TSS estimate for Kettlebell Simple & Sinister?

Training
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Hi all,

How would one go about estimating TSS for the Simple and Sinister Kettlebell program? My warmup, swings and gets ups take between 25 to 35 minutes depending on how long I rest or depending on how long I make each get up. Would it be relative to the weights, time under stress etc or do I need to wear a HR monitor also? Sorry don’t know much about TSS but was interesting in putting it in the calendar as I do about 5 days a week so I’m guessing the TSS is adding up.

Thanks!

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How long is a piece of string? I would guesstimate a number around 25-30 TSS for that sort of effort.
I do wonder where we draw the line on what TSS we add. Walking 2 miles a day, should that go on.
Mowing the lawn, the list can go on.

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I’ve heard them say on the podcast that it doesn’t make sense to add TSS for strength. Having said that, I know lots of people do by using HrTSS.

A bit off topic, but I personally feel like TSS is a bad indicator once we get outside of “normal” cycling activities, and for someone who does it as frequently as you do, it can make picking the right cycling workout difficult. TrainerRoad or TrainingPeaks or Garmin Connect may tell you you’re well rested even if you’ve done a ton of training. Some examples beyond strength training where this also comes into play for me and the algorithms think I’m taking recovery days when I’m not:

  • eMTB - I can be exhausted after a few hours of riding, but my TSS is only maybe 40
  • Riding in heat - If you go ride for 3 hours in extreme heat, your avg power can be really low, leading to low TSS, but you are completely cooked, sometimes for multiple days
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Agreed, don’t count it. It’s not doing anything for you aerobically, which is the type of training load that CTL is attempting to track.

I track CTL ATL etc on a spreadsheet, and for some types of cross training (like hiking) I have it count toward fatigue (ATL) but not CTL. I enter strength training in a cell that doesn’t affect TSS calculations at all.

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That’s smart to add it to fatigue. I need to find a spreadsheet like that.

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I just made my own. Here’s what it looks like. For the ATL formula replace 42s with 7s.

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Thanks for the replies so far. I was ignoring S&S TSS wise until recently, but then two things have happened. 1) As the weights are going up and my sessions are sometimes long, I have noticed that it can often feel like it has “negative” effect on my next days training or feels that way sometimes and 2) My FTP has started to going up again. My FTP had been on a downward trend over the covid period and it had been rather frustrating. I’ve not really changed my training TSS wise, but I would say the strength (started November 2021) is helping (as I’m not the most muscular almost 50 year old out there). Hence I was thinking to record the strength training in some way where it will be visible later and the effect it was having. Does that make sense? I’ll read up on CTL and ATL @jwellford - thanks.

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Yeah, I understand where you’re coming from and that makes sense. Definitely keep track of your strength sessions. As to whether you should count it toward TSS, I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as you pick something that works for you and stay consistent with it.

In my case, I know that I perform best when I’m strength training around twice per week and have a CTL around X. For me that’s about 90 for the events I currently am interested in. If I wasn’t strength training my CTL could easily be 100+, but CTL doesn’t equal performance. If I were to track strength toward TSS than my X might be 105, but I’d still need to know that that higher number came from adding strength training and not just more riding.

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This is where something like a Whoop comes in. TSS does a great job of measuring how much stress a bike ride puts on your body but I don’t find any of the estimation formulas work all that well for strength work. Something that captures your overall recovery picture daily on a long term basis will do a better job of showing you if the combination of cycling and non cycling activities, sleep, daily stress, etc are taking a toll on you. The Whoop and others all have their limitations but at least for me, I find those limitations are still better than trying to fit everything into a TSS formula and using that to measure fatigue.

Power based TSS is a pretty awesome tool for cycling but the more you start to diversify your fitness activities away from pure cycling, the more useful some sort of over all stress/recovery tracker becomes.

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