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Confused between Training Status and Training effect

Tim_B_
over 4 years ago

One tells me I’m going too hard, the other tells me I’m doing the right thing.

A little bit of history, I’ve had my 530 for a few months with a few rides outside then a few months of indoor rides on Zwift / Neo2. At the time I didn’t realise Zwift uploads didn’t contribute to any Training data in Garmin.

My last few weeks have been predominantly outdoor rides in the local hills and as such have been reasonably strenuous, and whilst they are showing as “productive” within Garmin and my Vo2 Max and FTP have been increasing I keep getting post ride messages in Training Status that I am not doing enough Low Aerobic activity. So these last few days I have been back on the trainer doing some (I thought) low aerobic activity.

Saturday Zone 1

Sunday Zone 2

Monday Zone 2

After Saturday and Sunday rides I’m told that I’m “maintaining” however after tonights ride I’m told that I’m being “unproductive” and I have a Low aerobic shortage, my Vo2 Max also dropped 1 point.

If I look at Training Status it tells me that I’m too focused on High Intensity activities, however if I look at Training Effect it tells me I had a enough low intensity and duration to increase my endurance and it was a low intensity ride.

These two fields are exact opposite, I suspect Training Effect is correct and Training Status is wrong, unless I’m missing something???

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Hi, I was confused by this too but I think I understand it now.

    Training Effect is a metric for a *single ride*.  Each ride gets its own TE score.  It tells you what that one ride did for you.

    Training Status is a metric that spans *multiple rides over time*. It's based on your ride history (seems to be 4 weeks). It tells you where you've been most active or least active and tries to give recommendations.

    I have the same issue as you. My Training Status tells me "Unproductive" because I have a "low aerobic shortage" (which I guess is true). So I do a low aerobic ride, and its Primary Benefit is either Recovery or Base. Good. But my Training Status still shows a shortage! 

    The reason is that I haven't yet done *enough* of the low aerobic activities to fill the shortage. If you've built up a big shortage by doing a lot of high aerobic work, it takes a *lot* of activity time to fill the low aerobic shortage. Multiple long rides are needed.

    I haven't found a good graphic for this in Garmin Connect (both web and mobile app), however on the Edge 530 itself, from the main screen go down to the Menu, then down to My Stats, then Show for Training Status, then highlight the big box with the status info and select it. This will give you 3 screens you can scroll down through that show more detail on your Training Status.

    Device screenshot

    The 3rd screen shows the "Load Focus", the balance between Anaerobic, and High and Low Aerobic groups. You can see any shortages there. The numbers on the left side of each group are the sums of the Loads (=EPOC) from all activities in those groups (over the past 4 weeks). It doesn't give you the shortage value directly but you can eyeball it at least. (Honestly I think it's easier to track this ourselves...)

    The challenge is that the only way to get larger Load values from a low-intensity ride is to do more of them for much longer duration. They will add up slowly over time.

    As for those ideal targets ranges that it shows for the balance of those 3 groups, well, that also seems to be secret proprietary stuff from Firstbeat. Whether they are actually reasonable for any of us is still a question in my mind. So I try to use them as a guide but I'm now learning not to get too upset if it keeps saying "unproductive" because I have a shortage for a little while.