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Is Training Effect linear

waltersjonathan
over 5 years ago

So after some of my “Garmin Coach” runs seemed to be delivering a Training Effect is less than 3 (and so maintaining, not improving, aerobic performance) I decided to add TE as a field to monitor during my run. I was competing a “progressive run” so 30 minutes easy, 10 minutes race pace. I wasn’t studying but it seemed like the TE reached 2 before I got to the end of the 30min easy (and 5min warmup) but then took an age to progress further, and in fact only reached 2.3 by the end of the run. So, my question, do you accurate Training Effect in a linear manner, or does it become harder to gain incremental TE the more you do?

thx 

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Were you pushing yourself, or just running with the same level of effort that you usually use? If it was the 2nd one, then that's probably why it never went much higher than 2. If you don't push yourself harder than usual, then all you're doing is maintaining.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Thanks, I should have checked First Beat myself! Though not explicit, that graph seems to suggest it would be linear. Must try harder!! Blush

    Given the last 10 minutes was quite a bit harder, I’d expected a faster increase from that point. Will keep monitoring this!

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Training Effect is based on peak EPOC and your activity class (see https://www.firstbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/white_paper_training_effect.pdf)

    Your activity class is based on your training frequency: work out more/longer and your activity class will be higher (see https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=DJEru6ns626MZTh2kvUXZA)

    EPOC is the amount of oxygen you consume during your workout: the harder you go, the faster this will build up; and as you work out longer, you'll also allow it to build of more - if you slow down/recover, it'll start dropping (see https://assets.firstbeat.com/firstbeat/uploads/2015/11/white_paper_epoc.pdf). I'm not sure exactly how Firstbeat measures EPOC, but I imagine it's based on your heart rate & thresholds determined from past workouts or so.

    So:

    - if you work out harder, your EPOC will build up faster (in a non linear fashion - closer to threshold will gain rapidly, but slower will stall your EPOC as you're recovering)

    - if you work out longer, your EPOC will build up for longer (assuming you keep up the intensity, or at least don't recover (= EPOC drops) more than you gain during the intense parts)

    - if you work out more (activity class increases), you will need to work out harder/longer to get a similar Training Effect to someone who works out less

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to matthiasmullie

    Makes sense.  Thanks for sharing! Will play around with duration / intensity and monitor the effect. Was interesting this morning on a bike VO2 workout... I’d expected this to be targeting Upper Aerobic, but ended up almost exactly 50:50 between Aerobic and Anaerobic. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to matthiasmullie
    matthiasmullie said:
    EPOC is the amount of oxygen you consume during your workout:

    urrrrm no it's not. Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption is a measure of the amount of oxygen required to (effectively) return your body to normal following exercise. During exercise you burn energy from stored stored fuel, damage muscle tissue, use hormones, all of which requires oxygen to rebalance this after you have exercised. From that it follows that a higher EPOC is likely to represent a higher workload or impact on the body as more oxygen is required to replenish everything..

    VO2max is a measure of the maximum amount of oxygen you can consume during exercise. It is possible to estimate the amount of oxygen you have used during a training session in a number of ways. For running you could use the formula:

    VO2(consumed) = 0.2 ml/kg/min(speed in m/min) + 3.5 ml/kg/min

    To use this, take the time spent on the activity, the distance covered, then divided the distance in metres by the time taken in minutes to give you the speed in m/min. The do the math.

    Or you can estimate an absolute VO2max (L/kg) from:

    Active men: 69.7 -  (0.612 x age)

    Active women: 42.9 -  (0.312 x age)

    Sedentary men: 57.8 -  (0.445 x age)

    Sedentary women: 42.3 -  (0.356 x age)

    and convert to relative VO2max by multiplying 1000/60 and dividing by body weight to get to ml/kg/s