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What is “chronic training load” and why is it important to measure it? We asked an expert to find out

Online Niel November 5, 2024

Whatever your favorite sport, training regularly puts pressure on your body. This strain is a good thing – it’s how you get fitter, healthier and, if that’s what you’re aiming for, faster. However, you need to get the amount of effort you put on your body right – too little and you won’t get fitter, too much and you risk burning out and getting sick or injured.

Chronic training load is a metric that can help you gauge your efforts every day and over long periods of training. It was popularized by the team behind the training platform TrainingPeaksand is widely used throughout the best sports watches and training appsalthough sometimes under a different name such as fitness.

For more information on what chronic training load is, how it’s calculated, and how you can use it to improve, we spoke with Cody Stevenson, Head of Education at TrainingPeaks.

Cody Stephenson

Cody Stephenson is Head of Education at fitness platform TrainingPeaks. He is also a qualified coach and cyclist with 30 years of experience. Stephenson has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Fort Lewis College and a graduate degree in health and exercise science from Colorado State University.

What is chronic training load?

“Chronic training load, or CTL, is a way to measure training volume in a way that also takes into account the intensity of individual workouts and how long your workouts affect,” says Stephenson. “In TrainingPeaks, you’ll also see it called fitness. As nice as it sounds and as much math goes into it, it’s really just your base number for how much you’ve trained.”

Most fitness apps and wearables now include some measure of CTL, although the exact term used and how much of the period it covers can change. With the classic measure from TrainingPeaks, CTL covers a period of six weeks, but with Apple’s new workout upload feature there are 28 days, for example.

How is chronic training load calculated?

CTL is the cumulative effect of your training over the last six weeks, and to get that number you must first calculate the training effect of each workout you do. This is measured by another metric with a three-letter acronym; training stress score or TSS.

“That’s basically (training) time (training) intensity with a few little adjustment factors in there to make a nice number and not some crazy decimal,” says Stephenson. “Intensity or duration gives you that individual session number. A single workout in TrainingPeaks can be 60 TSS or 120 TSS or 300 TSS.

“Then to get from there to CTL, we weight it, because a workout from six weeks ago affects you less than a workout from eight days ago. So we do an exponentially weighted average of all those workouts, all those TSS scores over the last six weeks.”

The result of all these TSS scores is a CTL score that can range from 30 to 200 and is comparable between athletes of all levels because the TSS is adjusted for fitness and ability, with intensity measured based on factors such as strength. in cycling and pace and heart rate in running.

What is the difference between acute and chronic training load?

a woman doing dumbbell lifts by a pool

(Image credit: Getty Images)

If the CTL is the long-term training load, the acute training load or ATL is the short-term training load, a period spanning the last seven days. CTL, or fitness, is an indication of how much training you can do in the short term, ATL.

“You have to look at both together and look at the balance between the two, because if you have a very high acute training load, then you’re probably more fatigued than what your chronic training load says you can tolerate .” Stephenson says. “As the two go back and forth against each other, you create more tension on your body or allow it to recover.”

This balance between CTL and ATL is measured using another metric, training stress balance or TSB.

“TSB is the difference between chronic training load and acute training load,” says Stephenson. “If this number is zero, your acute training load and your chronic training load are the same, and that means you’re training as much as you’re used to. If it goes really negative, it means you’re training more than you used to, and if it’s really positive, it means you’re training less than you used to.

“Those are the three things we always look at as a coach; ‘should we train more, less or the same?’. It’s the same thing we do the least. You don’t make a lot out of it, but you still put in a lot of effort.”

To get fitter, you need to increase your ATL so you train harder than you did in the past, but pushing this too far can put you at risk of burnout or injury, so use CTL to judge how much. to enhance your short term training.

This growth is measured by another term – ramp rate (thankfully, no three-letter acronym this time). In general, people looking to increase their training can increase their CTL by 5-7 each week, although boot camp athletes can push to higher numbers.

Can you use chronic training load to avoid injury?

There’s no way to completely eliminate the risk of injury when you train, but you can use ATL and CTL to reduce that risk by making sure you’re not overtraining by training more than your fitness suggests.

“It’s that balance between ATL and CTL,” says Stephenson. “Makes sense, right? If you suddenly, over the course of a week, add more volume than you’ve been used to for the past six weeks, that’s a risk for injury. How much it correlates or can be quantified, I’m not sure, but it’s definitely a thing.”

Should you include non-training activity in your chronic training load?

A group of friends go for a walk together

(Image credit: Getty/Hinterhaus Productions)

Your workouts will be the most intense activity you do each day, but they won’t be the only activity you do, so we asked Stephenson if you need to factor in things like housework or a job active.

“If they’re shorter and low-intensity, like a dog walk, then you can probably ignore them,” says Stephenson. “But if you want to include them, you can, as long as you’re consistent. Every time you do, include it or always ignore them, then it will be accurate.

“But if you have a very active lifestyle, work in construction or something, then I’d say it’s something to think about more with your recovery and how you manage your training load. You have a really active lifestyle, so your CTL should actually be lower and make sure you’re getting plenty of sleep and recovery.”

How does it influence recovery in chronic training load?

CTL isn’t a metric that includes any kind of recovery tracking, and although some wearables are now better at using things like heart rate variability to track your body’s condition and advise you on how long it takes to recover from workouts, this is another area you need to consider carefully.

“Anyone who wants to start using training load metrics should remember that they will never be directly correlated with performance,” says Stephenson. “Because a CTL of 60 when you sleep well and don’t drink too much beer and eat well is different than a CTL of 60 when all those things are opposite and you live a stressful life.

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What is “chronic training load” and why is it important to measure it? We asked an expert to find out

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What is “chronic training load” and why is it important to measure it? We asked an expert to find out

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