Intensity ...

[old] GeorgeD · Post by **[old] GeorgeD** » December 12th, 2004, 4:04 pm

I raised this topic a while back I think but want resurrect it as we come to years end. I intend to record more information next year in an effort to better understand how I physically / metally respond to different training sesssions in micro and meso cycles. Re-reading the notes is one thing but it would be nice to have a 'rough' numerical grading for a session - maybe HR x Ave watts, or Ave watts x time, or SPI x HR or some such thing. I think I made the mistake this year of not enough recovery, despite knowing that I actually respond better to 'overload' with days off. Any ideas ?? Tks George

[old] Ralph Earle · Post by **[old] Ralph Earle** » December 12th, 2004, 9:11 pm

If you erg the same distance or time every week or two, meters per heartbeat will tell you if you're getting more efficient.

[old] bw1099 · Post by **[old] bw1099** » December 12th, 2004, 11:32 pm

George, Interesting question. It seem like there are a limited number of possible indices of performance, and the danger may be that you come up with an index that is really the same as something else. For example, you suggested Average Watts times Time. That works out to be energy, which is the same as total calories, but in different units. The PM3 records distance travelled (meters), time (min), energy(Calories), power(Watts), average speed (time per 500m), and stroke rate (spm), and heart rate (if you have a monitor). I think all it is really recording is energy, time and number of strokes, and it calculates everything else from them. Am I correct? SPI seems good because it works out to energy per stroke. Ralph's suggestion of meters per heartbeat sounds good since is is a measure of how efficient your body is working. Energy (calories) per heartbeat might be better. bw

[old] GeorgeD · Post by **[old] GeorgeD** » December 13th, 2004, 4:58 am

Tks guys, I am aware that any measure will be arbitrary and it may be that I end up just ranking each session by an A, B, C, D etc based on percieved exertion. Or as I say i may come up with a numerical figure, and the only pre-requisite is that it is consistantly applied and relatively accurate. I mean how do you rate a 20min row at AT compared to a 45 min row at high UT1 pace .... the purpose being to avoid over training (or undertraining which is seldom a problem) - George

[old] tow rope · Post by **[old] tow rope** » December 13th, 2004, 9:41 pm

I remember reading in a discussion of "how do you know when to quit" (See <a href='http://www.run100s.com)' target='_blank'>http://www.run100s.com)</a> on an ultra-marathon website that if you pee blood three times in a row you probably should back off. Bert

[old] DIESEL · Post by **[old] DIESEL** » December 14th, 2004, 12:38 am

I've always figured SPI in relation to stroke rate is a good measure of intensity. If you're doing 18-26spm pieces and you are getting an SPI of 11+ chances are that's pretty good intensity. Once you go higher rating, the SPI will go down - but if you are doing your 2k pieces at over 32spm with an SPI of 8-9 I'd say that's pretty intense too.... Just a thought... D

[old] jamesg · Post by **[old] jamesg** » December 14th, 2004, 1:35 am

GD As you say, any measure is probably arbitrary, and I'd add, useless. UT and AT work are different tools for doing different jobs. You might as well try to rate screwdrivers and spanners. Both have to be in the toolbox, both have their design purpose, both require that first of all you decide your target. Maybe the simplest method (to avoid future overtraining and see effects of any particular past training scheme) is to measure the total work done (in Watt hours, or even just metres or time) AND the amount done at any specific level, and look at the percentages and the results. 100% UT work won't overload us even if we do 5-6 hours a day (as I do when on holiday): 100% AT almost certainly will but maybe won't keep us fit. Somewhere in the middle will be the ideal for your purpose. Training plans for racing such as the Interactive control both the overall load and the load at specific levels, for each week, on the basis of well-tried, hidden and highly dynamic schemes: the percents vary as the race date approaches, but high AT %s seem to be limited to just a few weeks.

[old] Physicist · Post by **[old] Physicist** » December 14th, 2004, 6:41 am

Eric Bannister proposed a simple measure known as TRIMP (Training Impulse) by which each session could be graded - the TRIMP can be added up for each session to give a weekly cumulative total. The original formula was simply TRIMP = A*B where A is the duration of the exercise in minutes, and B is the percentage of heart rate reserve which the athlete averaged for the session. So if you have a max heart rate of 200, a resting rate of 60, and you exercise for 30mins at an average heart rate of 130, then TRIMP = 30*(200-130)/(200-60) = 15. The formula was later revised to account for the exponential rise in blood lactate concentration with fractional elevation in heart rate by adding a third factor: TRIMP = A*B*C where C = 0.64*exp(1.92B) This formula is far more sophisticated and no longer gives the implausible result that doubling the intensity while halving the exercise time has no effect on overall training stimulus. The factor of 0.64 is of course irrelevant if you only want a relative measure of the training impulse, but is included in an attempt to make TRIMP approximate to the work done (0.64 is in units of Joules/min) The formula is still doomed over very short intervals where the heart rate is a useless measure of intensity, as it cannot respond fast enough to the muscular demands. But if you're looking for a quantitative measure of the overall 'value' of your session then this is the best one I've ever heard of. One important caveat is that nobody over said you'll get the same results if you tot up the same total TRIMP each week as someone else who's doing it a different way. This is not a tool for designing training programs, just for checking how much work you're doing.

[old] Cat7 · Post by **[old] Cat7** » December 14th, 2004, 1:46 pm

I believe Average Watts for a given distance is the best indication of relative intensity. Heart Rate is a poor measure at best because so of lag in heart rate response and so many variables impact heart rate: conditioning, amount of rest, temperature, humidity, altitude, diet, medication......it goes on and on. I'm a cross-over from the cycling world where training intensities have gotten a lot of study. Check out <a href='http://lists.topica.com/lists/wattage/read' target='_blank'>http://lists.topica.com/lists/wattage/read</a> for more detail than you'll ever care to know. The posts by Andy Coggin are arguably the most authoritative.

[old] Dickie · Post by **[old] Dickie** » December 14th, 2004, 4:22 pm

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE (tow rope @ Dec 13 2004, 09:41 PM)</td></tr><tr><td class='quote'> that if you pee blood three times in a row you probably should back off. Bert  </td></tr></table> The last time I pee'd blood three times in a row, I went to the doctor and they discovered Bladder Cancer. Take the warning, it could save your life. Fred Dickie

[old] Jim Barry · Post by **[old] Jim Barry** » December 14th, 2004, 4:54 pm

To date the best way for me to quantify one period's "intensity" versus another period is to count the hard days in a 30 day cycle. I have a column in my log. 1 is hard and 0 is not. Another column sums the total over the prior 30 days. Hard workouts are defined as the kind of workout that require a day's recovery. They are stressful (they build a better you). They usually take pretty high motivation. In my hottest period I've managed to get in 14 in a 30 day cycle. (all my PB's followed in the next month too). Intensity (or perhaps training load) as measured by average HR or average watts, I think fails because long moderate rows are so good for your rowing, but for your training load 'score' gets a ding if you put in a few extra easy steady state rows. IMO these extra sessions should be encouraged. So I only look at the quality days and build metrics on those days. At this point I do not think one quality day is all that much better than any other. They each play a role much like leafy vegetables are as important as beans or nuts in your diet. The physiological impact of any one training session is an unknown. I give a hard workout a value of 1 and then quantify things after that. KISS principle in action. Right now I'm in a re-building period where my rowing is just hard days. (3 hard 5k's per week). On my "count the hard days" score, my training load is pretty high. Oddly enough I'm only rowing 4 hours a month, but in all other aspects I feel like I'm training. I require a lot of recovery. I require a lot of motivation. I have to eat well, sleep well and prepare for my rows fully. I am seeing pretty good results, improving week over week. I do not know if I'll get to the levels where I trained 20 hours per month, but if I come close I think I'll score a victory. Right now my best training 5k is 242 watts (30spm). I started 3 weeks ago at 210w (30 spm) and am now at 222 (and corrected my ratio to 25 spm).

[old] andyArvid · Post by **[old] andyArvid** » December 14th, 2004, 10:16 pm

When I was running a lot, I used to have a problem of chasing miles. That is, running extra miles so my weekly total or my 7-day running average looked good. I also used to keep two totals. One was absolute miles and the other was relative to the intensity. Hard runs were worth 1.25 times mileage and Interval work and races were 1.5 time mileage. You can choose other factors, these were just easy to calculate in my head. But keeping a 7 ou 14 day running average was a poor indicator of my true shape. Plus I kept on trying to outdo the day that was dropping off the average. Nevermind taking a day off would be a big hit on my average. Anyway I hit upon the idea of using a decaying average (a weighted average where the weights decay each day into the past). Every run would have a half-life. Basically How many days it would take for a 10k today to decay to a 5k. I usually considered a work out to have a half-life of 90 days. But you can choose another length of time ( I also toyed with 30 day half-lifes and 180 day half-lifes). Another way of looking at it is that a workout 90 days ago would have half the importance of a workout today in the average. A workout 180 days ago would have one-quarter the importance. The workout never disappears from the average but fades away. The advantage is that missing one day or an extra long/hard workout does not affect the average very much. Plus you can easily tell if you are spending too many days well above your average (which would be a truer indication of your fitness level). I know that this sounds complicated but the math is not too complicated . Today's decaying average is calculated from yesterday's average. One can easily do it with a calculator. If anyone is interested, I can workout the math for you.

[old] GeorgeD · Post by **[old] GeorgeD** » December 15th, 2004, 3:46 am

Andy you lost me but I am interested. The issue for me is overtraining and that tends to be on intensity rather than distance. Because of limited time I tend to not add in the recovery sessions. I have invested in a heart rate monitor so that is one thing that will help. I guess you could give yourself 100 points for a week and then rate sessions as a % of the total till you have used it up. eg 40min at UT2 maybe 10%, 40min UT1 maybe 15- 20%, and 40min made up of 2 x 20min at AT maybe 30% - I really have not given it to much though but it is another one into the mix. I agree with someone up above that maybe ave Watts x time would give you a number that could be used as a rough comparison ? dunno fun to think about while rowing tho - George

[old] Kudos · Post by **[old] Kudos** » December 15th, 2004, 6:58 am

I know I have said this before, but if your heart rate has a calorie expenditure function. That may be the closest data to how hard you actually worked. It will reflect positively when you are overtrained and negatively when you are undertrained. But really, no matter what, overtraining is a feeling and besides a lactate tester, which is expensive, can't really be shown through any hard data. Since this is obviously very important to you, which is very good, I suggest that you purchase one. I think its like 300 or so dollars, www.hdosport.com. Look under monitering and testing. Even for an individual, one week of training that may be off the charts in terms of intensity will no overtrain him because his energy stores are greater, while half the intensity two months later will. The state of overtraining is very personal, and unfourtunatly, even with an intensity data figure, cannot be measured.

[old] Physicist · Post by **[old] Physicist** » December 15th, 2004, 9:08 am

I disagree that total calories burned is a useful measure of how hard you've trained. Ditto Watts x time (which equals total energy expenditure as well - same thing to within a constant.) Any useful measure of total training impulse has to account for the fact that doubling power output and halving training time still makes for a much harder session!! Using total calories burned, you could find farm labourers who are 'training harder' than Olympic rowers with full-time office jobs.