Many successful endurance athletes are type-A personalities. They are driven to succeed. While this is necessary to some extent, too much drive and motivation can lead to disastrous training and poor performance. This is evident in the following question that I received today. The athlete, a cyclist, understands a lot about the intricacies of training. His question uses several terms common to power-savvy cyclists who use power meters (or GPS devices for runners). Here’s a quick reference so you can understand what he is asking in case you don’t train with power (or a GPS):
CTL. Chronic Training Load. A rolling, daily average of how much training stress an athlete is managing. The more stress he/she can handle the greater the fitness. So CTL is a good proxy for “fitness.” If CTL is increasing then fitness is generally increasing also.
FTP. Functional Threshold Power (“Pace” in running). This is how much power (pace) a rider (or runner) can maintain for an hour. It’s similar to lactate or anaerobic threshold power (pace). Increases in FTP indicate an improvement in aerobic fitness.
1 minute max. The highest max power (or pace) one can maintain for a minute. This is another indicator of fitness.
Sh-t. You can probably figure this technical term out for yourself.
WKO+. Software designed for logging and analyzing power and pace data.
Question: I’m a big fan of your blog. I’m having trouble understanding fatigue and recovery. By definition I need to experience fatigue to gain fitness, but how much fatigue should I “feel” day to day? I’ve been increasing my CTL in 3-5 week cycles resting a little more for 1 week allowing a little loss of CTL then I hit it again and increase my CTL…. The problem is that my perceived fitness and actual fitness are not getting better. I just feel tired. Heavy legs, not making gains in my FTP, I’m stagnating! My FTP is not in decline, but the numbers I’m putting out seam to require more perceived effort. My 1 minute max has been in decline, at one point I was able to maintain 550 watts for a minute, now I'm at 440 watts. The question I have is, how should I feel during training, because quite frankly I feel like "sh-t".... and I don't think I'm suppose to. The other option is that I'm just not cut out for endurance sports because I can't take the suffering. I just feel weak!
Answer: First of all, everyone is cut out to be an endurance athlete to some extent. That’s our inheritance as homo sapiens. We’re hunter-gatherers by design—slow sprinters compared with the rest of animal world, but better than the others at endurance. Some of us just got more endurance genes and opportunities than others.
What you’re experiencing is not unusual at all for highly motivated athletes. It’s common for us to always seek our limits. Since you seem to be using WKO+ I’ll give you a suggestion for that software which may help you regulate your training to avoid extreme overreaching.
But first, some overreaching is necessary to produce improvements in fitness. You seem to understand that given your reference to fatigue being required to improve fitness. But overreaching and fatigue can be accumulated too quickly for the body to adjust and adapt. It functions best when the rate of overreaching is gradual. I suspect yours is overly aggressive.
The rate of overreaching (and therefore “hard training”) is probably too high when your CTL is increasing at a rate greater than 5 to 8 TSS per week. If your absolute CTL numbers are relatively low (let’s say, around 50 or less) then an increase of 7 or 8 in a week is probably a bit too much. Keep it lower than that. If your absolute CTL is higher (around 80+ we’ll say) then a weekly increase of 5 or 6 is pushing the limits. You may be able to manage such a rate of CTL increase for one week and get away with it (some can’t), but the longer you keep that going the deeper the fatigue hole you dig.
After 2 to 4 weeks of increasing your CTL by such excessive amounts you are likely to be toast. You’ll be in the early stages of the overtraining syndrome. That will be marked by relentless fatigue, poor training performance, lethargy, low motivation, a bad attitude about life in general, and much more. If you keep pushing it beyond this fatigue you’re likely to experience full-blown overtraining which is similar to having a disease such as mononucleosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, or Lyme disease. It isn’t pretty. And it may take you weeks if not months to shed the overtraining symptoms.
By keeping the rate of your CTL increase below the numbers suggested above you should be able to train steadily while making fitness gains and avoiding the downsides.
It may also be that a 5-week period of training in which CTL steadily climbs is too much for you. I train most of my athletes with 2- or 3-week periods before they rest. And regardless of your usual period length, if you are overly fatigued then you should recover immediately regardless of the plan. Training plans must be flexible to be effective. Doing workouts just to satisfy the plan is doing it backwards.
Of course, there are other stressors in our lives besides training. Supporting your family, working a lot of hours, having a physically or emotionally stressful job, having lifestyle stresses such as relationship or financial difficulties, and experiencing other pressing responsibilities of life can also lead to what may be interpreted as overreaching. If this is the case then training must be reduced regardless of what your weekly rate of CTL increase may be.
I think we all have experienced this at some stage. I too was over-reaching so now I have my own TSS plan & have a ramp rate set for 2 CTL pts per week, with every 4th a decrease of 1 where I do a FTP test. Life throws us many curve balls, I too work full time and have 3 kids under 5, so my day to day life is super busy. I ride 5-7 days, but you must be flexible and you mustn't be a slave to your plan. Yes do try and stick to it but if you miss a day dont worry just move on. Have a look at your nutrition and your sleep quality. Many overlook the latter. Most of all make sure your having fun! If your feeling totally exhausted, rest, dont tax your head with the worry of doing a ride or missing one. Just my 2 cents.
Posted by: Roy | 06/27/2011 at 01:22 PM
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the post. I have a question re: CTL increases for running - what are suggested weekly increases for that? I don't have a powermeter (yet), so my Performance Manager Chart in WKO+ only tracks my runs (via GPS device).
A CTL of 50 is pretty high for running I feel, let alone a 5-8 weekly increase. 14 weeks out from my first ever 70.3, my CTL is 20, it was 25 after a 6/5 Olympic Triathlon, rested a little and gonna start building it up. Any advice? Thanks!
Posted by: Mike | 06/27/2011 at 01:24 PM
Mike--I can't tell you with any sense of certainty what your CTL ramp rate per week should be. I can tell you that when trying to improve in 3 sports simultaneously that the rate per week per sport will be pretty small by necessity.
Posted by: Joe Friel | 06/27/2011 at 01:29 PM
I have been told that it Is ideal for ones ATL to dip below their CTL on recovery weeks? Is this true?
Posted by: Whitney | 06/28/2011 at 06:05 AM
Joe, what are your thoughts on nutrition regarding CTL increases and do you feel that a slight caloric deficit would act as a catalyst to the overtraining symptoms?
Posted by: Josh | 06/28/2011 at 08:01 AM
Hi Joe,
Just a thanks for a great blog and invalueable information from a novice athlete who is learning every day.
Thanks!!!!
Posted by: David | 06/28/2011 at 08:24 AM
Whitney--Yes, it should periodically. This means you have a positive TSB.
Posted by: Joe Friel | 06/28/2011 at 12:42 PM
Hi Joe, thanks again for the great blog. I don't have a question as a much as a recommendation: I've recently discovered the online service Restwise, which I use to supplement CTL and TSB estimates of fatigue. I'm quite pleased with the product -- it is a way of quantifying what would otherwise be more qualitative sense of fatigue and serves as a "second opinion" on the CTL scores (which in my case seem to bounce back from a high intensity workout faster than I think I really recover -- I use TRIMP scores rather than TSS because I'm doing multisport). (I have no affiliation with Restwise -- just a user). Thanks again for a great blog and your ever-useful books.
Posted by: Craig | 06/29/2011 at 06:50 AM
Joe, I don't use WKO+. How is CTL calculated manually? Your definition says it's a daily average of TSS. But for how far back? The last 7 days? If I accumulated 700 TSS over the past 7 days, does this give me a CTL of 100? What about ATL?
Posted by: Jay | 06/29/2011 at 10:49 AM
Jay--It's an average of (typically) the last 42 days of workout TSSs.
Posted by: Joe Friel | 06/29/2011 at 01:17 PM
Joe, I think I might be overtrained. I'm coming back from a knee surgery using Power Agent software. I had a good base years ago but on off bike from injury/surgery. I have been riding since March from January Surgery. I started riding again and my TSS was 471 for one week then 350 for a few weeks. Currently I've been experiencing a ton of fatigue and a VO2 max test resulted in 30% less than even my untrained level. I have not been eating or sleeping sufficiently. Any advice on how to make sure I am following the right recovery back?
Posted by: Bennett Fallow | 07/29/2011 at 02:58 PM
Bennett Fallow--You may well be right about the overtraining. Constant fatigue, low motivation and poor performance are fairly common symptoms. But before assuming that I'd suggest seeing your doc to find if there may be some other medical reason for these symptoms (mononucleosis, Lyme disease, etc). If nothing is found then OT seems likely. There is no guaranteed cure-all for this other than rest. You're essentially OT'ed until these symptoms are gone. During that time rest is the key.
Posted by: Joe Friel | 07/30/2011 at 01:50 PM