terrymorse 

For those using Training Peaks, how useful to you is the Fitness Ramp Rate - the rate at which your "fitness" (chronic training load) is increasing?

February here in the SF Bay Area has been pretty nice, so I've been riding more hours -- about 12 hours per week, easy to moderate pace. But this year, I want to be smart (for once) about not ramping up the volume too quickly.

Joe Friel's article says that the "correct ramp rate" of about 5-8 points is about right for most people, with 10 about the upper limit:

My 7-day ramp has been about 9 points for about 3 weeks, and I feel great. So maybe I'm overthinking this.

Thoughts?

MoAlpha

Alan Couzens, who, I think, tends to shoot from the hip, says anything more than 0.5 is unsustainable over some unspecified period. I'm happy when mine is positive, but the duration is clearly critical.

RChung

I've thought a bit about this. First, if you're feeling good, I don't think there's an obvious problem; it's when you start to feel not good that you may have a problem. Second, I think it's not just the slope of the CTL, it's also the level. A high rate when your CTL is already high might be different than a high rate when your CTL is low. Third, there's some room for fine-tuning the "time constant" (i.e., the decay rate).

MoAlpha

I think the problem is that you feel good until you don't and then you can find yourself in a hole that could disrupt a season.

Good point about the ramp rate in relation to absolute CTL or, more importantly, actual fitness. Obviously, the fitter you are the more ramp you can tolerate.

The CTL time constant? How is that related to the maximum tolerable ramp?

RChung

When Andy first proposed the PMC system, he suggested a CTL decay rate of 1/42 = 0.024 (or a half life of about 4 weeks) but he suggested that there should be more research on that and that the decay rates (for both ATL and CTL) might differ across individuals. The "ramp rate" when increasing load will depend on how quickly it "naturally" decays.

(The ATL "time constant" is 7, so the decay rates is 1/7 = 0.142, or a half life of about 5 days).

MoAlpha

Right. So you're just saying that if the time constant is higher, the CTL will be lower and vice versa, or am I missing something more subtle?

Too bad no one will fund good studies to validate and track the relevant biomarkers for these things.

RChung

I don't think you're missing anything subtle. CTL will differ, so (almost always) the rate of change in CTL will differ. But empirically, we're probably talking a couple of points one way or the other. I was just bringing it up because Terry says Friel advises keeping below 8 and Terry is seeing 9.

I think some people have done some work on trying to estimate individual decay rates but to be frank I've never closely read that stuff so I don't know how well it works. But I like the general big picture idea of it.

terrymorse 

So if I'm reading the comments above correctly, a higher ramp rate may be more tolerable at lower early-season CTL levels than, say midseason when you're higher on the curve, and your volume/intensity is greater.

Kind of in line with the steep fitness gains one sees when detrained, followed by the flattening of the curve as fitness improves, and it becomes progressively harder to induce gains.

Makes sense, I guess.

MoAlpha

I decreased my ATL decay to 8 days when I turned Medicare years old, and all that did was low-pass filter the thing a little more, making day-by-day loads look smaller, which was not really how I felt.

MoAlpha

I understood it the opposite way, but what do I know?

79pmooney

Does anybody check pulse and blood pressure in the morning to see how well they've recovered from the efforts the day before? Long before any of these plans, we used that to see when we needed a rest or easy day.

MoAlpha

Not much. Heart rate variability is a more sensitive, direct, and better validated readout of autonomic nervous system status than HR or BP.

Carbonfiberboy 

It being Training Peaks, the general idea is to train for a peak. I guess. That's my approach. It follows that, if one has a fair bit of experience in doing this, one knows what one's CTL should be, say a month out from the Big Event. So then you look at your current CTL and do some math. I rather think it's a good idea, for a geezer like me anyway, to not hold a high CTL for a long period. Takes a lot of work to keep it up there. My usual practice is to limit my rise to about 3 points/week, knowing that there will be times when I'll lose fitness for various reasons, some seen, some unforeseen, along with some easy weeks. Anyway, I like a long steady ramp. It's served me well.

This year is anomalous for me because of my little health issue. I'm running about 4 months behind my usual schedule. Once, maybe 20 years ago, I took the whole fall off and didn't start training until January. That was a disaster. My current CTL is 27 and I hope to peak at 65-70 in mid-summer. Maybe..

terrymorse 

Okay, now I'm more confused.

terrymorse 

So check heart rate variability first thing in the morning then?

MoAlpha

Yes, that’s how they say to track it. Lots of fitness geeks (including long-suffering spouse and I) use this: https://www.hrv4training.com/

terrymorse 

Thanks, I’m trying it out now.

Carbonfiberboy 

I have over 2000 daily HRV readings. I take them with Elite HRV on my phone and my Polar watch, just to check and because the watch gives me an accurate number for resting-standing minus resting-lying. For some reason, with age my morning resting HR has become mostly useless as a check, so I added HRV. I'd give it a C for usefulness, but I do it anyway. TSB is a better guide for me. One thing the Elite app has done very well is to predict the onset of PMR, twice. When my parasympathetic power goes in the toilet, I'm about to have a problem. Otherwise it's rather a crapshoot. Of course that's just me. I'm probably not a good case study.

terrymorse 

Can you please explain the acronyms TSB and PMR?

MoAlpha

TSB is training stress balance, i.e., CTL minus ATL or sometimes ATL as a percentage of CTL.

PMR? Polymyalgia rheumatica, in which case yikes!

GhostRider62

Couzens recommends no more than 5 CTL points per week for elite riders.

Adding 9 TSS per week to a rider with a CTL of 150-200 is trivial (5-6%) whereas it would cripple a 40 CTL rider, eventually.

WRT to the time constants, I had found that they did not represent my decay in my late 50's and I monkeyed around with them until they matched my HRV, mood, and general feeling of fatigue. I sent a note to Andrew Coggan and he graciously responded and if my memory serves, he said older fit riders can have different constants from the typical ones used by TP.

What I found worked for me was a constant of 10 IIRC with a 10 day Micro cycle and every 20 days (2 cycles), I would do 5 days easy as rest and then another 2 cycles of 10 days each. Very odd but it worked. I would be careful ramping too quickly

RChung

IRL I work on renewal models of various forms so when Andy first proposed his PMC (ATL, CTL, and TSB) I recognized it as a renewal model and, of course, I was both charmed and appalled.

200 CTL is a lot.

I think it makes sense that not everyone "renews" at the same rate, so one should pay attention to how the default "time constants" fit your particular situation. I think the first thing is to keep good records of your mood, motivation, and fatigue or session RPE. Using an ATL time constant of 10 is equivalent to lengthening the ATL half-life to a week.

PeteHski

My tracker (Fitbit) automatically tracks resting HR and HRV. I find both to be a useful guide to my recovery, especially resting HR. I'm still fairly new to HRV, but for me the correlation with fatigue is less clear. For example if my resting HR jumps more than 5 beats/sec above normal I'm usually either fatigued or getting sick. At peak fitness and freshness it always drops down to the same base level. HRV on the other hand is less predictable for me, although it does tend to drop with fatigue. I know Whoop is big on HRV and puts it front and centre, but I'm not convinced. I actually like Fitbit's readiness score balanced more evenly on HRV, sleep and activity.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, PMR got stuck over in "rheumatica" territory because AFAIK no one knows what causes it, so why not call it auto-immune. The treatment is a steroid, prednisone, and AFAIK no one knows why that works either. As long as one doesn't get giant cell arteritis, it's no big deal. Otherwise, it's otherwise. A weird note is that about when I got my first case of it, a riding buddy, 10 years younger, also came down with it. Huh. But it's definitely associated with a big drop in one's parasympathetic nervous system activity and hence an increase in inflammation. (I think that makes sense, but I'm not a doctor). "Polymyalgia" means that everything hurts, literally your muscles, but joints also. Usually a geezer disease. My WAG is that it's associated with low blood levels of choline. I don't consume a lot of eggs and no meat. After that last bout, I started taking a scoop of sunflower lecithin (~400mg choline) every morning, haven't had that problem again.

Digression . . . but just another good use of HRV. Keeps track of all sorts of things.

GhostRider62

To be honest, I had not really thought about the constants from a physiological perspective, although IIRC, TP simplifies the Banister equation. So, my monkeying around to make it fit how I felt seems reasonable. Yes, 200 is a ton. I am at 42 right now due to still recovering from Covid at Thanksgiving. I was only 95 CTL for PBP in 2019, which I did from the comfort of my Velo Couche whereas I was closer to 150 in 2015 on my upright. It takes many 1000+ mile weeks strung together to go well North of 200 CTL, at which point it is almost impossible to elicit a training response on short 3 hour rides. I'm going out today on one of old short 3 hour routes expecting about TSS of 120 and also knowing I will be toast afterwards. What I am trying to convey is a weekly limit in absolute terms doesn't seem to work, at least for me, a percentage increase on loading weeks seems more representative of what I can handle. 10% per week or around 4-5 points is the highest that has worked for me in recent years and it takes me close to 3 months to double CTL but a decade ago, it was 2 months to double. As CCFboy alluded, there seems a limit to how high CTL can be and for how long, which is more restricted as we age. At least that is what it is starting to feel like to this youngster going into my 65th year on the planet.