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What is ‘chronic training load’ and why is it important to measure it? To find out, I asked an expert

Harry November 5, 2024

Whatever your favorite sport, training regularly puts stress on your body. This tension is a good thing; How to get fitter, healthier and faster if that’s what you’re aiming for. However, you need to properly adjust the amount of load you apply to your body; Too little and you won’t be fitter, too much and you run the risk of exhausting yourself, getting sick or getting injured.

Chronic training load is a metric that can help you evaluate the effort you put in each day and over long training periods. Popularized by the team behind the education platform Education SummitsIt is widely used throughout. best sports watches And exercise appssometimes even under a different name such as fitness.

To learn more about what chronic training load is, how it’s calculated, and how you can use it to stay fit, I spoke with Cody Stevenson, head of training at TrainingPeaks.

Cody Stephenson

Cody Stephenson is the head of training for the TrainingPeaks fitness platform. He is also a qualified coach and racing cyclist with 30 years’ experience. Stephenson holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Fort Lewis College and a master’s degree in health and exercise sciences from Colorado State University.

What is chronic training load?

“Chronic training load, or CTL, is a way to measure training volume, taking into account the intensity of individual workouts and how long the workouts impact you,” says Stephenson. “You’ll also see it called fitness on TrainingPeaks. “As fancy as it sounds and how much math goes into it, it’s actually just the basic number for how much you’ve trained.”

Most fitness apps and wearable devices now include a measure of your CTL, but the term used and the period covered may vary. According to TrainingPeaks’ classic measurement, CTL covers a six-week period, but Apple’s new training load feature for example 28 days.

How is chronic training load calculated?

CTL is the accumulated effect of your training over the last six weeks, and to get this number you first need to calculate the training effect of each workout you do. This is measured by another metric with a three-letter acronym; your training stress score or TSS.

“This is basically (workout) intensity times (workout) time with a few little adjustment factors to make it a nice number and not a crazy decimal number,” Stephenson says. “The duration of the intensive periods gives you that individual session number. A single workout on TrainingPeaks can be 60 TSS, 120 TSS, or 300 TSS.

“Then from there we weight down to move to CTL because a workout six weeks ago affects you less than a workout eight days ago. So we’re taking an exponentially weighted average of all those workouts and all the TSS scores over the last six weeks.”

The result of all these TSS scores is a CTL score that can range from 30 to 200 and is comparable across athletes of all levels, as your TSS is adjusted based on your fitness and ability and is measured based on factors such as intensity and power. pace and heart rate while cycling.

What is the difference between acute and chronic training load?

A woman lifting dumbbells by the pool

(Image credit: Getty Images)

If CTL is your long-term training load, your acute training load, or ATL, is your short-term training load, covering the last seven days. Your CTL, or fitness, is an indicator of how much you can train in the short term, or your ATL.

“You really need to look at both together and look at the balance between the two, because if you have a really high acute training load, then you’re probably more fatigued than your chronic training load says you can tolerate.” Stephenson says. “As these two move back and forth relative to each other, you create more tension in your body or allow it to heal.”

It is measured using this balance between CTL and ATL. another metric, your training stress balance, or TSB.

“TSB is the difference between chronic training load and acute training load,” says Stephenson. “If this number is zero, your acute training load and chronic training load are the same, which means you are training as much as you are used to. If it’s really negative, that means you’re training more than you’re used to, and if it’s really positive, that means you’re training less than you’re used to.

“Those are the three things we always look at as a coach; ‘Do we need to train more, less or the same way?’ The least we do is the same. You don’t gain much from it, but you still put in a lot of effort.”

To get fitter, you need to increase your ATL so that you train harder than you have in the past, but pushing it too hard can put you at risk of burning out or getting injured, so you use your CTL to decide how much exercise you do. to increase your education in the short term.

This increase is measured by another term: ramp rate (no three-letter acronym this time, thankfully). People who want to increase their training in general can increase their CTL by 5-7 each week, but athletes in training camps can go to higher numbers.

Can you use chronic training load to prevent injury?

There’s no way to completely eliminate the risk of injury when training, but you can use your ATL and CTL to reduce this risk by ensuring you don’t overdo it by training more than your fitness can handle.

“This is the balance between ATL and CTL,” says Stephenson. “Makes sense, right? If you suddenly add more load in one week than you were used to in the previous six weeks, this poses a risk of injury. “I’m not sure how relevant or measurable it is, but it’s definitely something.”

Should you include non-training activities in your chronic training load?

A group of friends going for a walk together

(Image credit: Getty/ Hinterhaus Productions)

Your workouts will be the most intense activity you do each day, but they won’t be the only activity you do, so I asked Stephenson whether you need to factor in things like chores or an active job.

“If they’re shorter and lower intensity, like a dog walk, you can probably ignore them,” says Stephenson. “But if you want to include them, you can as long as you are consistent. Every time you do it, include it or always ignore it, then it will be true.

“But if you have a very active lifestyle, working in construction or something, then I would say that’s something you need to think about more in terms of your recovery and how you manage the training load. You have a really active lifestyle, so your CTL should actually be lower and you should make sure you get plenty of sleep and rest.

How does rest affect chronic training load?

CTL is not a measurement that involves recovery tracking of any kind, and while some wearables are now getting better at using things like heart rate variability to track your body’s condition and give advice on how long it will take to recover from exercise, this still needs to be taken with caution. This is an area you need to consider.

“Anyone who wants to start using exercise load measurements should remember that they can never be directly correlated to performance,” says Stephenson. “Because a CTL of 60 when you sleep well, don’t drink too much beer, and eat well is different than a CTL of 60 when all of those things are the opposite and you live a stressful life.

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What is ‘chronic training load’ and why is it important to measure it? To find out, I asked an expert

Harry

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What is ‘chronic training load’ and why is it important to measure it? To find out, I asked an expert

Harry

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