- Morning Trainiacs.
It is just awful outside,
a excellent Winnipeg -20 Celsius with the wind chill.
It's Tuesday.
Tuesday has grown to be a day that scares me.
Super-short but intense bike, super-short but intense run.
It's a little bit of throw up right there as evidence
for just how intense these are.
So, as we basically sell of and close out
all those template training plans
that we created with coach Pat last year,
and we are about to launch the Team Trainiac
very, very common question is,
can we send all of these workouts,
and manage it in TrainingPeaks?
And my response is not what people are expecting,
it's basically, like, mmm, you know what?
I'm not a big believer in TrainingPeaks
as the be all, end all, training software out there.
Sure, I use it, but it's not how you think,
so today, after I go through this brutal little workout,
and I show you the brutal run from later today,
I will show you why TrainingPeaks is not the be all, end all
of training software out there,
and how I actually use TrainingPeaks.
(high intensity music)
(mid-tempo intensity music)
All right Trainiacs, coming to you from the past,
because I haven't yet done that run workout.
How'd it go, look good, look intense?
I think it was.
So, with us getting really, really close
to the Team Trainiac website being live,
with us doing, well actually, this has been going on
for about a year and a half,
with us getting rid of all those template training plans,
a lot of questions have come up, with like,
can we upload all of this to TrainingPeaks?
Does this communicate with TrainingPeaks?
How do we get it on TrainingPeaks?
Well, that's a bit of a thorn in my side,
because I don't think TrainingPeaks
is the be all, end all of training.
Basically, if you wanna take training seriously,
you better be on TrainingPeaks, I don't think so.
Now, as a broad brush stroke,
and I'll get into the specifics in a bit,
but where you store your listing of upcoming workouts,
it doesn't matter, you can list it on a piece of paper,
it really doesn't matter where it's listed.
However, if you wanna start analyzing the data,
that's where it starts making a bit of difference,
and you wanna have a piece of software
that can analyze the workout data, hence TrainingPeaks,
so I'm a much bigger believer that,
store and list your workouts wherever you want,
but then, when you complete the workouts,
if you like TrainingPeaks,
then send the data to TrainingPeaks.
However, there are some caveats with that,
and I'm gonna show you some of them right now.
So, for starters, TrainingPeaks really doesn't
put any training stress score,
which is a lot of what TrainingPeaks is based off of,
on strength workouts.
And with so much more science,
and so many more pro triathletes
putting a big level of importance on strength workouts,
for it to essentially not be at all included,
is really a chink in the armor
about showing how dated it is.
So, looking at this here, you've got all of my workouts,
but here on Wednesday last week, I did a kettlebell workout.
Go into it, zero training stress score,
and you can input a training stress score,
but if you actually look online,
there are some forums where some of the programmers
from TrainingPeaks have said,
"Don't even bother putting in a training stress score,
that's not what it's about".
And it's like, well, how are you supposed to get
a broad picture of how your training is going,
and how much load you're placing on your body
if a huge component of your training isn't even included?
That's one issue.
Next issue.
Swimming training stress scores are all over the map.
So, I wanna show you these two right here,
this last Saturday workout versus yesterday's workout.
Last Saturday, a training stress score of 45.
There was a ton of fast swimming,
there was a ton of fast effort,
but just because of how my watched recognized the swim,
my average pace per hundred meters
was slower than the workout that I did yesterday,
which was a complete recovery workout.
So, Saturday's swim workout
had a training stress score of 45,
and yesterday's swim workout
had a training stress score of more than 20% higher
a training stress score,
even though it was a much less intense workout.
So, when we're placing so much emphasis
on training stress score being the be all, end all
determinate of a huge part of how you look at your training,
and it's still not very accurate with strength,
and now also swim, how much can we rely on it?
Next, it doesn't really say how smart your training was,
so opening up this file here,
this is the long, fat bike ride that I did on Sunday.
It's got the training stress score,
it's got my heart rate, it's got the Kilometers,
it's got the time, it's got all of that,
but what I noticed about an hour into the ride,
I started realizing, holy smokes,
if I kinda tighten my core a little bit,
and I bounce less on the saddle,
even though I'm basically working the same amount,
less power is scooting out the side of my body laterally,
and I'm not gonna stress my back a little bit.
I'm not gonna do that,
and I'm actually going to put more effort downwards
into the pedals, which then made me faster
at the same effort.
So, all of this training stress score,
all of the heart rate data, all of the charts,
it doesn't show how smart you're training.
The next thing that I've got an issue with is that,
all of these calculations of your fitness,
your fatigue, your training stress score,
your overall level of form,
how prepared you are for a race,
it doesn't actually say how your performance is going to go,
it gives you a certain guideline,
but it's not like we have this peak,
and because TrainingPeaks says, "all right, here you go pal,
you're ready to race".
Boom, next day you put out a personal best.
Not the case, and I'm gonna show you an example of that
based off of last year compared to this year.
So, this here is my performance management chart from 2017.
What we're looking for is a good build,
where the chart if generally trending upwards.
The pink is my level of fatigue, the yellow is my form,
it's a balance of the training load
you've placed on your body versus the fatigue
and the rest that you've got.
And what we see is, that basically, right up until Kona,
I was having a really nice build, Kona came,
and all of a sudden, my training kinda went down the tubes,
and I lost fitness, and I lost fitness, and I lost fitness,
and then I go and I race half ironman, Austin,
and conceivably, you would think, well Taren,
you have just lost all your fitness in the last month,
you'd have a bad race.
I didn't have a great race, I did a 4:53,
but I ended up qualifying for the world championships
in that race, and if you actually look on obstri.com,
and see how I performed relative to the field in that race,
that's the best race I've ever done,
even though it's one of the worst builds,
according to TrainingPeaks.
And then, we're gonna look a that
based off of this year.
Fairly similar, sort of graph,
we've got a nice build coming into race season,
I go and I race half ironman, Coeur d'Alene, do quite well,
but then, in between Coeur d'Alene and half ironman world's,
the chart is kinda flat, but I go in,
and I go five minutes faster than I did in Coeur d'Alene,
at the world championships, and do a personal best,
so all of the data that's going into this
still doesn't dictate how your race actually unfolds.
And then finally, the last thing is that,
I challenge you to find a really big focus on recovery.
There is none, there basically is none.
They're starting to incorporate a little prompt
every single day to say, "How did you feel this day?",
but it's not like it guides you with how you should recover
immediately after a workout with your nutrition,
or how much you should sleep.
It gives you no prompts for that.
And, unless your doing that on your own,
or your coach is extremely proactive,
taking 360 degree view of your entire training plan,
it's not included.
So, you could go and be smashing every single one
of your workouts, but digging yourself
a bigger and bigger hole,
because there is no retroactive data
that puts a really big stress on recovery.
Here's what I do look at.
So, I am a premium subscriber of TrainingPeaks,
largely because I need content for these videos,
but I will look at,
is my fitness generally trending upwards
coming into a season?
After that, I wanna be fit enough
by the time the season starts,
so that I can race week in, week out,
and then it's just a matter of sharpening,
so I don't place all this importance
on making sure that I am perfectly peaked
for every single race,
I wanna see just a general upward trajectory.
Next thing.
Over here, I wanna see
how my peak performance numbers are doing.
So, right now, while we're working on neuromuscular power,
outright speed, is my one minute bike power
trending upwards over the last little while?
My run speed over the last little while,
is that trending upwards?
But, it's really even hard to get that,
because there are different workouts
that have different focuses.
So, at a time like right now,
where I'm focused on speed and strength,
I'm going to be looking at, are my peak numbers
for say, bike power over one minute,
generally trending upwards?
Yeah, they are.
But, later in the season,
when we start going more towards aerobic efforts,
I'm gonna be looking at things like,
is my run 5K time going to be trending upwards?
Obviously, it's not going to be right now,
'cause I haven't been focusing on that.
At that time, closer to the season,
is my bike, 20 minute power increasing?
And we saw that it was over the race season.
So, these are some things that I look at,
because it indicates the potential of performance.
What do I actually place a big amount of importance on
if I'm poo-pooing basically,
the biggest training software in the world?
I'm gonna be looking at actual performance data,
not charts that tell me what my performance should be,
but actually, how am I performing.
Am I able to run faster, or put in more power
at the same heart rate, or at the same paces,
am I at a lower heart rate?
Am I able to sustain the same paces
for a longer period of time?
Am I able to put out more power, or run faster,
and have it feel a little bit better?
Am I able to breathe through my nose quite easily
at really hard effort?
Am I able to continue to put out more intervals
at the same speed, or with reduced rest?
And generally, am I able to complete a harder workout
this week, in this training block,
than I did last week, and last training block?
And what I've done with the Team Trainiac platform,
is instead of looking at it,
A: Week by week.
All right, what's a good workout this week,
what's a good workout that week?
The entire annual plan, 3654 workouts,
all build off of each other, so that it takes you through
a typical progression, and then what we do is
I start giving you prompts to say, "Here are the things
you should be focused on."
Are you making improvements?
Are you not making improvements?
Do you need to be recovering more or sleeping more,
or are you trying to overreach?
All of these things that take it more from
these fancy charts and graphs,
which are fun to look at and all, and make a video about,
but practically speaking, they don't necessarily determine
how you're going to perform come race day.
And, I believe that with Team Trainiac,
that we have a better way of doing that.
I'm a big fan of what we've made.
I'm a little bit biased, fair enough,
but that doesn't mean that it's not good.
So, if you're even intrigued
about the Team Trainiac platform,
it's not gonna be in competition
with TrainingPeaks, it might be a supplement,
and alternative, something to make TrainingPeaks
even a little bit better.
Something that you can use in conjunction with,
that's how I'm gonna use it.
I'm gonna get my training and my workouts from the platform,
send it over to TrainingPeaks, and then,
do some fun analysis, but know that as a whole,
the big picture stuff is taken care of,
and that in the workout's, I am paying attention
to how I'm actually performing.
So, if this all interests you,
go to triathlontaren/teamwaitlist,
and you'll be notified of when it's available,
and we're gonna have a 14 day free trial,
and we're only gonna open up 250 spots right at the start,
make sure that the whole platform works really well,
and then after, we'll open up to the general public.
So, if you wanna get one of those 250 spots,
and there's already upwards of 1900 people
that are in line for it, get in there soon.
All right, later Trainiacs.