I believe it only enhances the art, because the training decisions the ‘artist’ determines should be based on the data. Jim Vance: Some people claim that TSS monitoring ruins or takes away from the art of training. Once we have this goal Fitness (CTL) number, the next logical step is to plan the TSS progression that will ‘add up to’ this target CTL on a given date to maximize our chances of achieving our goal performance. By observing the athlete’s PMC over time we can get a sense of the load:performance relationship for that athlete to determine what Fitness (CTL) it is going to take to reach a certain goal.

TrainingPeaks: Why is TSS an important metric for planning your athletes’ seasons?Īlan Couzens: Since the Performance Management Chart (PMC) is based on the relationship between a given Fitness (CTL) and an athlete’s performance, it makes sense when targeting a certain performance level to equate that with a given training load. We asked expert coaches Alan Couzens and Jim Vance to discuss why you should start planning with TSS and how you can get the most from this powerful new feature.

TrainingPeaks recently released an update that makes it easier than ever to plan your season based on Training Stress Score (TSS) and target Fitness (CTL) for race day.

Training stress balance forecasting