A technique that I’ve used a few times with folks in the group is the idea of a TSS budget. Let me explain the concept. By reviewing the recent, say last 4 weeks, and the longer term, say last 3 months of TSS (red bars above) it’s possible to create a future budget of TSS to spend in the coming weeks.
Why would we do this? Essentially its for athlete flexibility and empowerment in session selection. It helps create a resilient plan rather than a brittle one. With triathlon training having the 3 core disciplines, some of which can be both indoor and outdoor and supporting strength and flexibility activities it can be hard to adjust and adapt training when lots of other priorities are in flux.
How to do this? Step 1: Create a budget based on training history – Within Training Peaks use the “Dashboard” area and the graph of TSS (example screenshot above). Setting the date range to the last 90 days is a usable range. Step 2: Review the most recent training across the last 4 weeks. Next is question time…. what is the background and context associated with these numbers? What’s the story of life outside training? Perhaps coming back from injury, perhaps travel, other personal commitments? Step 3: Also review further back, historically how are these levels versus levels that were sustainable say over the 90 day window. Step 4: Now the hard part, the art of setting the next week(s) TSS budget. There are 3 main scenarios that can influence a future budget – i) returning from a short illness or personal time out to a prior higher level you can often progress quite rapidly back over say 2-4 weeks. ii) Coming back from injury then maybe this is done more gently. iii) Or perhaps you notice you have pushed too hard recently and actively plan a lower TSS for a couple of weeks. This is a crucial thought process and reflection.
Alternative or similar approaches: This can also be done in a similar way in individual disciplines for example reviewing bike TSS individually. Or a similar non TSS approach can be on “long run” duration or weekly distance banked. The benefit of using total TSS is that it incorporates both duration and intensity into one figure and allows separate disciplines to be combined.
What are the downsides / risks: One of the biggest risks in any simplification (reductionist approach) is that you lose vital information in the process. Matching TSS values can be created with quite different session profiles – for example 80 TSS in a high intensity run session is quite different to a 80 TSS easy paced long duration session. The intensity session is likely to have a large nervous system impact and potential high muscle / tendon strain, whereas the easy pace long duration may have greater impact of glycogen stores and energy balance depending on how well the athlete can stay fully aerobic. This means being mindful of maintaining the overall intensity distribution in line with the coaching and training goals discussed. Equally maintaining a spread across the disciplines also helps keep the balance in specific loading. i.e. not doing all runs one week and all swims the following.
Next steps / Actions: Next time you are logged into Training Peaks or on your next call with me, have a look at your TSS history and how it’s been trending. Also have a look at the individual sessions and start to build a greater awareness of the TSS generated across each session, particularly when you adjust pace or duration.
I hope this is another useful skill and tool to add to your collection 🙂 Feedback and questions always welcome