Does anyone use the Fitness, Freshness and Form function on Strava?
What does it tell you if anything?
Martin
Hi Martin,
There is an explanation of the graph (which TrainingPeaks call the "Performance Management Chart") here...
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/what-is-the-performance-management-chart
To help translate the terminology from TrainingPeaks to Strava...
ATL = Freshness (or lack thereof)
CTL = Fitness
TSB = Form
You can get really technical with this stuff (read "how to train and race with a power meter" by Coggan & Hunter if you want to know the technicalities), but in a nutshell people can use it as a tool so they have a quantifiable way of estimating what numbers give them the best improvements, or when to start a recovery or tapering period. If you do a bit of trial and error with this, you can relate certain numbers in the chart to when you had good events (or bad events) and try to replicate (or avoid) those numbers again in the future.
For example, after some trial and error in the past, I noticed for me that my cycling tends to best when...
- Fitness score in the 70-100 region (above 100 is too much for me with a full-time job and middle-aged, as I am constantly feeling tired).
- Fitness score increasing at around 5-10 per month (again, I start to get too tired above an increase of 10 per month).
- Every 4 weeks or so, I like to recover with a few days off and some really easy short rides by getting my Form back up to zero, before stepping things back up to the next level in the following few weeks to increase my Fitness again.
- Before an event (e.g. Sportive), I tend to perform best when my Form is still slightly negative, i.e. when I am not totally recovered, at between -5 and -15 for me.
Obviously, this is all common sense, i.e. cycling more/harder leads to more fitness, you should take it easy every few weeks in order for your body to recover and grow stronger, and taking it easier just before an event will mean you will not be too tired to perform well. However, the chart just gives you a quantifiable way of measuring all of this (albeit, it is only a tool and not the be all and end all, and you still need to listen to what your body is telling you, etc), plus it can be a good visual reward and motivator to see your Fitness line on the up over time.
(There may be a couple of slight inaccuracies in the above in the name of simplicity for explanation
)
Hope that's of some use
All the best, Gaz
(P.S. I use the Strava tool with my Power Meter readings (rather than HR readings) and the scores on Strava are virtually identical to those on TrainingPeaks (which a lot of the pro teams use), and therefore the Strava tool seems "accurate" in that sense. (I can't comment on the HR side of things, as I don't use a HR monitor these days.))
