When you listen to the narrative about training, consistency is always in the top three.
When I look at the metrics available, it does not seem there is a measure of this consistency e.g. riding every hour of the day for every day of the week is taking it too the extreme. TSS is volume, IF is intensities
There is compliance in TP, but this is not the same i.e. plan prescribes one work out and you do it…. Fully compliant….
Is this possible, is there something I’ve missed here, just interested ?
@Nate_Pearson and the team discussed this on a podcast a while ago. They ultimately decided that a consistency metric could drive bad behavior with some people feeling like they could not or should not modify the plans based on how they are feeling (i.e. taking a rest day, etc). There was more to the discussion but I can’t remember the rest of it, or which podcast it was in. Sorry.
That’s a good point but I think it can be easily remedied: Don’t target 100% consistency. A healthier target might be more like 70-90%. Anything less and you probably have the wrong plan.
Before AT, they also avoided calling workouts pass or fail. I think now with AT, they clearly have had to wade into that territory. Seems like a metric could be devised.
Try tracking the 6 week exponential moving average of daily TSS. That will give you a good idea of how consistent your training has been over the past many weeks but also give an appropriate importance to more recent training surges.
TSS does not tell you if actually stuck to the plan. You might’ve had a 100TSS VO2max session planned but instead decided to noodle around in Z1 for 3hrs.
Even more important, it doesn’t include how well you hit the recovery and nutrition parts of your plan.
“TSS does not tell you if actually stuck to the plan.”
Well that is true! But @sbenzie asked for ideas to track consistency…not conformity. I think he distinguished his idea from TraininPeak Compliance? But it would be an interesting thread to discuss which is more important.
Your training is at least still consistent if you’re doing 100 TSS and your CTL is high, it may not be optimal though. (I think you gotta be creeping into z2 to get to 100tss in 3 hours too, but I could be wrong)
I think CTL is a good metric if you’re looking to track consistency. It’s really really difficult to have a high/increasing CTL and constantly be taking days off because of laziness.
I think most of us who don’t wear blinkers know if we are being consistent. It’s about avoiding those boom and bust periods where we go from all out to hardly anything at all.
You could start by plotting type of planned workouts and rest periods over next cycle of 4-6 weeks. Then plot actual against it. Then annotate any deviations to see how you are managing.
Just remember a plan isn’t a rigid unyielding thing. Plans give a direction and aim but adapt to what’s happening on the ground.
Missing one or two workouts because you are fatigued or ill isn’t being inconsistent. Repeatedly being ill or fatigued says the plan isn’t right for you. Burn out says it was too much.
At end of period you’ll see how many days didn’t go as planned and have notes as to why. Some the of whys you can’t do anything about and that’s fine. If you find some deviations where you don’t have a satisfactory why then look in more detail at those to reduce next time.
I think training load (intervals.icu) or CTL is your answer. It’s a metric of the stress put on your body weekly. You could monitor this with hours of weekly training for an idea of consistency.
When they stress consistency, that’s just saying keep moving and look for incremental progress.
That will give you a good idea of how consistent your training has been over the past many weeks but also give an appropriate importance to more recent training surges.