Primary Benefit

Former Member over 4 years ago

I recently did a WOD style work out that lasted 26min. It consisted of 4 lifts/movements that I continuously conducted with only 10-20sec breaks in between to transition between movements for 4 rounds.

My average HR was 162 (my Zone 4 is 155-174) and I was in my Zone 4 for 92% of the work out.

My watch categorized the primary benefit of the work out as impacting my “Base” which I found to be typically associated with Zone 2-3 work. It also says that the activity had “sufficient duration at LOW INTENSITY to improve my endurance” and that it “increased my low aerobic training load” Both inaccurate- it was not low intensity, and should have been high aerobic.

In my experience, if my average HR is well within my HR Zone 4 the exercise should be categorized with a primary benefit impacting “Tempo” or “Threshold”

Does anyone else Agree/Disagree?

Is there a way to manually change the “Primary Benefit” of a work out, so that my training focus/training load will be accurate?

Pictures below;

Thanks

0 mcalista over 4 years ago

Load Focus scores are not all-or-nothing, and you can get LA, HA, and AN "points" regardless of how the workout is classified. During a typical structured workout, you will get some increase in your LA Training Load from the warmup, cool down and recovery intervals, even if the effort intervals are definitely HA or AN.

How the workout is classified has no effect on TL/Load Focus. It works the other way - TL/Load Focus affects how the workout is classified.

And that is also affected by the overall workout. I can do 3x8 min threshold intervals in a run, and it is classed as High Aerobic. If I add an extended warmup and cool down to the same 3x8 structure, it gets classed as Base (OK, that's where I spent most of the time, but the phsyiological benefit still comes from those effort intervals). But I still get the HA points from the 3x8.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to mcalista

Thank you for the reply,

I get the theory of if you include warm up, rest intervals, cool downs, etc. that can screw the primary benefit from HA to LA.

But I’m my specific case, if you look at the data in the pictures it does not include warm up, rest, or cool down. It is just simply 25minutes of Zone 4 work. So it should not be classified as LA. It should be classified as HA.

Also I’m not sure the comment about it not being all or nothing (as far is the watch is concerned) I understand where the Primary physiological benefits coming from the intervals in your example. But in general the watch does not divide up the “Load” of a single work out between LA, HA, AN based on time spent in each. It seems to allocated the entire load of that work out to whatever it determines is the Primary Benefit.

Regardless of how it “should work”, any idea how to manually change any part of Training effect to account for any errors?

0 AndreiDracul over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Regardless of how it “should work”, any idea how to manually change any part of Training effect to account for any errors?

Not aware of such.

In terms of labels, https://www.firstbeatanalytics.com/en/features/workout-labels/

I find it very strict to the dot. You will have to play with your workout a bit and find what works best to get your label lol. Otherwise I would suggest contacting firstbeat to understand the logic -- it seems it's more run centric to begin with.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to AndreiDracul

I agree, it does seem to be very run centric.
I think the problem may be that I categorized the workout as “Strength” training vs something like “Cardio”

But I assumed that regardless of what the workout was called, if it was almost entirely Zone 4 it would still label it appropriately as High Aerobic.

Reason I’m asking is because of this and other errors similar to it, my “Load Focus” is screwed way more toward low aerobic than I believe it should be.