The Performance Management Chart in Training Peaks (PMC) –

What does it all mean?

The Performance Management Chart in Training Peaks helps you balance your Fitness, Fatigue, and Form.  And before I explain what all these things mean, I want to emphasize that the function of this chart is to BALANCE things. It is important to remember too, that for all of us, depending on who we are, there is a ceiling in terms of fitness due to time constraints etc.

What is the Performance Management Chart (PMC)?

• The Performance management chart helps you plan and measure your training as your season progresses.
  • It works by charting your daily Training Stress Score (TSS), which is based on the duration and intensity of each workout.
  • Your daily TSS can give you valuable insights into your cumulative training, including your fatigue (7-day rolling average); your fitness (42-day rolling average) and your form (yesterday’s fatigue subtracted from yesterday’s fitness).
• The PMC maps these metrics concurrently so you can see how your daily training affects your fitness goals.

What is Training Stress Score (TSS)?

TSS is a mathematical way to quantify the training load of each workout.  

Theoretically, threshold is the maximum intensity you can sustain for 1 hour at race pace, be it riding, running or swimming.  That could be threshold heart rate, threshold pace or threshold power.  

( If you ride / run for 1 hour at threshold, you would reach a score of 100 TSS. )

In Training Peaks, you will see each workout has a planned, and completed TSS.  Training Stress Score takes both intensity and duration into account and provides you with a more complete view of how stressful that workout was in the overall picture of your training.

Normalised Power (NP)

For those training with power, Normalised Power is an important metric.  Training Peaks uses NP to accurately calculate TSS.

Normalised power (NP) is the adjusted (normalized) average power output for a ride or segment of a ride. Power output on a ride is variable (due to small changes in external power demands e.g. small changes in elevation, small surges in speed, wind, etc) so NP represents the physiological cost of the ride or segment of the ride if that power output had been constant.

Think of riding your bike like driving a car. You are going to use less gas while driving on the highway at a steady speed than you would driving in the city and constantly having to come to a stop and then hit the gas again to get back up to speed. 

Normalised Power provides a picture of what a ride “cost” and while the Average Power may be relatively low, the Normalised Power could be high due to surges in power throughout the ride duration.

What is Fitness (Chronic Training Load, or CTL)?

“Fitness” (blue line in your PMC) is the average daily training load (TSS) for the past 42 days and reflects the training you have done over the last 3 months.  However, the workouts you did 15 days ago will impact your fitness more than the workouts you did 6 weeks ago.  

You may notice that as Fitness goes up so does Fatigue, only at a greater rate.  The PMC helps to tell a story, consistent training is marked by a steady rise in Fatigue and Fitness whereas a sharp drop might indicate time off due to rest, sickness or injury.  

What is Fatigue (Acute Training Load, or ATL)?

“Fatigue” (the pink line in your PMC) is the average daily training load (TSS) for the past 7 days.  Here you can see on days with a workout with a high training stress score, the Fatigue line climbs sharply in response. 

(i.e. if you do a hard workout today, you will feel it in the coming days.)

What is Form (Training Stress Balance, or TSB)?

“Form”, (the yellow line in your PMC), is the result of subtracting yesterday’s Fatigue from yesterday’s Fitness.  Just because you are fit does not mean that you are ready to race at your best.  A negative Form would indicate that you are carrying a lot of fatigue and are not in form.  However, by tapering you can shed fatigue at a greater rate than you lose fitness and come into form on the day that matters most… race day! 

In short, Fitness minus Fatigue equals Form.

What does it all mean / How do we put it together?

When you are training hard, your fitness and fatigue increases, and your form decreases.  The ideal chart shows a progressive increase in fitness and fatigue, and then a decrease in your form.  During your recovery week, your form increases, and fatigue decreases.  At the end of your recovery week, you want your form to be as close as possible to “0”.

At the end of a “building” block of training, you want to see your form between -10 to -20.  When your form is below -30, then there are red flags for your immunity and it will be difficult to bring your fatigue under control for the next training block without complete rest.  When your form is positive, you are coming into form for an important race, and you want to see your form at around +5 to max +15 for an important race.

An ideal weekly increase of CTL will be ± 4 – 5.  An increase of more than 8 per week, is too much training load for 1 week.

It is important to note that when you only train with heart rate your PMC chart, TSS, CTL and ATL, will not be as accurate as using power. This is due to the fact that heart rate has a limit for all of us and heart rate lags effort, while power can theoretically continue to increase over time.