What is Training Load?
Training Load gives a high level look of what the athlete has been put under in terms of stress. When the body undergoes stress the likelihood of injury can increase. By using monitoring we can reduce this likelihood allowing us to keep our athletes uninjured for greater periods of time.
It’s important to remember is that stress can come from a variety of different aspects. Internal loads such as Heart Rate or RPE are important as well as external loads like distances covered or sprint efforts. These can also be joined together to create a total load. In future we will add the ability to bring your metrics such as athlete wellness and RPE into the Training Load Tool.
How is my training load score calculated?
Your training load is calculated by summing the individual load score for each metric. The load scores are calculated as follows:
Metric score / metric benchmark * (metric weighting/sum of all weightings * 100)
What metrics should I use?
For most sports we offer a default set of metrics and benchmarks that have been carefully selected by our sport science team. The default metrics should be suitable for most teams, but over time we recommend you change your benchmarks to match your game day averages. This will allow the system to be better suited to your teams needs.
What weightings should I set for the metrics I choose?
We suggest you start with our suggested metrics until you are comfortable with the system and the needs of your team. From here you can start to decide what is important to you, and adjust accordingly.
What is TSB?
Training Stress Balance (TSB) is the ability to monitor an athlete’s capacity and how it changes over time as a function of training. It allows us to monitor both the fitness and the freshness of the athlete.
By averaging Training Load scores we can come up with the two metrics that comprise TSB; these are the Acute Load which monitors a smaller time frame and represents the freshness of the athlete, and the Chronic Load, which uses a larger rolling average of Training Load and represents the Fitness of the athlete.
How is TSB calculated?
Both the chronic and acute loads are calculated as a rolling average from the Training Load scores.
The Chronic Load uses a 28 day rolling average, whereas the Acute Load uses a 7 day rolling average.
The TSB score then is worked out by Chronic/Acute = TSB. This number then represents if the athlete is fatigued or is ready to train.
Why should I set up Seasons
Setting a season allows you to view TSB data straight away. When a start date is set for a season we will begin using a smaller sample for the average until you reach the 7/28 day thresholds. Data that is not using the full 7/28 days’ worth of data will be shown as dotted lines on the TSB graph.
Some of my data is not appearing?
Please be aware that data collected from before 1st July 2015 will not appear in the Training Load Tool due to updates to the VX Sport database structure. This may however be revised in a future update.