![]() Am I tired? Do I need to do more of this type of training? I can then look at why it might have not been as good as I hoped. If I only hit an IF score of 1 then I know the effort wasn’t very good. For example, I know I am capable of roughly 115 per cent of my FTP for eight minutes – therefore if I do an eight-minute effort in a session, if I score between 1.1 and 1.15 then I know it was a good interval. You can then use IF as a quick guide to how good an interval was compared to what you were aiming for. With experience using a power meter, you will get a feel for what IF score you are capable of for various periods of time. As a rough guideline to various IF scores: IF can be calculated for an entire session or an individual effort and is therefore very useful in order to see if an effort was carried out at the correct intensity. IF is calculated by dividing your NP by your FTP – so if your Normalized Power was 150 watts and your FTP is 300 watts, then the IF would be 0.5. Intensity Factor refers to how hard a ride or training session feels (Pic: Sirotti) Athletes will often feel short-changed in terms of TSS points scored for short intense sessions, like those done on a turbo trainer, so that’s where the next metric comes in. Therefore, TSS doesn’t tell the entire story – for that we need to take into account other metrics. However, you won’t nearly be as tired after a two-hour endurance ride as you will be after a one-hour time trial, despite the two rides recording the same TSS. For example, a two-hour endurance ride will score roughly 100 TSS points. One of the criticisms of TSS is that it is very biased towards duration, rather than intensity. To achieve this, your NP would need to be equal to your FTP power for one hour. TSS aims to encompass both the duration and intensity of a session to give a numeric value for that ride and is calculated based on your Functional Threshold Power, the normalized power of the session, and the duration of the session.Īgain, we won’t get into the actual equation but 100 TSS points is the maximum number that can be scored per hour. TSS is a measure of the expected physiological impact of a session (Pic: Allan McKenze/)) If you’re already using a power meter, you may have noticed your NP is often higher than your average power – some riders quote their NP just because it is more impressive. Normalized Power (NP)įirst of all, we need to cover something known as Normalized Power – it’s a key figure as a lot of metrics are based on NP. ![]() I’ve used Training Peaks here as it’s the most popular software, but you’ll see similar numbers and graphics in a number of packages. Here are some of the most commonly used metrics and graphs you’re likely to see when analysing a training file, along with some insight into how I use them as a coach. If you work with a coach, it will also enable the two of you to communicate better. It takes time to fully get to grips with the data but, as you become more comfortable with the numbers, it’s great for your motivation to understand how your body is reacting to the training and improving as a result. Over time you should be able to see improvements in certain areas, or identify areas for improvement, rather than simply relying on your coach to point them out – or, worse still, guessing. ![]() If all that sounds complicated, then what we’ll do in this article is cover the basics so you start analysing your own files at home – something you should be doing even if you work with a coach.
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