The Training Process: Quantifying Training Load | Essentials of Sport Science Live Lecture

okay tonight we're talking about uh

training load

and specifically how to quantify

training load we need to start though

with some definitions of training load

and some theoretical concepts

so what we're going to talk about

tonight uh first managing the training

process and then quantifying it

all right it's a big picture

long-term

thing the training process

and oftentimes

we get so bogged down in the sets and

the reps and the agenda for tomorrow's

practice that we forget to look at the

training process from the 10 000 foot

view today we're going to be looking at

it from that 10 000 foot view seeing how

all of those smaller variables

fit together or at least starting to see

how they fit together

then we're going to talk about different

techniques of load monitoring

and these other things specific versus

non-specific strength etc

those are going to be for another

lecture not for this lecture tonight

we're just going to go through these

first three these we will cover more in

our lab activity later

okay so first

managing the training process we can't

start to talk about the training process

before first talking about the general

adaptation syndrome

okay the general adaptation syndrome was

developed by han selye in 1938 or at

least it was first proposed by him in

1938 he was an austro-hungarian

i think physiologist

and he essentially

posited this thesis that stress is the

common denominator of all adaptive

reactions to the body

and i don't just mean mental stress not

just psychological stress but any type

of stress general stress hence general

adaptation syndrome

abbreviated by gas

the gas or the general adaptation

syndrome has proven to be an instructive

framework for understanding the

mechanistic process of providing a

training stimulus

to induce specific adaptations that

result in functional enhancements okay

so that's the application of the gas

model to sport training now his research

was not with athletes his research was

with rats and he would subject them to

electric shocks or burns or starvation

or like psychological distress it was

actually it's kind of sad for the rats

but he noticed that they they all went

through

these three phases

we had the alarm phase at first after

the

implementation of that stimulus whatever

it was whatever stress stressful or he

called it noxious stimulus he presented

them with they went through some sort of

alarm where

their body systems and we could think of

that as performance

they all suffered they all declined okay

they were worse off

acutely

but then in the presence of continual

stress

after time they went through this

resistance phase where their body

mounted an adaptive resistance to the

stress being applied to them

okay and for us we can think of this as

the super compensation effect

we can also think of this though

as that training effect that we do call

adaptive resistance whereby the same

training activity doesn't make you quite

as fatigued or as sore

uh the second third fourth hundredth

time it's applied

does anyone follow that guy's squad

every day ivan zurich on instagram or

youtube no no none of you for real okay

um have you heard of the squad every day

program or the bulgarian style training

programs where they would

these weight lifters bulgarian

weightlifters would max out on their

lifts snatch clean and jerk back squat

front squat

two maybe three times a day and would

just continually do that they mounted an

incredible adaptive resistance so that

they could handle those loads day in day

out

you know for a long time until they

would eventually break in the exhaustion

phase it they had a lot of

pharmacological support

but eventually even with that they would

break um the reason i brought up ivan

juric and squad every day is because

he's building up an incredible level of

adaptive resistance and what's really

cool is you can watch the entire thing

play out over the last like 600 days you

squat it every every day

so this resistance phase is important

because this is where all of the

adaptations occur but you have to

present continually higher and higher

and higher stresses this is the

principle of overload right if we don't

overload we eventually plateau and we're

not going to improve strength until we

increase the level of the stimulus but

eventually the rats cannot handle

further increases in stress and then

well and then they they die and that's

what happens in the exhaustion phase

okay so if you go into the weight room

and you do 10 by 10 back squats at 105

of your 1rm

every day you're probably going to hit

this exhaustion phase pretty quickly

okay and that's

this is not only on an acute timeline

where we have the acute response which

is fatigue and then the recovery and

then the adaptation followed by

involution

or potentially over training if we

continue too much of the stimulus but

this is also the long-term response of

an organism to stress with the

accumulation phase where we see a

decrease in overall performance during

let's say off season training during

that hypertrophy phase during a high

volume training block for endurance

runners during their base period of

training they're not going to be very

fast a power lifter is not going to be

very strong when they're in sets of 10.

followed by transmutation where we start

to creep back up because of maybe a

reduction in a change in the specific

stress being applied

and then finally a realization where we

have that super compensation effect

and improved performance then if we stop

training

or if we train too much and too hard and

with too much overload then we get into

this exhaustion phase

okay does that make sense the general

adaptation syndrome

it applies to all organisms with any

stress but we can we can apply it to uh

sport training um to give us a good

theoretical

starting point for developing the rest

of our training theory

now

further work was done um by morton at

all

and they

they developed mathematical models of

the training response this was done with

runners with distance runners and

essentially what we're seeing in these

curves you'll notice

it's kind of a confusing looking graph

but if you look at an individual curve

it looks very similar

to the alarm

resistance and exhaustion phase

however

do you guys see those upward waving

lines that sort of plateau and then dip

down a little bit starting at 10 20 40

60 80 100. what this is modeling for us

is what happens if you present the same

training stimulus for that many days in

a row and then you stop

okay so this is 110 days of training

the same training volume and intensity

every day

and if somebody was um to stop at day 10

and rest and recover

their performance would they would

recover and they would super compensate

and then involution or d training would

occur and they would end just a little

bit higher than where they began

if they went 20 days they would end a

little bit higher than that 30 and so on

so there's a much bigger

alarm phase or depression in performance

the longer you train but also a bigger

super compensation

effect and we see this dotted line is

like the apex of each of these curves

that's sort of the theoretical upper

limit of how much improvement they can

make from that many days of training

all right now this is important because

what happens if you doubled the training

response are you going to get double the

output

no because there's a lot of diminishing

return we see all of these are

asymptotic meaning that they

they don't just go up forever linearly

they all level out

and plateau

okay let's move on

now if we take the general adaptation

syndrome and some of that mathematic

modeling of fitness and fatigue

we get to this the physiological

response to training and this is from

the textbook um the cpss textbook and so

take a minute

look at the different

categories that we have plotted on the

x-axis is time so this is obviously the

acute response to a single bout of

training

okay

acute response to a single bout of

training and what do each of these

things do

we have carbohydrate so this is probably

glycogen storage

we have

inflammation local to the tissue being

being exercised

we have muscle damage

we have soreness which you'll see is

delayed and i don't remember what va

stands for does anyone remember

voluntary activation there we go

so this is a time horizon for a single

bout of training but now try to imagine

in your mind what would happen to these

curves if you decreased the volume of

that training by 50

obviously they would shrink what if you

increase the volume of that training

what if you kept the volume the same but

increase the intensity

okay but now start to think of maybe

some other curves we could imagine maybe

a curve for connective tissue repair and

regrowth and healing or even

uh

bones bone tissue how long does it take

a bone to remodel

okay maybe

neuromuscularly what is uh what is the

peripheral and central nervous system

doing maybe maybe a motor skill

acquisition okay how long does that take

so we can think of these as stimulus

recovery adaptation curves right but

each of the body's systems has slightly

uh different lengths of those curves

different time horizons that are

dependent not only on the dose and the

intensity but also on the nature of the

body system itself

that's why those hungarians could get

sorry bulgarians could get away from

with training

two or three times per day

on their key lifts because it was highly

technique dependent they weren't doing a

ton of volume overall they weren't doing

sets of 10

you know they maybe that maybe they

would do a double now and then for them

that was their cardio right but

everything else was just singles to max

all the time highly technique based high

neural outputs

they went there all the time because the

central nervous system and your ability

to learn

new skills skill training technique

training

that sra curve is very short

right you can

you can practice multiple times a day

and get better each time but how many

times a day could you do like a

a heavy hypertrophy workout

maybe once every two or three days okay

so that sra curve for muscle growth and

repair is much longer than for

technique training

so when we take all of these things from

that 10 000 foot view of training our

model of training and then we start to

try try to cram all of our programming

variables into it okay there's a

thousand little details that you can put

into your training program

however

there are some key defining factors of

good successful training programs

the first is that they have articulated

system aims or goals

right

they have intelligent logical goals that

are within reach of the team or the

athletes

that make sense based on the sport

demands and where the athletes are in

their long-term development

and that makes sense season after season

they build on them

then they have detailed short and long

term planning that's where something

like an annual plan comes into play

where you start at the end of the season

and you say here's our end of season

goals what goals do we have to

accomplish

leading up to that between now and then

in order to accomplish that end goal

regular assessment of progress so is

there a monitoring system in place is

there a testing system in place how do

we know that we're reaching those goals

are we doing some sort of

some sort of testing day where the

athletes know hey this is where when we

get assessed on our technique or on our

tactical preparation or on our strength

or our endurance right luckily games or

matches or competitions are sort of a

built-in form of assessment but those

don't assess everything

right you can't always get a sense of a

soccer athlete's strength or power or

explosiveness just from watching them in

the game right maybe they're the goalie

and they there's no shots on goal so

they don't they didn't have anything to

display

um but without program adjustments

following the monitoring and the testing

then the monitoring and testing is

wasted it does this no good if we gather

the data and even interpret the data if

we don't feed that data forward into the

program so there has to be regular

program adjustments the annual plan that

you create is not the law okay it's just

there are guidelines there are

guidelines for what you project and

think that you're going to do that

season

and yes you can you absolutely should

stick to the goals and to the structure

of it but maybe the details change maybe

you realize the athletes are reaching

non uh non-functional overreaching in

their training and you have to scale

back the volume that you projected you

would be doing

uh in week 16.

okay

we also want program variable

manipulation at the micro and the mat

and the macro levels

all right

this should say based on

valid and reliable monitoring

so i see a lot of programs where there

are certain program variables that just

stay the same like maybe they have

maybe they have good undulation or

rather a good sequential

set and rep scheme that matches the

fitness characteristics

that uh that they say their goal is to

develop so in the offseason maybe it's

strength endurance and then during the

transmutation phase of their

annual plan maybe it goes to sets of

five and so it's more basic strength

with some plyos thrown in and then

during the competition phase maybe it's

i don't know max power or something and

it sets of three or two add a sub

maximal load so you can do it for speed

i'm just making this up off the top of

my head but let's say that they just

keep back squats in the whole stinking

program for 32 weeks long or 52 weeks

long however long this annual plan is

going to be that's one program variable

that they're not they're not

intentionally manipulating okay and

maybe it's a power lifter or something

so you so yeah you want to keep back

squats in but are we exploring uh maybe

other exercise selections that could

actually amplify or augment your ability

to perform the back squat or that takes

you out of doing your competition back

squat all the time and therefore

incurring the same wear and tear on the

same joints all the time and even more

so with our team support athletes okay

so do we see a logical progression of

exercises that build upon each other

not only with skill factors

but also in the strength and the power

development arenas as well okay so

things like

overhead press in the hypertrophy phase

push pressing in the transmutation phase

push jerks or power jerks during the

competition phase that's an easy example

okay and then finally a valid and

reliable

monitoring system combined with coaching

expertise so as a sports scientist we

should never tell the sport coach what

to do

it's their arena they're at the helm

when it comes to steering the ship

we are just the navigators and we'll say

hey the north star is that way not that

way like you can still go that way if

you want

we we give we help them to make informed

decisions but ultimately they are the

experts for the tactic uh the tactical

and oftentimes also the technical

aspects of the sport okay we just get

their athletes ready to show up

and then keep them ready

okay and we also another concept another

important concept is this fitness

fatigue model maybe i should have put

this slide before the last one

this figure was developed by revive

stronger they have good stuff for

bodybuilders kind of hypertrophy but

i thought this was the best figure i

could find of this model essentially

what it says is that after you train so

we have a training stimulus in the black

over there there's a single training

stimulus after you train your

preparedness which is a combination of

fitness and fatigue will peak but not

immediately after you train it takes

time this is similar to the sra curve

that we saw before but it shows you the

interaction of

fitness and fatigue and preparedness

okay

fatigue is decreasing your preparedness

fitness will be increasing your

preparedness fitness is highest

right after you train but it's masked by

your fatigue

okay fatigue will always mask your

fitness the good thing though and this

is the reason why we adapt

we hold on to our fitness longer than we

do our fatigue

okay we hold on to fitness longer than

we do fatigue so fatigue will eventually

dissipate and we'll still have some of

that fitness left from the training

session

and that's when we optimize preparedness

okay so that's this is all well and good

uh we've looked at a lot of sort of

concepts big broad overarching concepts

but how do we actually begin to quantify

some of this and know that we're taking

training in the right direction for our

athletes

okay and that's that's when it comes to

actually quantifying the training

process

now probably the

most important thing that you could

quantify as a sports scientist is going

to be the training load of your athlete

okay and there's different types of

training load measured in different ways

depending on the sport that you're

dealing with

two types of training load or at least

two classifications

are external and internal training load

external training load refers to what an

athlete has done it's an output of the

athlete

distance or speed of running

kilograms lifted

number of contacts

accelerations and decelerations

all of those things that you can measure

that are an output

internal load is more what's happening

physiologically what's happening on the

inside

these are things like

heart rate response to training whether

sub-maximal maximal resting heart rate

hrv

but also perceptual so things like

session rpe

also falls into the internal load

category

now related to training load but

specifically to external load we have

our different types of positioning

systems

global positioning systems which we're

all familiar with because we all have

them in our pockets in our phones and a

lot of other devices now

so gps

when in sport these are combined also

with imu or inertial measurement units

that

not only help to triangulate an

athlete's position on the field but can

also tell acceleration and deceleration

and whether contact has occurred

vertical oscillation

and other things like that right

so we um

oftentimes the gps system is only

functioning at 5 to 10 hertz so 5 to 10

data points per second which often isn't

quite precise enough to give us

the data that we want to know that's

happening in a split second so we have

these other

inertial measurement units

or accelerometers in multiple axes to

help us to determine things like player

load which we'll see on the next slide

there are also the local positioning

systems these are less often talked

about because you need

an expensive array of either cameras or

rfid systems right a radio frequency

identification system in your arena it

has to be built into the arena

and then it can tag the player so this

works better say for basketball whereas

gps works better for

all right

so if we're talking about volume load in

um as a subset of training load this can

this

has to do with things like high speed

running the volume of high speed running

the volume of sprinting it could be the

volume of total running

the number of accelerations or

decelerations the number of contacts

these are all components of that

and for different sports you might want

to focus on different aspects

maybe in football contacts are really

important maybe in soccer they're not

quite as important but maybe that you

still have them on the list of variables

that you examine

most companies that produce

wearable gps units also have their own

um sort of

you know in-house calculation of

training load for

um is this for polar do you guys

remember player load

this is for polar yeah

did someone say yes

catapult that's what it is catapult has

something called uh player load catapult

if you see this sorry that i got that

wrong

catapult has has player load and this is

how they calculate it it's a combination

of individual vectors from the inertial

measurement unit on the wearable gps

device

okay in case you ever need to calculate

it by hand that's how you do it right

there all three axes are included

and this corresponds also with things

like metabolic load because if we think

about it accelerating and decelerating

are are much more physically taxing than

even just cruising at a set speed even

if it's a high speed if you have to

decelerate which is going to decrease

your average speed during that time

segment it's still

more metabolically taxing to acc to

accelerate and decelerate than to carry

a constant speed through that and that's

why we have to take these types of

things into consideration as well

now in the weight room we calculate

volume load a different way we don't

need fancy gps we typically just need a

calculator or a spreadsheet

and sometimes some sort of displacement

measuring device

so different ways to calculate volume

load and i put an example here to show

you the different outcomes if you

calculate it different ways because

sometimes it can be misleading so we

have the typical load times reps and

that's times total reps not times just

the reps in a set so if you're doing

three by ten that day it would be 30

total reps times the load that you

lifted for each of those reps

a second way is to add in displacement

adding in displacement meaning that the

distance that the bar travels that

actually gives you work

okay because

do you guys remember the definition for

work

work equals something times something

force times distance yeah so it's i mean

it's a close correlation to work it's

not actually uh work in the sense um

of being the same number but it

correlates with work

you could even though um

simplify things to just the number of

hard sets completed you know did you do

20 hard sets for legs this week or did

you do 25

did you do 30 as you're overloading

so there's a number of ways to do it um

i calculated

for each of these three exercises back

squat bench press and shoulder shrug

just a hypothetical

uh volume load

calculated for each each of these

different ways so we can see with load

times reps back squat has the highest

followed by shoulder shrug followed by

bench press but when we include

displacement then it's back squat as the

clear winner because of all of that

displacement because this person squats

fully to depth like all of you should

then followed by bench press then by

shoulder shrugs because those movements

are very have very small displacement

so rpe is on a one to ten scale but it's

anchored to these subjective

descriptions or these qualitative

descriptions of the pain or discomfort

that you're feeling okay it so a jump

from a one to a two is not the same as a

jump from a nine to a ten it's not a

linear scale and it's anchored to these

qualitative descriptions

when we talk about session rpe or or s

little s then rpe if you ever see that

that that's the rpe for the entire

session okay but we could also talk

about set rpe or rep rpe you know if

you're in the weight room and somebody

does a heavy set of of cleans let's say

like three power cleans or something and

you can say hey what was the rpe on that

and they say rpe seven so you say okay

let's go up a little bit or they say oh

that's like a 9.5 and you say okay let's

go down a little bit

depending on your goal right so that's

for individual

exercises but

session rpe is typically what we use to

quantify

the training load

we also have training impulse which is a

little bit different this is the heart

rate response to exercise multiplied by

the duration of the session that's

that's the main way to calculate tremp

however

session rpe multiplied by the duration

of the session

may correspond a little bit better to

training load or at least as found by

haddad at all in 2017.

so that's what we typically use and also

because oftentimes we don't strap heart

rate monitors to everybody during the

session although if you do you could

very well calculate training impulse as

well

okay so load monitoring

so what are some actual techniques to

monitor load we've talked about what is

what is the training process from a big

picture we've talked about um

we've talked about

the

different ways to measure training load

but that but now aside from gps because

we're not going to play around with gps

today what are some different ways to

quantify training load by looking at

fatigue and assessing how fatigued is

the athlete so we're not going to be

at least

in today's class we're not going to be

looking at training load overall but

maybe

more the after effects the fatigue

response to training load

so here the first thing we could do is

to look at neuromuscular tasks

and these are three of the most often

reported in the literature and most

often used in a practical setting

the first is the counter movement

vertical jump which we'll be doing today

in lab the next is an isometric

mid-dipole and then finally sprint tests

okay the reason why these are

neuromuscular indices and why they're

good for assessing fatigue is because

none of them are very fatiguing

themselves you know sprinting 10 or 20

meters is not too tough an isopole lasts

only four seconds and a vertical jump

lasts

even less time maybe half a second and

so it doesn't incur a huge fatigue cost

to the athlete but all three of them are

sensitive to fatigue to the presence of

fatigue whether that's

delayed onset muscle soreness whether

that's reduced motor output from the

central nervous system whether it's

reduced peripheral output

whatever it is they're sensitive to

fatigue and even if the

even if the um the primary output let's

say like in a counter movement vertical

jump even if that is robust like jump

height so for instance well-trained

athletes can typically maintain their

jump height even when they're fatigued

but they do so in a different way they

utilize a different movement pattern to

achieve the same jump so they might have

a longer

a longer time to take off right or a

deeper counter movement because they

have to generate that impulse somehow

and they don't have quite the elastic

and the stretch shortening qualities

that they do when they're fresh so they

just take a longer time to generate it

and we can see that if we use force

plates or if we use some sort of slow

motion

camera same thing with sprinting same

thing with isometric methylpoles okay so

we can use them to assess the readiness

of the athlete and to tell if hey maybe

we're subjecting them with too much

training

or maybe they're really good to go and

they're fresh and maybe they can

actually handle more training depends on

the phase of the season that you're in

and your goals for that phase

all right so the key point here is that

for a performance variable to be useful

for ongoing monitoring

of fatigue status an alteration in a

particular measure such as an increase

or deep decrease following exposure to

an appropriate load

should be reflected

okay it should be reflected

in a change in either exercise intensity

or movement strategy in the subsequent

performance so what that means is

for a test to be useful for us in

detecting fatigue it has to change in

response to training in an amount

similar to actual performance

all right so if we think of let's

imagine a basketball athlete who needs

to jump and get rebounds and have jump

shots and all that kind of stuff they

need to jump

if we employ the vertical jump

they might still jump at the same height

in the presence of fatigue but they

accomplish it with a different strategy

that is sub-optimal when playing their

actual actual sport

similarly if we look at a non-jumping

athlete let's say a sprinter

they still rely heavily on their

reactive qualities and on the stretch

shortening cycle so a counter movement

vertical jump would still tell us the

things that we need to know in fact with

almost all athletes who

use the stretch shortening cycle and who

rely on lower body power

a vertical jump is going to be a great

fatigue assessment tool uh for them so

that's like probably 90 of all athletes

yeah and if they don't use the lower

body let's say

i don't know let's say a wheelchair

athlete we could come up with some sort

of a reactive upper body movement let's

say a plyometric push-up or a ball throw

and assess the velocity of it

does this make sense yeah

now we also have heart rate variables

that we can assess

the primary ones being just a heart rate

during rest at exercise or recovery

these are easy to administer

with a heart rate monitor or even the

old you know find your heart rate and

count

method

however interpretation just it depends

on the sport and the frequency of

measurement are you measuring this every

week

after key workouts are you measuring it

every day after both your hard and your

easy workouts are you measuring resting

heart rate in the morning

under a set of standardized conditions

and how reliable are your athletes at

actually tracking that

we also have heart rate variability

which is a little bit more

a little a little bit trickier because

it requires a wearable device okay you

can't find your heart rate variability

without specific wearable devices

and the other tricky thing is that

there is both inherent measurement error

we're still not

really really good at tracking hrv but

also the response to recovery and the

response to over training in your hrv

measures are similar so you have to be

able to parse out well are they

recovered or are they just over trained

all right

and finally when we're talking about

monitoring as far as

sensing fatigue and assessing that

fatigue and then making changes in the

program we have to talk about this topic

of invisible monitoring invisible

monitoring is essentially

it's kind of like folding or disguising

monitoring into testing and monitoring

into the athlete's actual training so

let's say that

the athletes are working on max velocity

for that day and they're doing flying

30s

and that's the training stimulus you

intend to provide well if you if you

time those training those flying 30s

which you should time them you can use

that to assess their neuromuscular

readiness if you're going to be working

on power in the weight room you can have

them jump but just jump up jump on the

force plates or maybe as part of the

warm-up they're doing that

or as a coach you're assessing bar speed

maybe with a gym aware system and

because you keep good notes and you keep

track of things

you or the sports scientist

you can know if they're in the correct

velocity zone for the load that's

prescribed for that day and so this

while slightly less structured at times

it could seem

the fact that it's invisible to the

athlete not like you're hiding it from

them but it just blends in with the rest

of their training a it's less obtrusive

to them

b it's less fatiguing because now you're

not doing an extra test to assess them

you're doing their normal training

and c they're not going to experience

the same type of testing anxiety they

potentially could experience when you're

giving them

you know a specific day of testing

does that make sense yeah so finding

ways to incorporate testing and

monitoring into the training process

naturally is

it's not like we need to do that all the

time but it is definitely a good goal

when you can do it do it

okay

any questions about that

yeah so sampling rates of different

devices

that's really important when looking at

the validity of the device

validity being is it measuring what you

think it's measuring so different

devices like a force platform the gold

standard or really the minimum threshold

for

for good measurement on a forced

platform is 1000 hertz which means it

takes 1000 readings per second

the more readings it takes the more

accurate any instantaneous measure of

the thing you're measuring

will be

does that make sense so if it was one

hertz that would be one time per second

but a lot can change in one second for

instance when you're sprinting your foot

spends uh 100 milliseconds

uh of time on the ground

if you're elite for me it's probably

200. um so you don't you don't even

spend a full second on the ground

so if your device is only measuring at 1

hertz or 5 hertz or 10 hertz it probably

won't capture everything that's

happening in that very very fast

movement so the more hurts the better

with gps units

and i don't know what they're at now but

at least in the chapter and in the

textbook and at the time of writing it

was most of them being 5 to 10 hertz so

they're not incredibly accurate i mean

if you've ever

won a gps watch and gone for a run and

you're doing like an out and back that

turnaround time when you look pivot and

turn 180 degrees and go the other way

yes you've decelerated and then you've

gone the other way but if you look at

your your pace on your gps it's like

and then it falls to zero and then it

goes back up and it messes with your

pace and so i always try to like loop

around because i'm kind of anal like

that and i don't want it to fall down i

want an accurate measure and it's just

because it's 5 hertz or 10 hertz that's

not instantaneous

or if you're like running around a track

or doing a lot of tight turns it's not

going to track you

super accurately because it's going like

here here here here here instead of a

nice

smooth line

the reason i don't have it for you

before class yuki is because i literally

work on it right before class and then i

teach you

so

a little peek into my teaching

here we process

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you