Originally Posted by
Racer Ex
Blasphemy!
Actually, they are best used as a workload/fatigue metric, with a fair bit of knowing individual response and what contributed to the number. It's counting up the pots and pans at the end of the meal.
Agreed. No question they are great at quantifying what has been done (although we all know that 100TSS does not always equal 100TSS, depending on how one got there).
TSB doesn't do a great job at telling when someone is recovered and ready for me, or for a peak performance. That's where the art comes in.
I actually think those measures work better for professional athletes than amateurs, as professionals have a life built around the sport, whereas amateurs have many other sources of stress and/or activities that rob them of proper recovery.
A personal interest of mine in my own performance and in working with others is attempting to more accurately
quantify recovery. Some stuff I've found comes close than anything else--dealing with overnight sympathetic variations in HR that is not something that can be faked/controlled.
I'm sure someone has found that CTL/TSB alone works perfectly for them, but IME that would be rare.