power training and daily fitness..

lyot

hello,

I have this question.. If you train according to power, how does it take into account the level of daily fitness ? When you train according heart rate it's easy . When you have a bad day, and aren't rested enough, you're heart rate is higher, so if you want to do an endurance/recovery training, you just ride a bit slower compared to when you're really fit..So heart rate tells you how fast you can drive..But this isn't the case when training according to given % of power .. if you have to do a training at 70% of your LT (measured in a test), then some days your trainingload will be too heavy . Or am I wrong ?

thanks in advance for the advice

beerco

Actually, it will be lower.



When training by the numbers, especially if your PM has an interval feature, you use a combination of being able to hit the target powers combined with PE to decide how you're doing.

e.g. the other day I went out to do 2x20 threshold intervals. On the ride out I felt very week, but decided to do one interval anyway to see how I do, starting out slowly. AFter 20 minutes, I had exceeded my target power by about 6w so obviously I wasn't doing as poorly as I thought I did so I completed the second interval.

Another day, I was planning on doing 6x5s but could barely hit my target power on the first interval, nearly puking in the process - I bagged that workout right then and there.

lyot

well, not really.. If i'm doing endurance training, my heart rate will be relatively lower then when I'm having a good day.. I will, for instance, touch 130 easier then when I'm well rested (same speed, wind circumstances,...).. I understand that my maximum heart rate will be lower (like you seem to suggest) but I'm not talking about all out efforts, yet more about endurance training.





But what if the target power output is low (endurance training) . And you are able to push the output needed (without having to puke of course, since you're not pushing high wattages) ...In that case, you might be doing too much of a workload for that day ..That's my problem. How does power training take into account daily fitness? When I have a bad day, my heart rate immediately shows it to me, so I know just how hard I can ride (f.i 120 bpm). But that doesn't go for power training, right ?

greetings and thanks for the input.

beerco

I disagree that HR tells you when you're having a bad day. Typically, when overtrained or overreached, HR will be depressed. Dehydrated and it will be elevated etc. Who knows how HR reacts when you have a combination of these.

Basically, if you can handle the power output, your daily fitness is "good enough" to get the workout.

When training by power there are other tools such as TSS & IF that you can use to track your daily/weekly/monthly training load to help you decide if you're overdoing it in a much more quantitative way than just watching HR.

I'm in my third year of training by power now. For the first two I wore the HR strap but now I don't bother because for the life of me I couldn't find a use for the data.

lyot

based on my own experience, there's definitly a correlation between heart rate and level of fitness.. I'm not talking about real overtraining, since that's a whole different story, and before one reaches that stage, one must have been doing quite some things wrong. What i mean, is the slight differences in heart rate (7-8 beats) you encounter the day after a relatively hard training ..For instance, you're doing a intensive endurance, near LT and the next day, you're heart beat is 7-8 beats up (compared with the heart rate at that workload in 'normal' circumstances).. F.I, if you have planned a recovery training, this 7-8 beats can make the difference between doing recovery or extensive training...A heart rate monitor can help you adjust easily, but how do you do that using power meters ?

And excuse my ignorance, but what is TSS & IF ?

greetings

velomanct

you need to learn how to gauge your effort and determine if you are riding the right intensity. a smart rider knows when they are rested and when they need to recover. relying on all these gadgets is making everything too complicated.

lyot

I know..my feeling is often confirmed by my heart rate values...But since i'm considering switching to power, i want to know how training according to absolute power values takes this into account..

beerco

If you're not using a powermeter, how do you even know what the workload is?

You can keep looking for info in HR, but you won't find anything that will assist your training.

TSS/IF: http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/defined.html

lyot

same speed & same gear give different heartrates..

i'm convinced of the use of HR training, and i have no doubt Power training is usefull, yet, i would like to see an answer to my question.. that's all..

beerco

Same CdA? Same stretch of road? Same leadup workload to the road?

I don't really want to start the "is HR useful debate", but we're kind of heading in that direction anyway.

Personally, I've found that HR training and Power training are incompatible - i.e. you've got to pick one and pretty much ignore the other in terms of training plans. That is, if you're training by power, you can record HR for amusement purposes, but you can't prescribe workouts or adjust workouts based on HR.

Back to your original question though, I disagree that HR can tell you what your "instantaneous" fitness is and it's folly to think that you're having a positive effect on your training by adjusting workouts based on it. i.e. You're kidding yourself if you think your training program is any better because you're making adjustments based on a few beats difference one way or the other.

As an example, if one is relatively fresh, you can do the same threshold workout three days in a row. Ave HR for the work interval will steadily be decreasing with each consecutive day, but you'll still be able to perform the work. This "block" style training is often being prescribed by some of the more leading edge power based coaches out there.

So, in spite of your HR dropping each day, you are still able to perform the same workload each day, in spite of getting more fatigued, and you'll definitely be getting training benefit*. What would the additional positive effect of watching HR be in this scenario?

*Just to deflect a flame war here, block training is always prescribed with the intense work block followed by typically an equal length of very low intensity work afterward for recovery. e.g. if you do a 3 day block, it's followed by 3 days of very light riding or complete rest. By no means should one interpret my comments as advocating riding hard every single day.

ric_stern/RST

As well as Beerco's great comments, i'll add some. Training by power is *direct* measure of your fitness. Basically, at any given time, the more fit you are, the more power you can produce.

During blocks of training, your HR for the same workload may go up, or may go down, it will depend on many factors, e.g., fatigue, cadence, euhydration, etc.

My HR for a given workload goes higher when i'm rested, yet you're suggesting that i ease off in this situation, when it's actually likely that i could produce more power at that point.

HR is a dependent variable, whereas power output is the independent variable. Thus, your training should be based on power.

How does it take "daily level of fitness" into account? If you've been prescribed a session at X watts, you'll either do it or fail. during that session, if it feels significantly different (harder) to a similar session then you would need to either stop the session or drastically change it (e.g., you're supposed to do hill intervals, but you feel like death, so you change it to a recovery session or just go home).

does that help?

ric

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lyot

ric, beerco,

thanks for the input..First of all, I'm not at all willing to start a debate 'heart-rate' vs. 'power'.. As I said before, I believe they both have their value. My objective is to get a deeper understanding of power training. I've already been reading Ric's website and most of the threads on this forum..

I understand that when one is fit, one can produce more power. I also understand the opposite is true. I only seem to find it a bit odd, that power training is in the end based on the 'feeling' you have. If you feel you are not able to push a certain wattage, you should end the session. Yet, let's say you're doing a training where you need to push 90% of your power output at treshold. You'll be able to do that, even on a day when you are not really 'fit' ..It will be more difficult to reach that output compared to a day when you are feeling 'fit'... But since there's fatigue, your heartrate will be higher then your treshold .My main problem with this kind of issue is : how do you know you are not building up fatigue instead of fitness (the whole supercompensation kind of thing) if you're only guided by the percentages of total power output.
I really hope i'm not expressing myself to vaguely..

greetings,

lyot..

beerco

A couple of things though - where's the evidence that by watching HR you will be able to tell if you are building fatigue instead of fitness? In fact, in Ric's example (which is how my HR behaves too), going easier with a higher HR would be the exactly wrong thing to do to build fitness.

Do you have a powermeter by the way? If you don't you may not be aware that pacing workouts via the meter is somewhat difficult to do on the road and you usually don't know exactly how a session/interval went until after you're done with it - sometimes on the road still when you've finished an interval if your meter can show it (essential in my opinion).

Anyway, if you're doing a sub-threshold interval, yes, you would have to rely strictly on PE to bag a workout, but, if it's sub threshold, I'd say in most circumstances it would be unstructured and you'd automatically compensate by riding easier.

As to structured intervals, you'll know as soon as your done with the first or second interval. If you can't hit the targets you've hit in prior workouts and/or your PE is too high compared to similar workouts in the past, you bag it or change plans. Hitting or missing a target power is a pretty quantiative criteria in my opinion.

mattv2099

IF you ride your endurance rides at X watts then when your heart rate for this work out consistently becomes lower this is an indicator of increased fitness. If you are attempting to ride your endurance ride at X watts and your heart rate is significantly higher than usual this is an indicator of fatigue.