Power Meter Advice

imposter2.0

Dave_P1 wrote:

Imposter wrote:

Dave_P1 wrote:

Surely using both is best, HR & Power.
There's days when you could be trying really hard but your HR doesn't increase which could be a sign that your rather tired

in which case, your power would be down, no ?

No, not if your aiming at a set wattage and you know that your HR should be within a particular range for that effort.

But if you hit the power numbers, what does it matter? You wouldn't give a stuff about HR in a bunch sprint, would you?

Tom Dean

BigFatBloke wrote:

For the record. I expect to banned. So if you I stop posting it is because I have been banned, not because I have left.

Tin foil (aero) hats on, everyone!

ugo.santalucia

Any reason to get overheated about a power meter? I suggest you all calm down... it's just a stupid power meter you are talking about

Dave_P1

Imposter wrote:

Dave_P1 wrote:

Imposter wrote:

Dave_P1 wrote:

Surely using both is best, HR & Power.
There's days when you could be trying really hard but your HR doesn't increase which could be a sign that your rather tired

in which case, your power would be down, no ?

No, not if your aiming at a set wattage and you know that your HR should be within a particular range for that effort.

But if you hit the power numbers, what does it matter? You wouldn't give a stuff about HR in a bunch sprint, would you?

It does show if your tired though does it not?
Racing is racing, I couldn't care less about power or HR when it comes to that.

ric/rstsport

how does it show you're tired?

Dave_P1

Ric/RSTSport wrote:

how does it show you're tired?

I was under the impression that a lower than normal resting HR can show your tired and thus could affect any training your doing, in the same way as it can be higher if your suffering with a cold for example. Please correct me if I'm wrong?

Bear in mind that I started this thread to learn, so if I'm worng regarding the above then don't shoot me down in flames.

ric/rstsport

i'm not shooting anyone down in flames, although i possibly get a bit frustrated with Trev or whatever he's called, but that's mainly because he enjoys winding people up on a variety of forums.

Resting HR can go up or down if you're tired (exhausted with fatigue as opposed to needing to go to bed). Popular theory would have it that it goes up when you're fatigued and that it decreases with increased fitness (as your heart is pumping out more blood than before, as well as other things).

But it goes up or down depending on how you feel (good or bad), and while one time it may go down, another time it may go up, depending on the type of fatigue that is being caused.

Likewise resting HR tends to increase when you're ill.

On the other hand while it's possible to go to reasonable lengths to record such data, you must have an idea that you're already knackered/completely shattered/slightly tired/ill without recording such data? If you can't recognise that you're exhausted or ill or whatever, then it's important skill you should learn (learning to read your body). For e.g. i woke up the other morning with a pain in my throat and feeling like crap and knew i was ill -- i didn't need to measure my HR and find out it's 30 b/min up on normal. Likewise, today i woke up and felt (but not 100%) so i went for a 45-min spin at a very easy pace.

BigFatBloke

Ric/RSTSport wrote:

i'm not shooting anyone down in flames, although i possibly get a bit frustrated with Trev or whatever he's called, but that's mainly because he enjoys winding people up on a variety of forums.

Resting HR can go up or down if you're tired (exhausted with fatigue as opposed to needing to go to bed). Popular theory would have it that it goes up when you're fatigued and that it decreases with increased fitness (as your heart is pumping out more blood than before, as well as other things).

But it goes up or down depending on how you feel (good or bad), and while one time it may go down, another time it may go up, depending on the type of fatigue that is being caused.

Likewise resting HR tends to increase when you're ill.

On the other hand while it's possible to go to reasonable lengths to record such data, you must have an idea that you're already knackered/completely shattered/slightly tired/ill without recording such data? If you can't recognise that you're exhausted or ill or whatever, then it's important skill you should learn (learning to read your body). For e.g. i woke up the other morning with a pain in my throat and feeling like crap and knew i was ill -- i didn't need to measure my HR and find out it's 30 b/min up on normal. Likewise, today i woke up and felt (but not 100%) so i went for a 45-min spin at a very easy pace.

The advice Ric gives here is 100% correct. Learn to read your body. There really is no need to worry about heart rate.
Although over the last few decades people have used heart rate to train effectively I doubt they would have improved better than if they had gone entirely by feel.

Now there are power meters you really should not bother with heart rate.

Dave_P1

Yeah, I already listen to the body, it soon tells me when it doesn't want to work, lol

cookiemonster

BigFatBloke wrote:

I prefer facts. Average power is fact, it allows for high power and coasting. Heart rate is fact

Attempting to contrast average power and (averaged) heart rate as "fact" against NP as an "estimate" is misleading.

They are all equally factual or "true", in the mathematical sense that we can say that average power and average heat rate (assuming your maths is correct) truly represents the mean values of the duration concerned, and NP truly represents the normalised power (again, referring to the equation).

Additionally NP is, to quote from TP, "an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological "cost" if your power output had been perfectly constant". Neither average power or average heart rate have, as far as I know, a similar additional quality except in the broadest sense that average power has some relation to workload and average heart rate may have some relation to stress.

Unless you are able to show that average power and average heart rate have stronger relationships to workload and stress respectively than NP is a valid estimate, then the statement that "average power is fact" or "average heart rate is fact" is no more or less true than "normalised power is fact". And when used in the post above, in order to devalue normalised power, is disingenuous.


jon

Edited for clarity

Alex_Simmons/RST

cookiemonster wrote:

BigFatBloke wrote:

I prefer facts. Average power is fact, it allows for high power and coasting. Heart rate is fact

Attempting to contrast average power and (averaged) heart rate as "fact" against NP as an "estimate" is misleading.

They are all equally factual or "true", in the mathematical sense that we can say that average power and average heat rate (assuming your maths is correct) truly represents the mean values of the duration concerned, and NP truly represents the normalised power (again, referring to the equation).

Additionally NP is, to quote from TP, "an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological "cost" if your power output had been perfectly constant". Neither average power or average heart rate have, as far as I know, a similar additional quality except in the broadest sense that average power has some relation to workload and average heart rate may have some relation to stress.

Unless you are able to show that average power and average heart rate have stronger relationships to workload and stress respectively than NP is a valid estimate, then the statement that "average power is fact" or "average heart rate is fact" is no more or less true than "normalised power is fact". And when used in the post above, in order to devalue normalised power, is disingenuous.


jon

Edited for clarity

+1

A mathematical mean as used to calculate Average Power or Average HR is just a mathematical construct, as is the algorithm used to calculate Normalized Power, or indeed many other types of data averaging (e.g. weighted averages). Give me a power file and from that the AP and NP can be derived and both are equally factual.

What we do know is that Average Power is typically a poor indicator of effort when ride (or part of a ride) becomes more variable in nature and the reasons for that have sound and well founded basis in physiology, and is exactly why NP is better for that purpose, since the NP algorithm factors in some very important physiological considerations that AP does not.

BigFatBloke

Alex, Jon, everything you say would be correct if the NP algorithm factored in all the important physiological factors correctly. It does not which is why it is an estimate.

cookiemonster

By that thinking even if NP did factor in all the important physiological factors correctly, it would still be an estimate

In the same manner, you appear to want to use Average Heart Rate (already an estimate, as with Garmin its a four second rolling average I believe, displayed as "beats per minute") as an estimate for some greater physiological factor which you leave undefined. Any wider physiological factor, beyond how fast is my heart beating, will require more inputs to be expressed correctly. Otherwise I would be able to achieve the same physiological result as riding my bike through taking acid, having a shock or seeing the person/object of my desires - all of which are going to raise my heart rate.

Which is why contrasting average power and average heart rate as "fact" and normalised power as a lessor quality "estimate" is nonsense

jon

BigFatBloke

In practice, heart rate is reliable and the problems with heart rate are exaggerated.

http://www.toppfysik.nu/wp-content/uplo ... itions.pdf

I advocate using heart rate and power in conjunction. Using both to quantify training stress is far more reliable and safer than using power alone.

Remember Dr Eric Bannister's TRIMPS using heart rate as the input has been scientifically verified. TSS has not been scientifically verified.

PM sent

cookiemonster

Heart rate measurements are as reliable as power measurements using the standard off the shelf cycling kit.

But that wasnt what you said.

You said that Average Power and Heart Rate are "fact", while Normalised Power is an "estimate", with the intention of giving a negative slant on Normalised Power. Which is clearly nonsense.

jon

BigFatBloke

cookiemonster wrote:

Heart rate measurements are as reliable as power measurements using the standard off the shelf cycling kit.

But that wasnt what you said.

You said that Average Power and Heart Rate are "fact", while Normalised Power is an "estimate", with the intention of giving a negative slant on Normalised Power. Which is clearly nonsense.

jon

Even TrainingPeaks, and Hunter Allen and Dr Coggan's book refers to Normalised Power as an estimation.

To quote Andrew R. Coggan, Ph.D., my bold.

To account for this variability, TrainingPeaks uses a special algorithm to calculate an adjusted or normalized power for each ride or segment of a ride (longer than 30 seconds) that you analyze. This algorithm is somewhat complicated, but importantly it incorporates two key pieces of information: 1) the physiological responses to rapid changes in exercise intensity are not instantaneous, but follow a predictable time course, and 2) many critical physiological responses (e.g., glycogen utilization, lactate production, stress hormone levels) are curvilinearly, rather than linearly, related to exercise intensity, By taking these factors into account, normalized power provides a better measure of the true physiological demands of a given training session - in essence, it is an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological "cost" if your power output had been perfectly constant (e.g., as on a stationary cycle ergometer), rather than variable. Keeping track of normalized power is therefore a more accurate way of quantifying the actual intensity of training sessions, or even races. For example, it is common for average power to be lower during criteriums than during equally-difficult road races, simply because of the time spent soft-pedaling or coasting through sharp turns during a criterium. Assuming that they are about the same duration, however, the normalized power for both types of events will generally be very similar, reflecting their equivalent intensity. In fact, normalized power during a hard ~1 hour long criterium or road race will often be similar to what a rider can average when pedaling continuously during flat 40k time trial - the normalized power from mass start races can therefore often be used to provide an initial estimate of a rider's threshold power (see below).End Quote

But power output is hardly ever perfectly constant as on a cycle ergometer, so why translate something that happened for real into something that might have happened if you had done something else?

Tom Dean

BigFatBloke wrote:

But power output is hardly ever perfectly constant as on a cycle ergometer, so why translate something that happened for real into something that might have happened if you had done something else?

To give a consistent guide to training load.
Please stop it.

BigFatBloke

Tom Dean wrote:

BigFatBloke wrote:

But power output is hardly ever perfectly constant as on a cycle ergometer, so why translate something that happened for real into something that might have happened if you had done something else?

To give a consistent guide to training load.
Please stop it.

No probs, last post on this forum.

napoleond

BigFatBloke wrote:

Tom Dean wrote:

BigFatBloke wrote:

But power output is hardly ever perfectly constant as on a cycle ergometer, so why translate something that happened for real into something that might have happened if you had done something else?

To give a consistent guide to training load.
Please stop it.

No probs, last post on this forum.

Dave_P1

I like the idea of the Garmin pedals as there easy to swap between bikes compared to a crank based system. I could just do with seeing some long term test reports first.

xscreamsuk

Dave_P1 wrote:

I like the idea of the Garmin pedals as there easy to swap between bikes compared to a crank based system. I could just do with seeing some long term test reports first.

Easier to swap my Quarq than it is to swap 2 pedals. One bolt.

uphillstruggle

Easier to swap my Quarq than it is to swap 2 pedals. One bolt.[/quote]

Being a mechanical retard what does swapping the Quarq between bikes actually involve?

I like the proven results of the Quarq but was looking at the pedal system simply because swapping between bikes would be very beneficial.

napoleond

uphillstruggle wrote:

Easier to swap my Quarq than it is to swap 2 pedals. One bolt.

Being a mechanical retard what does swapping the Quarq between bikes actually involve?

I like the proven results of the Quarq but was looking at the pedal system simply because swapping between bikes would be very beneficial.[/quote]

Cranks are really quick and easy to change. My Rotor 3D+ is about the hardest I've used and it takes less than 5 mins to take off and reinstall.

xscreamsuk

uphillstruggle wrote:

Easier to swap my Quarq than it is to swap 2 pedals. One bolt.

Being a mechanical retard what does swapping the Quarq between bikes actually involve?

I like the proven results of the Quarq but was looking at the pedal system simply because swapping between bikes would be very beneficial.[/quote]

undoing one bolt in almost exactly the same way you would on a pedal. Take off cranks, place on other bike and do bolt up again. Torque wrench advised. I swap between bikes ( TT and road) in under 2 minutes, Both have same BB type. I'd never taken a crank off until I got the PM, but it's a doddle.

Alex_Simmons/RST

uphillstruggle wrote:

Being a mechanical retard what does swapping the Quarq between bikes actually involve?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibycOXD-Mw0

Alex_Simmons/RST

BigFatBloke wrote:

Remember Dr Eric Bannister's TRIMPS using heart rate as the input has been scientifically verified. TSS has not been scientifically verified.

PM sent

The impulse response model was what was inspected, not the inputs to the model.

Once could readily use time weighted RPE values as an input as well and see similar patterns.