I got an email from another highly respected coach (he asked to be called that!) asking me to elaborate a little on how to implement in a weekly routine he constant fatigue model that I talked about here, and how it differs from other ways of scheduling training.
In order to talk about this, it might be helpful to define a subjective, qualitative training stress score that I will call TRS, Training Response Score. For a simple definition of TRS, let’s say that the total training load that any athlete can handle in a week represents 700 TRS, which means that the average daily TRS is 100. With this average daily TRS defined, it is easier to qualitatively explain the constant fatigue level model, and even compare it wth other scheduling models. Given that TRS is a measure based on adaptation to training, it is closely linked to the state of fatigue/recovery of the ahlete. Therefore, constant fatigue levels should be obtained by aiming to have daily TRS’s of around 100.
Even though for the sake of simplicity, the time frame of one week was mentioned, we need to remember that adaptation to training occurs in periods of 6-8 weeks. So when we are talking about the 700 TRS an athlete can handle in a week, we really should be thinking of the amount of training load an athlete can perform in a 6-8 week block, 4200-5600 TRS. This training load is something that falls into a very narrow interval.
As we all know, specificity has, or should have, a big impact when designing the training plan. Therefore, specificity requirements might deviate us from the “perfect” implementation of the constant fatigue model. This is particularly true for Ironman training, where for specificity, it is often needed to schedule days which will bring a TRS in excess of 100. To give an example, a training session that is common for IM athletes to do, a 5 hour ride followed by a 40min run, is a session that might have a TRS of over 150 for some athletes.
So how do you couple the constant fatigue model with the specificity needs? I feel that the best approach is to have a hard day/easy day approach, where you seek recovery, hence adaptation, in the short term. In terms of TRS, this would mean that following a 150 TRS day, you would schedule a 50 TRS.
An alternative way to schedule training is to center microcyle planning around 2-3 “big days” in a week. Let’s try to see this with the help of the TRS. A “big day” might represent some 150-200 TRS and 2-3 days can mean a training load of 400-500 TRS. Because we have a “budget” of 700 TRS for the week (or more important 4200-5600 TRS for the block), and because such stenous sessions require significant recovery in the following days, a good part of the week is comprised of low TRS days. The practical consequences of what was stated above are pretty straightforward. There is only so much and athlete can handle inside 6-8 weeks. So if you are seeking adaptation to training, something that apparently is not a goal for some, if you are going to do “big days” or “big weeks” of training, they will be followed by small days or small weeks in order to balance out the adaptation equation. And this is the important detail that never makes it to athlete’s blogs.
Some of you must be asking right now this: What is the difference between the two approaches, providing you respect the same TRS during a 6-8 week block?
The main difference I find is the predictability in response to training that you get by using a constant fatigue/recovery model. By seeking to find the training load that induces a constant recovery timeframe, you can easily answer one of the more important questions when scheduling training: “Is the athlete recovered in order to be able to complete the goals of the next session?”
As mentioned in an earlier post, the training process can be loosely modeled as a series of sequenced processes composed of:
Training Load (session) -> Fatigue -> Adaptation(recovery) -> Performance
By trying to maintain constant the load/fatigue part of the process, we can more easily predict the effect that the scheduled sessions have in the overall training plan and hence the impact in performance.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Run like Sergio
Wim de Doncker asked me to write a little piece about Sergio's run training. You can read it here.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Discussing training, discussing coaching
Recently I was asked to write a little piece about Sergio’s run training. Sergio is unarguably one of the best runners in Ironman, and the interest in what makes him a fast runner is normal. As I was writing the piece, it occurred to me that from all the things that I have written about training, all the discussions I have had about training, I never used one of my athletes as validation to my training methods.
Regarding this subject, I have two interesting stories.
Story #1: Some weeks ago there was a training discussion on the men’s forum of Slowtwitch about training theory and methodology. As the discussion “evolved” (not a good application of the term “evolved”, but I digress), a coach that will remain anonymous here felt he needed to validate the point he was making by quoting the “great results” a pro athlete he coaches had obtained at a recent Ironman race using his particular approach. After some googling, I found out that the said athlete was 23rd overall on that race. More interestingly, an athlete I coach was 2nd on that race, almost half an hour in front. My first thought was, my goodness, how much better are my training methods? More amusingly, the said coach was arguing with another coach that has had an athlete win that particular race in the past, and that over the last season alone had 4 ITU World Cup wins. How much better are his methods?
Story #2: A few years ago, I remember this coach, another anonymous soul, talking about his “8:20 guy”. The reference to his “8:20 guy” was generally given at the beginning of the articles, so as to lend credibility to what he was about to write. I remember at the time following what he wrote carefully, as I was impressed that a coach with less than 5 years experience had a “8:20 guy”. This “guy” was also pretty young at the time and had a bright future ahead of him. A few years later, the “8:20 guy” has fallen off the (triathlon) world. No longer you see his name on result sheets. What, at the time, was fed to us as amazing tales of heroic training, are in hindsight sad tales of misguided training that ended in full-blown overtraining syndrome. And I guess because it is said that “hindsight is 20/20”, now the said coach tells us how the athlete was responsible for destroying himself. Wait… the athlete? What happened to his “8:20 guy”?
These two stories nicely ilustrate the point I want to make. Too many times you see coaches using their own “n=1” examples in order to attempt to validate their methods and practice. This is especially used by coaches with limited experience, that anxiously want to market themselves as high-level coaches. Some, like the coach in story #1, have bright headlights and expect their future clients to behave like deer. Some, like the coach in story #2, are fully successful coaches because they suffer from the type of selective memory that only remembers success. In common, they share a way of conducting business that is fast becoming the norm in the industry. To the detriment of the athletes that end up hiring these coaches.
Regarding this subject, I have two interesting stories.
Story #1: Some weeks ago there was a training discussion on the men’s forum of Slowtwitch about training theory and methodology. As the discussion “evolved” (not a good application of the term “evolved”, but I digress), a coach that will remain anonymous here felt he needed to validate the point he was making by quoting the “great results” a pro athlete he coaches had obtained at a recent Ironman race using his particular approach. After some googling, I found out that the said athlete was 23rd overall on that race. More interestingly, an athlete I coach was 2nd on that race, almost half an hour in front. My first thought was, my goodness, how much better are my training methods? More amusingly, the said coach was arguing with another coach that has had an athlete win that particular race in the past, and that over the last season alone had 4 ITU World Cup wins. How much better are his methods?
Story #2: A few years ago, I remember this coach, another anonymous soul, talking about his “8:20 guy”. The reference to his “8:20 guy” was generally given at the beginning of the articles, so as to lend credibility to what he was about to write. I remember at the time following what he wrote carefully, as I was impressed that a coach with less than 5 years experience had a “8:20 guy”. This “guy” was also pretty young at the time and had a bright future ahead of him. A few years later, the “8:20 guy” has fallen off the (triathlon) world. No longer you see his name on result sheets. What, at the time, was fed to us as amazing tales of heroic training, are in hindsight sad tales of misguided training that ended in full-blown overtraining syndrome. And I guess because it is said that “hindsight is 20/20”, now the said coach tells us how the athlete was responsible for destroying himself. Wait… the athlete? What happened to his “8:20 guy”?
These two stories nicely ilustrate the point I want to make. Too many times you see coaches using their own “n=1” examples in order to attempt to validate their methods and practice. This is especially used by coaches with limited experience, that anxiously want to market themselves as high-level coaches. Some, like the coach in story #1, have bright headlights and expect their future clients to behave like deer. Some, like the coach in story #2, are fully successful coaches because they suffer from the type of selective memory that only remembers success. In common, they share a way of conducting business that is fast becoming the norm in the industry. To the detriment of the athletes that end up hiring these coaches.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
There is life after the end of this season
That is an obvious title. For most competitive athletes, there is no doubt in their minds that they will be training and racing in the next season and beyond. There is also little doubt in the minds of competitive athletes about the need to improve from year to year. However, very little is said by most triathlon training gurus about the need for a multi-year plan. Instead, we get narrow views of athlete development, like the one-size-fits-all 24-week plans for Ironman training, or the athletes and/or coaches that see multi-year development kind of like “Groundhog Year”, with every season starting at the tune of Sonny and Cher.
The first requirement for a continuous performance improvement over several years is to establish at an early stage a multi-year plan. This plan should delineate, in broad terms, the building-up of conditioning over several years.
In order to elaborate the multi-year plan, it is essential to access:
- a profile of the athlete’s weak and strong characteristics
- the athlete’s ability to adapt to the various training methods
The multi-year plan sparingly needs to readjusted according to the physiological development of the athlete. This requires an ongoing observation of the evolution of the athlete’s conditioning level, based on training feedback, test results and racing. In order to benefit from the long-term guidelines that the multi-year plan contains, not too many changes should be made to it.
So what training information should be stated in a multi-year plan?
- Long-term racing objectives (e.g. win a determined race).
- Long-term motivational goals (e.g. participate at a competitive training camp).
- Long-term training load goals (e.g. achieve a determined training load necessary to achieve the long-term racing goals).
- Laboratory and field tests to evaluate the evolution of conditioning.
In order for us to achieve our goal, it is not sufficient to just have a clear picture of the goal. It is also necessary to have a picture of the path to the goal. Only through the clear picture for athlete development that the multi-year plan provides, we can expect for the continuous performance improvement we all want to achieve.
The first requirement for a continuous performance improvement over several years is to establish at an early stage a multi-year plan. This plan should delineate, in broad terms, the building-up of conditioning over several years.
In order to elaborate the multi-year plan, it is essential to access:
- a profile of the athlete’s weak and strong characteristics
- the athlete’s ability to adapt to the various training methods
The multi-year plan sparingly needs to readjusted according to the physiological development of the athlete. This requires an ongoing observation of the evolution of the athlete’s conditioning level, based on training feedback, test results and racing. In order to benefit from the long-term guidelines that the multi-year plan contains, not too many changes should be made to it.
So what training information should be stated in a multi-year plan?
- Long-term racing objectives (e.g. win a determined race).
- Long-term motivational goals (e.g. participate at a competitive training camp).
- Long-term training load goals (e.g. achieve a determined training load necessary to achieve the long-term racing goals).
- Laboratory and field tests to evaluate the evolution of conditioning.
In order for us to achieve our goal, it is not sufficient to just have a clear picture of the goal. It is also necessary to have a picture of the path to the goal. Only through the clear picture for athlete development that the multi-year plan provides, we can expect for the continuous performance improvement we all want to achieve.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Interactions between training sessions – Part III: Interactions between swim-bike-run
In part II of this series, we saw how the time intervals between consecutive training sessions should be selected in order to respect the timings of adaptation to training for the different training methods used. Today I will talk a bit about how all this relates to the scheduling of swim, bike and run training sessions.
As an example of the timings that need to be respected in order to allow for adaptation to training, I quoted a table from Olbrecht (2000). As some readers surely noticed, those recovery times are very general and specific at the same time. General because they do not account for individual variability and specific because they apply to swimming training only. If the effect of individual variability is something easy to understand, it is worth noticing that in the context of swim training, training sessions almost always have the same length (volume), with different training methods being used inside the training session (intensity). That obviously simplifies modelling adaptation to training. For example, if we wanted to build a similar recovery chart for cycling training, where training sessions have varied length, we would need to either quantify training load (volume times intensity) or introduce some sort of temporal distintion.
So if for single-sport there are differences between recovery times, if we try to approach recovery timings in this way for triathlon training, the issue quickly becomes quite complex. As we saw before, fatigue is directly connected to recovery and adaptation to training. By modelling, even if qualitatively, fatigue and recovery, we gain insight on how the athlete is adapting to training. This is where the “art” in coaching comes into play. For the experienced coach, it is relatively easy to know what to schedule based on the information he has from the athlete and his experience in knowing the various responses to the various training methods. Most coaches, either consciously or unconsciously, model the fatigue levels of the athlete in order to prescribe training. Given the training load the coach feels is appropriate for the athlete, the training routine is set by asking the following question before scheduling the next training session: Will the athlete be able to complete and fulfill the goals of the next training session? Instead of setting in stone all the possible recovery times between all kinds of swim, bike and run workouts, a realistic accessment should be made as to the level of fatigue/recovery before each workout.
Intrinsic to this way of seeing daily training prescription, is the way we want to manipulate the athlete’s fatigue levels. Several approaches exist, most of them revolving around the concept of alternating “hard” days with “easy” days, that is to say, days where fatigue level is high with days where fatigue level is low. However, I find that the easiest model to implement is one of fairly constant fatigue levels. This will bring fairly constant recovery timings and hence very predictable responses to training, i.e. adaptations. It is obvious that one possible way of obtaining fairly constant fatigue levels, which will in turn produce predictable responses to training, is to apply fairly constant training loads. However, when scheduling triathlon training, the concept of equivalent training load between swim, bike and run is one difficult to estimate. Again that is where experience in triathlon training prescription is important for the design of the best training schedule.
During this short series, I broadly definined an approach to training prescription based on modelling the level of fatigue as a way to model recovery and adaptation to training. When talking about training, most discussions are centered around what training load should be applied to the athlete, and very seldom the characteristics of the response of the athlete to the load is mentioned. It’s as if the way the athlete handles the training sessions is not important. Modelling the athlete’s fatigue when prescribing training, even if in a qualitative way, puts the athlete back into the equation and allows us to design more effective training plans that cater to the athlete’s individual response to training.
As an example of the timings that need to be respected in order to allow for adaptation to training, I quoted a table from Olbrecht (2000). As some readers surely noticed, those recovery times are very general and specific at the same time. General because they do not account for individual variability and specific because they apply to swimming training only. If the effect of individual variability is something easy to understand, it is worth noticing that in the context of swim training, training sessions almost always have the same length (volume), with different training methods being used inside the training session (intensity). That obviously simplifies modelling adaptation to training. For example, if we wanted to build a similar recovery chart for cycling training, where training sessions have varied length, we would need to either quantify training load (volume times intensity) or introduce some sort of temporal distintion.
So if for single-sport there are differences between recovery times, if we try to approach recovery timings in this way for triathlon training, the issue quickly becomes quite complex. As we saw before, fatigue is directly connected to recovery and adaptation to training. By modelling, even if qualitatively, fatigue and recovery, we gain insight on how the athlete is adapting to training. This is where the “art” in coaching comes into play. For the experienced coach, it is relatively easy to know what to schedule based on the information he has from the athlete and his experience in knowing the various responses to the various training methods. Most coaches, either consciously or unconsciously, model the fatigue levels of the athlete in order to prescribe training. Given the training load the coach feels is appropriate for the athlete, the training routine is set by asking the following question before scheduling the next training session: Will the athlete be able to complete and fulfill the goals of the next training session? Instead of setting in stone all the possible recovery times between all kinds of swim, bike and run workouts, a realistic accessment should be made as to the level of fatigue/recovery before each workout.
Intrinsic to this way of seeing daily training prescription, is the way we want to manipulate the athlete’s fatigue levels. Several approaches exist, most of them revolving around the concept of alternating “hard” days with “easy” days, that is to say, days where fatigue level is high with days where fatigue level is low. However, I find that the easiest model to implement is one of fairly constant fatigue levels. This will bring fairly constant recovery timings and hence very predictable responses to training, i.e. adaptations. It is obvious that one possible way of obtaining fairly constant fatigue levels, which will in turn produce predictable responses to training, is to apply fairly constant training loads. However, when scheduling triathlon training, the concept of equivalent training load between swim, bike and run is one difficult to estimate. Again that is where experience in triathlon training prescription is important for the design of the best training schedule.
During this short series, I broadly definined an approach to training prescription based on modelling the level of fatigue as a way to model recovery and adaptation to training. When talking about training, most discussions are centered around what training load should be applied to the athlete, and very seldom the characteristics of the response of the athlete to the load is mentioned. It’s as if the way the athlete handles the training sessions is not important. Modelling the athlete’s fatigue when prescribing training, even if in a qualitative way, puts the athlete back into the equation and allows us to design more effective training plans that cater to the athlete’s individual response to training.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Interactions between training sessions – Part II: Timing of adaptations
In the first instalment of this series, I talked a bit about the importance of modeling the response to training load, fatigue and recovery, to the correct prescription of training. Today I will talk a bit about the temporal evolution of fatigue/recovery, which will influence adaptation to training.
After each training session, fatigue sets in and performance is diminuished. The recovery process also starts as performance will slowly increase towards a higher level. The recovery phase allows for several biological adaptations to occur:
- normalization of the cell environment.
- recovery of neuromuscular stimulation processes
- concentration and activity of enzymes and hormones will be restored
- energy sources are replenished
As these processes evolve, adaptation to the stimulus (training session) is marked by an increase of performance. This is usually called the principle of super-compensation.
As fatigue is directly related to performance, and performance related to adaptation to training, then one way of monitoring adaptation would be to measure performance. However, measuring performance has its own impact on the training process. Therefore, a non-intrusive way of monitoring adaptation to training is the qualitative monitoring of an athlete’s level of fatigue.
In order for adaptation to training to occur, some requiments need to be met:
- A healthy body: Inflammation, infection, mental stress, etc strongly reduce the possibility for adaptation.
- Adequate training load: This is the most crucial aspect of successful training.
- Enough recovery: rest or regenerative workouts will make up most of an athlete’s time.
The timing for adaptation is the deciding factor when planning training on the short-term (1-7 days). For a healthy athlete, this timing depends on several factors:
- the type and duration of the workout
- the conditioning level of the athlete
- the recovery level of the athlete
If an athlete has a high conditioning level and/or is well rested, time for adaptation will be shorter. On the other hand, mental stress or lack of rest will slow down the process necessary to achieve super-compensation. The differences in timing for adaptation are due to various biological regeneration processes that take place during the recovery phase. The replenishment of creatine phosphate will take only a few seconds to a couple of minutes to return to normal levels, but the glycogen-reloading process in the muscle may last 24 hours; in some cases, it may last even longer. The production of new enzymes (proteins) may also take hours, sometimes even days, to complete (Olbrecht 2000).
According to Olbrecht (2000), the time for different types of training to reach the maximal supercompensation are:
- Extensive Endurance: 8 to 12 hours.
- Intensive Endurance: 24 to 30 hours.
- Sprints/Short sets: 30 to 40 hours.
- Extensive Anaerobic Training: 36 to 48 hours.
- Extensive Strength Training: 40 to 60 hours.
- Intensive Anaerobic Training: 36 to 48 hours.
- Intensive/Strength Training/Competition: 48-72 hours.
When designing a training plan, the time intervals between consecutive training sessions should be selected in order to respect the timings of adaptation to training for the different training methods used. Working out these timings is possibly the most difficult part of planning and it is the "art" part of coaching.
In the last part of this series, I will talk a bit about interactions between swim, bike and run training sessions.
Olbrecht, J., (2000), The Science of Winning – Planning, Periodizing and Optimizing Swim Training.
After each training session, fatigue sets in and performance is diminuished. The recovery process also starts as performance will slowly increase towards a higher level. The recovery phase allows for several biological adaptations to occur:
- normalization of the cell environment.
- recovery of neuromuscular stimulation processes
- concentration and activity of enzymes and hormones will be restored
- energy sources are replenished
As these processes evolve, adaptation to the stimulus (training session) is marked by an increase of performance. This is usually called the principle of super-compensation.
As fatigue is directly related to performance, and performance related to adaptation to training, then one way of monitoring adaptation would be to measure performance. However, measuring performance has its own impact on the training process. Therefore, a non-intrusive way of monitoring adaptation to training is the qualitative monitoring of an athlete’s level of fatigue.
In order for adaptation to training to occur, some requiments need to be met:
- A healthy body: Inflammation, infection, mental stress, etc strongly reduce the possibility for adaptation.
- Adequate training load: This is the most crucial aspect of successful training.
- Enough recovery: rest or regenerative workouts will make up most of an athlete’s time.
The timing for adaptation is the deciding factor when planning training on the short-term (1-7 days). For a healthy athlete, this timing depends on several factors:
- the type and duration of the workout
- the conditioning level of the athlete
- the recovery level of the athlete
If an athlete has a high conditioning level and/or is well rested, time for adaptation will be shorter. On the other hand, mental stress or lack of rest will slow down the process necessary to achieve super-compensation. The differences in timing for adaptation are due to various biological regeneration processes that take place during the recovery phase. The replenishment of creatine phosphate will take only a few seconds to a couple of minutes to return to normal levels, but the glycogen-reloading process in the muscle may last 24 hours; in some cases, it may last even longer. The production of new enzymes (proteins) may also take hours, sometimes even days, to complete (Olbrecht 2000).
According to Olbrecht (2000), the time for different types of training to reach the maximal supercompensation are:
- Extensive Endurance: 8 to 12 hours.
- Intensive Endurance: 24 to 30 hours.
- Sprints/Short sets: 30 to 40 hours.
- Extensive Anaerobic Training: 36 to 48 hours.
- Extensive Strength Training: 40 to 60 hours.
- Intensive Anaerobic Training: 36 to 48 hours.
- Intensive/Strength Training/Competition: 48-72 hours.
When designing a training plan, the time intervals between consecutive training sessions should be selected in order to respect the timings of adaptation to training for the different training methods used. Working out these timings is possibly the most difficult part of planning and it is the "art" part of coaching.
In the last part of this series, I will talk a bit about interactions between swim, bike and run training sessions.
Olbrecht, J., (2000), The Science of Winning – Planning, Periodizing and Optimizing Swim Training.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Interactions between training sessions – Part I: Load, Fatigue and Adaptation
A fundamental problem in training planning is the way you sequence the various training sessions inside one micro-cycle. Even though this problem is present for any sport, when it comes to triathlon training it assumes a particularly important role. Due to the different characteristics and muscle groups involved in swim-bike-run, it is often hard to see how the interactions between training sessions effect training adaptations.
The training process can be loosely modeled as a series of sequenced processes composed of:
Training Load (session) -> Fatigue -> Adaptation(recovery) -> Performance
Obviously the training load imposed is a central aspect of training planning. However, fatigue plays an important role in the whole training process. In this context, fatigue can be defined as a natural response to a training load characterized by a lessened capacity for work. The evaluation and monitoring of the level of fatigue of an athlete, either quantitatively or qualitatively, a priori or a posteriori, is the most accurate way of checking the level of an athlete’s adaptation to training. Fatigue has several characteristics, but when it comes to planning training, we are mostly interested in fatigue as a function of time.
It is intuitive to everyone that different training sessions cause different levels of fatigue and that, more important, have different time-frames to recover from and to adapt to. Sessions with a higher training load take more time to recover from than sessions with a lower training load. When designing a micro-cycle routine, the temporal characteristics of the fatigue caused by a specific session need to be taken into account. On top of that, the interactions between the several Load -> Fatigue -> Adaptation processes need to be estimated in order to access the fatigue status at a given time. This fatigue status is extremely important because it determines the maximum load an athlete can perform at a given time.
Like I mentioned above, evaluating and monitoring fatigue can be done both quantitatively or qualitatively. For years and years, coaches have been predicting, evaluating and monitoring athlete’s fatigue levels in a qualitative way, in order to prescribe training. And rightfully so, since only through monitoring fatigue we can evaluate adaptation to training. Many coaches and athletes see training as a mere accumulation of fatigue, expecting that rest periods (days, weeks and even months) will be enough to recover from fatigue and allows for adaptations to training to happen. This way of thinking fails to realize that recovery occurs at all times that stress is not applied, and that adaptation to stress occurs at all times, even while stress is applied. Correctly modeling fatigue, even if in a qualitative way, is paramount for a correct prescription of training.
In the next part of this series, I will talk a bit about how the level of fatigue is connected to the level of recovery, the timings of fatigue/recovery and how all that that determines micro-cycle planning.
The training process can be loosely modeled as a series of sequenced processes composed of:
Training Load (session) -> Fatigue -> Adaptation(recovery) -> Performance
Obviously the training load imposed is a central aspect of training planning. However, fatigue plays an important role in the whole training process. In this context, fatigue can be defined as a natural response to a training load characterized by a lessened capacity for work. The evaluation and monitoring of the level of fatigue of an athlete, either quantitatively or qualitatively, a priori or a posteriori, is the most accurate way of checking the level of an athlete’s adaptation to training. Fatigue has several characteristics, but when it comes to planning training, we are mostly interested in fatigue as a function of time.
It is intuitive to everyone that different training sessions cause different levels of fatigue and that, more important, have different time-frames to recover from and to adapt to. Sessions with a higher training load take more time to recover from than sessions with a lower training load. When designing a micro-cycle routine, the temporal characteristics of the fatigue caused by a specific session need to be taken into account. On top of that, the interactions between the several Load -> Fatigue -> Adaptation processes need to be estimated in order to access the fatigue status at a given time. This fatigue status is extremely important because it determines the maximum load an athlete can perform at a given time.
Like I mentioned above, evaluating and monitoring fatigue can be done both quantitatively or qualitatively. For years and years, coaches have been predicting, evaluating and monitoring athlete’s fatigue levels in a qualitative way, in order to prescribe training. And rightfully so, since only through monitoring fatigue we can evaluate adaptation to training. Many coaches and athletes see training as a mere accumulation of fatigue, expecting that rest periods (days, weeks and even months) will be enough to recover from fatigue and allows for adaptations to training to happen. This way of thinking fails to realize that recovery occurs at all times that stress is not applied, and that adaptation to stress occurs at all times, even while stress is applied. Correctly modeling fatigue, even if in a qualitative way, is paramount for a correct prescription of training.
In the next part of this series, I will talk a bit about how the level of fatigue is connected to the level of recovery, the timings of fatigue/recovery and how all that that determines micro-cycle planning.
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