Monitoring training part III - calculating & analyzing load, monotony, and strain

This is the last part (for now) of a series of articles on monitoring training. Here is part I and part II. I will mostly talk about the calculating and analyzing the training load, monotony, and strain coming from a RPE-based monitoring system. This stuff is not rocket science and most certainly is not new, but may have been lost in the "strength and conditioning noise" of late. Remember that there are more objective methods to monitor training, as discussed in the previous two posts, but these may not be financially or logistically possible in your situation.

Coming off the back of a very good three days at the UKSCA national conference, some of you may have seen Mike McGuigan of the New Zealand Institute of Sport (North Island) speak on assessing strength and power in sport. Now whilst his talk was primarily looking at performance measures, I am glad he gave us a short insight into how important it is to integrate a training and athlete monitoring program into the global set up.

Mike McGuigan studied under Carl Foster at the University of Wisconsin - Lacrosse, and so it came as no surprise to hear that he uses the RPE method. It was towards the end of the talk that he introduced this simple but effective idea, but I could see the room prick their ears and take note. Unfortunately, he was not able to cover it in much detail and so hopefully this blog post will hope to clear some things up for both attendees and non-attendees alike.

Briefly with this method you can look at:

Session intensity: the RPE score given by the athlete gives us a guide of this

Session volume/load: the RPE multiplied by the duration in minutes (from start of warm-up to end of cool-down)

Monotony of training over a training period (usually a week or month): Exactly how is sounds - the level of variation in training volume day to day (or week to week). Large amounts of variation = less monotony.

The strain of the above training period: monotony x load

To help illustrate this, below are excel screenshots from a track and field athlete that I work with. You can click on each for a closer look.

You can see the training details in the bottom half, and the lifestyle 
factors above that (more on that in a future blog) 
sensitive info has been blanked

Week of training - her training week actually runs W - Tu not M - Su

The numbers from this week - "total" just means it includes 

all forms of training (pole vaulting, track work, lifting)

I apologize that some of the above screenshots aren't the most presentable but I didn't feel it was bad enough to rewrite - that would defeat the purpose of this blog!

Recording the raw data is self explanatory. The formulas you need to enter into your spread sheets for the above table, and how they written in my spreadsheet are as follows:

Weekly Load: The sum of each day's volume (RPE x duration): Monday volume + Tuesday volume + Wed..... etc. etc.

=BE35+BF35+BG35+BH35+BI35+BJ35+BK35
High daily and weekly loads are needed for intermediate and advanced athletes to improve, but restitution periods need to be in place to allow for positive adaptations to occur.

Mean: The weekly load divided by the number of days (including days off): Weekly load / 7

=BK67/7

SD: Standard Deviation of the day volumes: STDEV(M. Vol. + Tu. Vol. + W. etc...)

=STDEV(BE35:BK35)
The higher the SD the more variation in volume load there is in training day to day.

Monotony: Mean divided by Standard Deviation: Mean/SD

=BK68/BK69
Some monotony is unavoidable and training should not be random, but higher values of monotony need to be avoided.

Strain: Weekly Load multiplied by Monotony: Load*Monotony

=BK67*BK70
Strain is the product of the amount of work and monotony - (relatively) high values of strain can lead to mental or physical burnout, injury, or illness.

Total training time & mean intensity are fairly self explanatory. Obviously the specific formulas in italics above wont work without adapting them to your spreadsheet, but I wanted to give it to you how it is.

The next task once you have crunched the data and displayed it graphically is to work out what intensity, volume, monotony, and strain you are looking to get / to avoid. What are the right figures? The short answer is "it depends". This is where it gets hazy as it is all relative. RPEs and training norms are very individual depending on the athlete or team you are working with. What works for one athlete or team in a specific situation may not work for another.

Taking data over time, and correlating it with good performances, bad performances, testing, injury, and illness will educate you to make better decisions that will then improve future training and ultimately, competitive performance.

Looking more globally - the process of analyzing monotony and strain can theoretically be applied to a bigger picture. Instead of looking at the day to day variation, you can look at week to week or month to month training numbers. This is something I have not investigated in great detail as yet, but I could see this being very useful to practitioners working with athletes on a quadrennial plan (an Olympic hopeful, for example). Below is an example of a months volume, monotony, and strain from one of my athletes, and longer term graph from Carl Foster:

Notice how reduced volume on Jan 25 did not result 

in reduced strain (due to increased monotony)

Foster et al. (JSCR 15(1), 109-115)

As noted in previous posts, Carl Foster has some research on using RPEs, and an article that I found of particular use practically is:

Foster, C. et al. A new approach to monitoring exercise training, JSCR 15(1), 109-115.

From a program design standpoint, looking at all forms of training in one "unit" of measure can really help to evaluate and modify your planning on a micro and mesocycle level. Personally, during my rehab I hit a plateau about a month after coming off crutches. I looked at my program and analyzed the figures (which I often don't get to do to my own training!) and immediately saw the problem. I had tried to spread all the elements of training over the week and avoid feeling fatigued. In actual fact I had done the opposite - I never worked really hard on any one day, but didn't have any recovery days of lighter training. The monotony was therefore high, and I was sluggish and unmotivated in my training. 

A rather dry post but an important one. I hope you have been able to take something from it as the RPE method can be applied to anybody training at any level. Give it a go in a "pilot study", so to speak with one or two of your athletes. I think it will help you realize the value of monitoring training, and in the future maybe you will look to invest in a more objective system such as heart rate monitoring or GPS.

Please post any questions here or send me an email - hg15_83@yahoo.co.uk.