Clarity of Insight into Status Makes ERG Users Better Able to Optimize Load
The clarity of insight into status makes ERG users better able to optimize load. This is because changes in performance can be more quickly and confidently attributed to actual changes in status due to the reliable relationship between fixed power and effort under controlled conditions.
The ability to optimize training load is important because adequate stimulus and recovery are required in order to realize the adaptations that we seek. And changes in status require adjustments to training load in order to ensure this balance on an ongoing basis.
The three load programming variables we have to work with are intensity, duration and frequency.
During the base phase, ensuring proper stimulus and progression is a simple matter of adjusting duration as needed to keep cardiac drift between 5-10%.
During the build phase, the focus of proper stimulus and progression becomes intensity, which merely involves performing intervals at maximum sustainable intensity (MSI) or the maximum power which can be sustained across all intervals. A decrease in average work interval heart also indicates the need to progress intensity.
Not be forgotten, proper frequency must also be maintained in order to ensure adequate recovery while preventing reversion to the prior fitness baseline. This is where the combination of cardiac drift and heart rate comes into play. A sudden decrease in heart rate this coincides with a spike in cardiac drift is a sure sign of fatigue. Conversely, the subsequent return to normal heart rate and cardiac drift after an additional recovery day indicates fatigue dissipation. This is because fatigue can cause heart rate to become abnormally low, especially earlier on in the workout which will skew both average heart rate and cardiac drift. This phenomenon is known as heart rate suppression and greater fatigue can cause greater suppression which allows cardiac drift to reflect the magnitude and accumulation of fatigue as well.
This insight into fatigue occurs at every level from workout-to-workout (especially during Base with uniform microcycle / single energy system focus), microcycle-to-microcycle and block-to-block. And it can be used for both responsive or forced progression; making it fully compatible with existing training plans.
Last edited by fstrnu; 03-10-19 at 10:34 AM.