Its not TSS as Im sure your are aware and based on heart rate.
Its based on an estimate of Excess Post-excerise Oxygen Consumption, EPOC, from heart rate data (not power)
The idea is it gives an indication of the degree of impact an activity has on your body.
If you compare with power data or dont have (accurate) heart rate data for certain activities you can get some very odd results / values you wouldnt expect.
I loosely watch strava instead, or just go on how I feel these days.
That certainly is effective for day to day training.
I am guessing Joe is looking back at data from a few years ago to try spot any correlations between training load and performance.
It may provide an useful insight, although it can also be misleading if consideration of what else was going on at the time outside training isn’t considered. Sometimes what worked previously doesnt work as effectively in the present or future.
One thing seems to be a constant,…
consistency over the longest time you can tends to reward with improved performance.
That’s exactly the word I was landing on to understand it
Yeah what I seem to have found in bike data, tss, is a training load that is more cost for no benefit. I’m trying to do the same with running data, but I recorded hrTSS for a while, then I got a Garmin in ‘21 and Load data appears in June, then I stopped centralising run tss, then I setup power based run tss….you get the picture.
I see my best run results in 2021, my first and highest vo2 summer of 21, and it’s just steadily declined from there. So I’m thinking Load is my consistent data on impact of training since then if I want to find insights.
Equally your highest threshold seems to be when your 6 week average TSS is at its highest (without exception.) Only you can assess the cost to you verses the benefit, or you view it as no benefit.
I assume that in 2024 you acquired most TSS from activities that dont tend to have a significant impact on threshold. I guess there was more time but less quality. Was most TSS from longer Z2 outdoor rides without efforts? And less from threshold and above compared with other years?
As I said above, there is much value in considering the other facts that allows one to absorb the training, load is useless if it has no impact.
I suspect that if you analysed your training load looking at kJs (or TSS) above and below threshold you’d see a clearer picture of how training load impacts your performance.
WKO5 has Aerobic and Anerobic TIS, Training Impact scores, which is much more revealing than TSS or kJs in my opinion.
So this is about the rate of increase, not the end state.
So getting from 245 to 270 happens no faster if I’m at 200-250 or 300-350 TSS.
Spending four months at 300-350 is reasonable to conclude as a waste of effort.
Whether I then will continue to improve at 200-250 TSS at the same rate or will need to increase to 350+ to get higher than 270 is not supported by my data.
I think my data also supports that other training does not affect this correlation. I didn’t see any particular correlation in kjs which did surprise me a little.
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Running is a different story, again it’s easy to see what would improve my running, but it’s not clear what the minimum/optimum would be as the data is not so consistent.
A pattern emerging does look like a lot less than I thought - consistently applied - will get me back to my best. I’m still trawling through various data pools with this aim in mind…then I’ll move on to swimming.
But “improve” and your TSS number are different, right? Assuming you are retesting at least every now and then?
If your threshold power is increasing then you are clearly improving, even if TSS stays static, seeing as TSS is a function of FTP.
It’s more than conceivable to hold TSS at your c.270 figure for a long time, yet see FTP moving up and down. When it’s going up, you’re getting fitter. It’s back tk the same discussion about CTL not being equivalent to fitness. You can have a comparable CTL score heading into an A race of 120 in two consecutive years, but if your FTP was 50w higher in the second year, you’re clearly fitter in year 2. Yet would not see that in the CTL peak, or potentially TSS numbers.
Slightly aside, sounds like a new 975 is imminent. Can’t imagine there’ll be much to justify moving from a 965
Not sure I need another subscription to tell me I’m crap and what I’m doing wrong 
SWIM MORE!
“Fuck off”.
If they are expecting me to pay for the type of AI insights that strava delivers then I’ll pass thanks. More likely to pay to turn them off.
I do think Garmin, Strava etc ought to be able to offer some decent coaching insights, build a plan based on a given race date and target, adjust that plan based on the logged training. But either they are not interested, or that stuff is actually harder than it looks 
Hmm, and if you look at the GDPR stuff they’re doing with the new HRM in it not being open Ant+ then I can see the natural progression to have proprietary hardware talking to each other and you having to be a subscriber for certain, probably vital, metrics to be sent to third party apps like Strava.
Maybe I’m being a doom merchant but the pressure for perpetual growth from investors is strong.
The move away from open ANT+ is actually to comply with new EU regs that stipulate personal data must be encrypted and not be transmitted on an open RF channel. The very fact that every piece of gym equipment can detect my HR is apparently something I should be concerned about.
Although it is enough for Garmin to make you aware of the fact that your HR is visible to everyone, so they can continue to broadcast openly if you opt-in.
I think Bluetooth is already compatible and there was an agree consent for ANT+ initially if you didn’t mind potential data transmission.
Maybe they should ask Alan Couzens or half of ST for training insights 
More or at ALL
Very unlikely but…
Depends on the readings and if your insurance companies can use it to get out of a claim. Maybe more of an issue in America 
Although they have bigger issues right now.
Yeah, the more I hear about the US health system the more I dispair.
But this is EU legislation. I think in reality this is an unintended consequence of a general privacy piece of law. You must not transmit someone’s personal data on an unencrypted radio channel, seems fair enough, but no-one was thinking of your running watch when drafting it.
On the dcrainmaker piece on it, he says Garmin are basically mothballing all ANT+ protocols in response, which will affect lights and trainer control, even though they have no personal data attached to them.
You make a good point. I agree.
My trusty old Edge 520 had been having battery issues, with a 1hr-ish ride using about 40% of the battery (with maps and navigation on). Checked all the settings and found nothing amiss, so bit the bullet and bought a new battery. It is a bit of a faff to get into it, need to lever of the screen which is glued on, managed it with the help of a hair dryer to soften the glue. The speaker wires share the battery connector so a little soldering is required to attach the new battery connector to the speaker. Overall a fairly straightforward job.
Took it out for a ride round my now standard hour-ish route and it used 9% with maps and nav, which is much better and saved my splashing out on a new one.