Training Effect vs Exercise Load (Anaerobic vs High Aerobic)

How long are your intervals? An average trained person cannot sustain more than 30-60s in anaerobic mode, so if the intervals are longer than around a minute, then they are indeed done mostly in high aerobic mode.

Thank you, this makes sense. Yesterday’s intervals must have been too long.

I don’t understand why there is a difference between Training Effect and Exercise Load. It’s confusing when Training Effect show an anaerobic benefit, but Exercise Load shows zero anaerobic load for the same activity.

9745928 said:

I don’t understand why there is a difference between Training Effect and Exercise Load.

The Exercise Load chart in Training Status shows the Primary Benefit of the activity, so if the activity's main benefit is the aeroby, it is then displayed accordingly too. 

That makes sense, thank you. I was looking through my activities and found this recent strength training activity:

Exercise Load was anaerobic.

Primary Benefit says anaerobic.

Training Effect numbers:

Aerobic - 3.1

Anaerobic - 2.6

I wonder how Garmin determines the Primary Benefit. It looks like you can still get anaerobic primary benefit despite anaerobic training effect being less than aerobic training effect. Maybe there’s a cut off of how close the two numbers have to be before it is changed to high aerobic? 

9745928 said:

I wonder how Garmin determines the Primary Benefit.

AFAIK, the exact algorithm was not disclosed. There is just a schematic diagram in the video explaining the feature, on the website of the technology provider, Firstbeat Analytics (owned by Garmin). It seems to be more complex than just the ratio of the two numbers.

Firstbeat Analytics

I had a similar run today - Warm up, 12 x 150m(very close to all out), Cool down - 8 miles total

3.7 - Aerobic

2.7 - Anaerobic 

Exercise load - High Aerobic

Primary benefit - Tempo

Thought for sure this would end up Anaerobic. 
I wonder if shortening the warm up and cool down, thus lowering Aerobic of 3.7, would have resulted in Anaerobic?

I tried to test out that theory on a workout yesterday, but was unsuccessful due to issues with my external heart rate monitor data (the monitor either wasn't connecting, or the signal kept dropping, so the data was really bad and inaccurate).

Do you use the Garmin's optical HR sensor or an external heart rate monitor?  I've found that optical heart rate is reliable for steady efforts, but not when your HR is changing quickly and abruptly like during high intensity intervals. In my experience, there's usually a ~30 second delay before the heart rate starts rises, and it usually never reaches your actual high point HR before your heart rate starts decreasing again. Unfortunately, having an external HR monitor seems to be necessary to get accurate HR data in these kinds of situations.

I do believe recording the warm up/cool down separately will make it easier to get Anaerobic benefit. I'll definitely try again next time and update you.

Thank you for sharing this!!!

I use a Garmin HRM-Pro

It’s possible my recovery(350m jog) between intervals was too long and my HR came down too much. 

9745928 said:

I don’t understand why there is a difference between Training Effect and Exercise Load. It’s confusing when Training Effect show an anaerobic benefit, but Exercise Load shows zero anaerobic load for the same activity.

I see it differently from what the answers you got say.

Years ago although you could never get both Low Aero and High Aero loads for one activity even if you did one hour walking and after you ran one hour just below your LT, at least getting both High Aero and Anaero  loads was quite common. Moreover sometimes I got both Low Aero and Anaero. It was relatively rare, but possible if your HR went dow quick enough after your sprints.

And even the load values of the components were quite reasonable. I mean sometimes it was a bit suspicious, but I did have a trust in them.

These days either watches or GC (I dunno which one says the final word about load sharing between Low/High Aero and Anaero) do not like to share the exercise loads. In other words it became much rarer in my case to see a bar in the Exercise Load chart having two colours.

I dont whether this change was the result of upgrading from F6X and Enduro to Enduro 2, or some GC version update, but it is that I see. And I lost my trust in the load component values, although I still believe the total Load is reasonable.