Training Basics; Training Balance, Fitness and Fatigue

Training balance is an important measure for managing performance and training. Training causes physiological changes in the body, adaptations which help you perform better. But building fitness and making these adaptations take time; in the short term an increase in training will make you fatigued. Over time, and with rest, fitness will increase. The continual management of training load, with slow and deliberate increases, will lead to higher fitness over time.

Fitness is a measurement of the amount of training load an athlete has maintained over the long term past, commonly 42 days. Fatigue is a measurement of the training load an athlete maintained over the short term past, commonly 7 days. Training balance is the comparison of fitness to fatigue, fitness minus fatigue yields training balance. Training balance is a useful number, because it gives you an idea of the most recent week of training as compared with the training you can complete (or have completed over the last six weeks).

Training balance can be:
– Positive, this means that fitness is higher than fatigue, and perhaps your training over the last few days is tapering off. Most people seek to race when in positive training balance. Positive training balance is also common when in seasonal recovery, or season transition.
-Zero, or close to it. Fitness and fatigue are similar, meaning your training has been maintained in the last week. Fitness is being maintained, and some people enjoy racing at neutral training balance. Over time, it takes less for the body to maintain the same level of training, and so zero may feel more like positive training balance.
-Negative, which means fatigue is higher than fitness. When you’re building fitness, you’ll find that most of the time you’re in negative training balance. In order to increase fitness, you’ll have to keep increasing the amount of training you do. Doing so in a linear, continual fashion will keep training balance negative, but not too negative. Too negative is a sign of over training.

Understanding training load can help you train and race better. Managing a schedule of training, with highly intense training grouped away from races with adequate rest between them to permit excellent performance (positive training balance). Understanding your training balance can make race performances more predictable, and can prevent over training.