I’m Marcus, your host here at Garmin’s training video series.
From beginners to performance athletes, we all train with a goal in mind.
And it’s that goal that motivates and pushes us to achieve new PR’s.
We track our miles, our heartrate, and even our calories burned.
But how do we know if our efforts are actually helping us to improve or if we’ve just plateaued and hit a wall in our training?
Well today, I want to tell you about a feature that we have in many of our fitness devices to help you train smart and get the most out of your workouts.
Let me introduce you to Training Effect.
Training Effect accumulates during an activity and measures the impact of that activity on your aerobic and anaerobic fitness.
Aerobic activities include exercises like running, biking, swimming, walking – and refers to the energy that the body produces using oxygen.
Whereas Anaerobic activities include sprints and speed intervals – and refers to the energy that the body produces without using oxygen.
As the activity progresses, the Training Effect value increases.
Training Effect is determined by your user profile information, training history, heart rate, duration, and intensity of your activity.
So, what does all of that mean?
Simply put, Training Effect is a number from 0 to 5, where 0 means your workout had no impact on your body and 5 means you’re overreaching.
Training Effect builds over the course of your workout and is updated in real time.
You can see this displayed on your compatible Garmin device either during or after you complete an activity,
to let you see how much of an impact your workout had on both your aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels.
You can also see your Training Effect number in your stats on Garmin Connect or your Garmin Connect Mobile app.
At this point you may be asking yourself where do those numbers come from? I’m glad you asked.
Effective training transformation comes from repeatedly disrupting the body’s tendency to maintain a stable environment, also known as homeostasis, then balancing out with sufficient recovery.
Notice I said, sufficient recovery. We’ll come back to that later.
With the help of FirstBeat Analytics, the Training Effect is calculated based on EPOC. So, what’s EPOC?
When we’re active, our bodies use more oxygen than when we’re at rest. And the need for more oxygen doesn’t stop at the end of our workout.
It can continue for hours, based on the intensity of the workout.
The amount of oxygen you use after an activity above and beyond your normal resting rate is called EPOC, which stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption.
The longer and harder your effort, the more work it takes the body to recover and the higher your EPOC.
So, the bigger the Training Effect number, the better….right? That’s what you would think, but that’s not necessarily true.
No matter what your overall goal is, it’s important to know how your workouts influence and affect your body.
And based on your fitness level, the relationship between activity and outcome isn’t always the same.
For example, an avid and rather fit runner may do a 30-minute 5k run and get a 1 to a 2.5 Aerobic Training Effect – which is a minor effect or maintaining.
Whereas a beginner may be sucking wind at the halfway point and end up with a 4 or 5 Aerobic Training Effect – which is highly improving or overreaching.
To boost your aerobic fitness, you need to challenge yourself and push your limits.
This is when you’ll get an Aerobic Training Effect number from 3 to 5 – meaning your body is being pushed harder than usual, which is needed for improvement.
And as you get fitter, you’ll need larger doses of exercise to continue seeing improvement.
But it’s important to know that a high Aerobic Training Effect is not needed in every workout.
In fact, if you can achieve an Aerobic Training Effect of a 3 at least once per week and a maintaining session of a 2 at least twice per week,
that’s enough to maintain the aerobic fitness for trained individuals or even improve the aerobic fitness for less active individuals.
But it’s equally as important to know when you do push yourself to new PR’s and hit that Aerobic Training Effect of 5, your hard work really pays off with recovery.
See, I told you we’d come back to that.
On compatible Garmin devices, not only will you get your Training Effect number, but you’ll also see your recovery time – letting you know how long you should rest before your next big workout.
During sufficient recovery, your body adapts in response to your efforts and improvements happen.
Now that doesn’t mean you should just lie around and do nothing all day.
On your rest day, low-intensity activities such as a walk, or an easy bike ride are great ways to enhance your recovery.
Just keep an eye on your Aerobic Training Effect to try and avoid going above a 2.
Even if you feel like you can push through and hit your peak again, listen to the numbers.
Recovery time not only ensures you gain the maximum training benefit from your efforts, but it also helps to avoid the lasting consequences of overtraining.
Anaerobic Training Effect uses heart rate and speed or power to determine how a workout affects your ability to perform at a very high intensity, such as sprint workouts.
It then interprets the information relative to the impact they’ll have on future anaerobic performance capacity.
In other words, your Anaerobic Energy is your body’s reserve tank to keep you going when you exceed the rate at which oxygen is available compared to the energy demanded.
The higher the Anaerobic Training Effect, the greater expected benefit to your anaerobic athletic capability.
And high-intensity intervals, for example, have been shown to improve several components related to your ability to perform, and Anaerobic Training Effect quantifies this for you.
And to take it one step further, by analyzing the type of workout you did, it can tell you more specifically how the workout helped you.
For example, if it were detected that you completed several high-speed repeats, you might get an Anaerobic Training Effect of 3.5 saying,
This activity improved your anaerobic capacity and speed due to several high-speed/power repeats.
So, there you have it. We train because we want results.
So why not train with a metric that gives us a sneak peek at how each training session is expected to impact our future fitness levels.
Train smarter and tailor your workouts to your needs – with Training Effect.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to learn more about Training Effect.
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For now, that’s all I‘ve got.
This is Marcus from Garmin, wishing you all the best.
And in all that you do, we want to help you beat yesterday.