Alternatives to CTL, ATL and TRIMP for running?

Asked by: Kristen Exilhomme

What is a good CTL fitness score?

Your average daily TSS over a period of 6 weeks becomes your Chronic Training Load (CTL), and CTL is considered your quantitative fitness. In the PMC world, a higher CTL is always better. Theoretically, if you start an event with a CTL of 100, you will perform better than at a CTL of 90.

What is TSS and CTL?

Timing fitness is a top concern for athletes, and can quickly become a struggle without a solid understanding of a few important terms: TSS (Training Stress Score), CTL (Chronic Training Load), ATL (Acute Training Load), and TSB (Training Stress Balance).

What does fitness CTL mean?

Chronic Training Load

What is Fitness (CTL) Chronic Training Load (Fitness) combines duration and intensity to provide a value of how much an athlete has trained historically. TrainingPeaks calculates CTL, by default, as the exponentially weighted average of daily TSS for the past 42 days (7 weeks).

What is a good fitness number on TrainingPeaks?

Joe Friel has mentioned numerous times that an ideal TSB range for a peak performance falls between +15 and +25. While zero indicates the athlete has reached a training equilibrium, complete recovery is often needed for peak performance, especially for long-distance racing.

Is strava fitness same as CTL?

CTL is what Strava calls Fitness. ATL is what Strava calls Fatigue. TSB is what Strava calls Form. Ideally, you have a Fitness that is at or above 70 and a Form that is close to, or above 0.

How do I get 100 CTL?

So if you do 700 TTS per week for seven weeks your CTL will be 100. In this case you will be training at the equivalent of riding one hour as hard as you can every for an hour every day. The goal of a training plan is to get CTL as high as possible.

What should my CTL be for an Ironman?

On average an IRONMAN run will vary between 190 and 250 TSS, depending on the athlete, while IF ranges are between 0.7-0.85. With this information, you can determine the appropriate IF, and thus pace or power, you or your athlete can hold off the bike and train to achieve that goal.

How can I get low TSS fast?

If you decide to increase your training stress, the easiest way is to increase your volume. However, jumping to a higher volume plan could be too much. Instead, you can increase your training load by doing a “plus” version of a workout, extending your cooldown, increasing the intensity, or add some strength training.

What TSS to ride?

For our racer, a hard workout would be 150-200 TSS, whereas a hard workout for the beginner would be 60-80 TSS.

What is a good CTL score on TrainingPeaks?

The rate at which your CTL should climb is very variable athlete to athlete, but generally 5-8 TSS/day per week is a good ballpark to start with. See the diagram below for illustration. The higher your cumulative (absolute) CTL, the less you will be able to load.

How high should fatigue be on TrainingPeaks?

Training Peaks has several rough rule of thumbs to let you know ideal form to hit for race day. Friel says a range of +15 to +25 on race day is a great place to be. If your form is negative, you’re too tired to race man! Take it easy for a few days!

What is a high ATL TrainingPeaks?

Acute Training Load (Fatigue) combines duration and intensity to provide a value of how much an athlete has recently trained. TrainingPeaks calculates ATL, by default, as the exponentially weighted average of daily TSS for the past 7 days.

What is a good CTL for Ironman?

On average an IRONMAN run will vary between 190 and 250 TSS, depending on the athlete, while IF ranges are between 0.7-0.85. With this information, you can determine the appropriate IF, and thus pace or power, you or your athlete can hold off the bike and train to achieve that goal.

What is a good weekly TSS score?

Base on actual CTL you can come up with a total TSS number per week if your CTL is around 40 we would recommend starting with around 300-350 TSS per week. Don’t forget about periodization, you should be increasing your training load every week by about 3-7 TSS per day, which means 21-49 TSS per week.

How is CTL measured?

In the JAM test protocol, CTL activity is determined by measuring degradation of radioactively labeled DNA in target cells that have undergone apoptotic cell death. Rather than measuring release of radioactivity, the JAM test measures the amount of DNA retained in target cells that are not killed by CTL.

What is CTL in cycling?

Chronic training load (CTL), is the cumulative training dose that builds up over a long period of time. CTL is especially popular in cycling, among athletes who use a cycling power meter, which simplifies the collection and review of training data.

What does fatigue ATL mean?

Acute Training Load

What is Fatigue (ATL)? Acute Training Load (Fatigue) combines duration and intensity to provide a value of how much an athlete has recently trained. TrainingPeaks calculates ATL, by default, as the exponentially weighted average of daily TSS for the past 7 days.

What is a good training load?

The optimal range for training load is in the middle. If you are on the right of that you are too high, and on the left then your load is too light.