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Artificially elevating CTL

  • Creator
    Topic
  • October 27, 2022 at 9:25 am #71885
    gregclimbs
    Participant

    My partner and I were having a discussion about what activities I log and “count” towards CTL values.

    I have been riding my bike to/from the gym for climbing and S&C sessions 2-5x a week. And have been doing vinyasa yoga (flow) 2-3x a week.

    Training peaks usually gives yoga around ~30hrTSS. Riding into training (bike has powermeter), works out to ~5TSS in (downhill) and ~15TSS riding home (uphill).

    Just curious the UA coaches perspective of “is this just gaming the CTL system” and artificially raising CTL or is this training load real?

    And if the latter, I do not see a way in TP to exclude these activities from CTL calculation, did I miss a feature flag somewhere on the activity?

    Thx!

  • Creator
    Topic

Posted In: Mountaineering

  • Participant
    PaulB on November 1, 2022 at 3:11 pm #72252

    Hi Greg,

    I’m not a coach but I have done both yoga and cycling and recorded the TSS values. It all counts towards fitness, but depending on your fitness level and goals some activities just count, and help, more than others.

    Somewhere on this site there is advice to count cycling as 1/3-1/2 the “recorded” TSS, which is what I did when I was bike commuting a lot. For about a week I wore a HR monitor on my commute and recorded 1/3 the HR TSS value that Training Peaks gave me. After that week I stopped wearing the monitor and just recorded the TSS manually because it was really consistent.

    For Vinyasa Yoga, I have used 20TSS/hr because some of the poses seemed to give a general strength effect, but not significant. This one seems more like a more individualized TSS would be best.

    Others might have a different approach, but that’s what worked for me.

    Paul

    Moderator
    krish on November 24, 2022 at 10:22 pm #72924

    It depends on what you’re trying to optimize for. There’s definitely lots of ways to chase CTL and get high numbers. But, if your goals are high mountains, then the CTL number might not be representative of what you’re actually ready for. If your goals are more general fitness, then it might be useful.

    Other than deleting the entry, there’s no way for TP to ignore the activity but being consistent for what you’re training for is the key. CTL is useful for yourself when comparing your OWN performance relative to previous activities. It’s not a number that you can use to compare against other people. So, if you do record everything you do and then perform a goal activity, take note of how you did and how you recovered. Keep recording everything the same way and use the CTL number to give yourself a relative comparison for the next time.

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