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Training Status is bèèèhh

triabas
over 4 years ago

After using it for more than 6 months my conclusion is that the 'training status' feature is useless. The main issue is that it doesn't get basic trainingprinciples right, such as periodisation/training cycles. I guess this is because it's far too heavily focused on VO2Max. As soon as you go into a relaxed training (or -week), it goes to unproductive. Which is obviously ***, as everybody should know that sometimes you need restSleeping and sufficient rest makes you stronger in the end. That Garmin/Firstbeat does not understand this (or are not able to properly implement this), is astonishing.

For training I can better rely on the level of my 'body battery': that's generally quite in line with my feeling and a good predictor of how my training goes.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to triabas

    Fair call on the response. If you are training for an IM, then you probably are getting enough LSD.

    I find my body responds quickly to just a couple of VO2Max sessions, so I can see "Productives" there, but it can take weeks or a couple of months of zone 2 work to see an uptick from that, and I can see some flip-flopping between statuses from that.

    In terms of accuracy, if you dig through the Firstbeat white papers, they note that accura.cy of the VO2Max estimation increases significantly if your true maxHR is known, versus using the age-based default. If you are concerned about accuracy, then that is one place to look.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to mcalista

    Good to know ! Although I am now already using my actual HR zones/max, I could 'play' a bit with it and see if this results in better accuracy.

    It wonder if it may also be related to the recovery advice on my 945 after training sessions. This is always far off: the other day after a D1 run (with max HR of 137) a recovery advice of 60 hours ! On my previous watch Garmin 230 and on my Edge 830 the recommendations are far shorter (with the edge 830 even for the same training; both completely up to date with personal data).

    Still I don't understand why there is such a strong link between VO2Max and the trainingsstatus. Personally I don't give a damn about VO2Max. I would be far more interested to see that my (an)aerobic threshold level improves over time.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to triabas

    I think there has to be something wrong with your heart rate settings or HR or HRV measurements on the watch. What does the Training Effect look like? Recovery Time and Training Effect should correspond somewhat I think. It's somewhere taken a wrong turn if it thinks you need 60 hours to recover from an easy training. Do you use a chest strap or optical? Same heart rate data on the edge and the forerunner and still wildly different suggestions? There's something wrong.
    Have you done a soft reset lately? Just hold the power key until the watch shuts down (15s or so), there is no data loss if you sync before you do it, it just hard reboots the watch. Might help or not, won't hurt usually.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Idefix

    Btw, it was a 40 minute run and my current status (before and after the run) is 'productive'. The Training Effect is always okay (this one was 2.6 aerobic/0.0 anaerobic). For running I am using an optical, but for biking a Garmin chest strap which gives the data to both my 945 as the Edge 830.  My HRV after the 3 minute test is always between 15-30, so low stress.

    I have all this conflicting info since I have the watch. Still I don't think there is anything wrong with it. I think somewhere in the algorithms there are some flaws.

    I would welcome the following improvements:

    - Reserve 'unproductive' for real overtraining. As mentioned above in several comments it's very demotivating to have this status. And often simply not true. If you are at the end of a season, taking a break and only doing maintanance training, you will loose some fitness and your VO2Max will go down. Still, long term it's smart and certainly benefitting your fitness.

    - My training as endurance focused athlete will be completely different from a 5-10k focussed runner. It would be a nice feature to be able to change the predefined optimal area's for training (low and high aerobic and anaerobic).

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Can I set training quality options here? I mean, for example, to set a specific time to distance? as we know people prepare differently. some on 10 km, others on the half marathon?