Dynamic Loading - Part One
Smarter Loading, Fewer Mistakes, Less Illness
I always wanted to push, Johan was the one who urged caution
Nils van der Poel, World Champion
How many times has a serious athlete asked the question, “Should I rest or am I being lazy?”
The purpose of this section is to give you a simple framework that will answer this common question.
Unlike Nils, most athletes don’t have a world-class coach in their corner. The framework I will outline is not intended to replace a coach’s role.
Rather, the idea is to create a system:
To Gather Daily Information, with the minimum hassle to the athlete
To Make Better Decisions, on where to place load
So There Are Fewer Mistakes, and greater compound gains
Misconceptions About Load
One of the most persistent fallacies in sport is intensity is the best form of loading.
Put another way, the belief that painful sessions are better than all other workouts. We often use the word “quality” to refer to high intensity sessions.
Be aware of this bias, it’s going to follow you for your entire Endurance Journey.
Related, and just as important, the #1 goal is not speed. At least, not speed in the sense most athletes think of it.
The #1 goal is performance.
…and many factors contribute towards performance:
Strength & Force Production
Durability & Peripheral Endurance
Metabolic Fitness & Nutritional Uptake Rates
Athlete Constitution & Immune Function
Aerobic Stamina & Power
Mental Fortitude & Arousal Control
And Many Others
The purpose of Dynamic Loading is to better place stress to get the adaptations required for performance.
…and one of the things you’ll notice is your non-training stress has a direct impact on the capacity to adapt.
Stress - Adaptation - Performance
The components of the system:
Resting Heart Rate
Easy Warm-Up
Mood, Soreness, Feeling, Prior Training Performances
Training Heart Rate
Heart Rate Variability
Understanding Personal Bias
It sounds complex.
It isn’t.
It is three pieces of daily data, and paying attention to how we feel and perform.
Heart Rate
Smart coaches have been manipulating load for more than 60 years.
John Hellemans’ table from The Tired Athlete shows his system. A system used to train Olympians, World Champions and regular folks.
Here’s how I use John’s chart.
Resting Heart Rate - RHR
Check resting heart rate AM and PM
Sample With An Empty Bladder, Seated
5 bpm move up is an Easy Day Signal
>5 bpm move up is a Red Flag
Understand Your Personal Recovery Profile. As an elite, so long as my morning RHR was in my normal range, I was OK to train. This is NOT the case for most athletes and doesn’t apply to me in my 50s.
If my evening RHR is elevated by 5 bpm then the following day needs to be an easy day.
If my evening RHR is elevated by more than 5 bpm then the following day needs to be very easy. I should also consider if my prior training load was “worth it.” What I mean here is large disruptions, requiring multiple days to absorb, are seldom worth it.
Late Training Impacts Evening HR. Place demanding training so you have time to settle afterwards, ideally at least five hours. This will improve the quality of your sleep and speed your adaptations.
Placing a key session in the evening can elevate evening HR by 10-15 bpm. In those situations, laying on the ground with legs up the wall helps settle the body. Ten minutes is an appropriate duration to use.
Warm Up Heart Rate & Feeling
Whatever your sport, develop an easy warm-up that you can repeat most days. During this warm-up pay attention to:
Heart Rate Response
Breathing Response
Overall Feeling
15-20 minutes is long enough to get a read on your vibe.
Examples:
Runner with Steady Pace of 5 min per km: 10 minutes of powerwalking then a 10 minute gradual build to 6 min per km pace.
Cyclist with Steady Power of 200 watts: 6’ segments of 150/165/180 watts
Swimmer: Easy 400 Mixed, then 4x100 descend 1-4 on 10 seconds rest, 4x50 alt Build / Steady on 10 seconds rest
If your heart rate is suppressed by more than 5 bpm during this warm up, and your other metrics are flashing caution, then don’t load.
If your heart rate is suppressed during warm up, and your other metrics are normal, then consider extending your warm up. If the heart rate stays down, as your body warms up, then it’s best to shut it down and come back tomorrow. Log your minimum effective dose, declare victory and take an easy day.
First Decision Point
After your easy warm-up, you will know the following:
Yesterday’s Training Performance & Evening RHR
Sleep Quality & Morning RHR
Morning Mood & Soreness
How The Warm Up Felt
Hopefully, you also have a clear idea about the goals for the week.
It is time to make a decision.
There are three courses of action:
Shut It Down - treat the warm-up as an active recovery session
Easy Day - Green Zone1 training with low-to-moderate total load
Loading Day - target a specific adaptation
Most athletes will know where they're at before the warm up. Once you get into the routine of your Basic Week, you will have a clear idea how you’re doing.
Training Heart Rate Assessment - THR
John makes three useful distinctions in his table2:
Reduced
Suppressed
Elevated
Reduced THR - a reduction in training heart rate relative to velocity and feeling. Training pace/power is normal, feeling is normal… heart rate is lower. When the other metrics are aligned, and normal, this is a sign of increased fitness.
Suppressed THR - a reduction in training heart rate, for a given pace/power, and the feeling is “working harder than usual.” Green Zone only training with reduced loading. Monitor closely as this pattern makes it easy to slip into being overreached.
Elevated THR - an increase in training heart rate, relative to power/pace. Often the athlete will feel outstanding. If accompanied by elevated resting heart rate then assume illness is inbound. Shut the session down and take one, or more, rest days.
Assessing training heart rate provides the second decision point.
Dynamic Loading is about better placing stress. For the system to work optimally, athletes need to back off when indicated. Heart Rate Suppression or Elevation provide a second opportunity to dial down stress.
Know your biases and play the long game.
Heart Rate Variability - HRV
I take my heart rate samples with a strap that is able to track my heart rate variability.3
I’ve found HRV provides two reliable signals.
When suppressed below normal range, The athlete is tired. The smart choice is an easy day or rest day
When suppression is accompanied by a rise in body temperature, the athlete is close to illness. Best to shut things down immediately and monitor closely
The temperature move need not be a large one. I have an Oura Ring which tracks my body temperature. More on body temperature tracking on the Oura Website.
Avoiding Illness
Reducing time lost to illness and injury is a material, and hidden, benefit of this system. We don’t see the virus we avoid.
When things are going well, the athlete will wonder if they are doing enough. One of the benefits of Dynamic Loading, and monitoring performance, is confidence the athlete is doing enough.
Case Study with one year of morning resting heart rate data.
The first red candle is covid positive. Note the material HR suppression leading into the first candle. Training continued and no symptoms were present. This abnormal reduction in Morning RHR was a clear signal (missed at the time) that “something was up.”
The second red candle is a near miss. Morning RHR elevated a number of times before the athlete backed off.
My point, your metrics are an early warning signal. We don’t need to know why we are out of our normal range. We merely need to notice and act.
Avoiding a week of missed training, an injury, or long covid, is a huge win.
The Dynamic Loading system is not just about placing load. It’s about reducing days lost due to overloading at an inopportune time.
Because we don’t get to see mistakes not made, the athlete will always feel like they could be doing more.
Just because you’re feeling better, doesn’t mean you are better.
Mark Allen, GOAT Triathlete
Chronic Fatigue
Sometimes, your metrics will say go and your vibe says “blah.”
Long term fatigue builds slowly. So slowly, your metrics can be in their normal ranges while training performance goes stale.
Loss of motivation, particularly in highly motivated populations, is an important signal.
Most of us are smart enough to skew the data to tell ourselves any story we like.
While many of the metrics above sound objective, truth is, there is no one truth.
When your vibe tanks, consider a fatigue wash out. 7-14 days where the focus is health and training load is cut in half. 4
Inside a fatigue wash out, you might discover you feel worse!
Continue to back off5
Return yourself to a healthy baseline
Shed the fatigue you’ve build up
As you gain faith in the system, you will find preemptive rest is a powerful tool.
Summary
Making this as easy as possible for you to implement:
Capture AM & PM resting heart rates
Pay attention to heart rate in the warm-up
Pay attention to heart rate during training
Movements greater than 5 bpm, particularly when accompanied by a feeling of more difficult than normal, indicate an easy day is needed.
The absence of drama and the presence of a could-do-more feeling are signs that you are on the right track.
Most athletes sabotage themselves. Don’t interrupt the benefits of compounding.
Final Thoughts
An observation about our demographic.
Illness and injury are socially acceptable way to rest.
Dynamic Loading is about removing the incentive to use a setback as an excuse to rest.
Back To Table of Contents
Zone 1 or easier, light weights and gentle mobility work.
You’ll find a deeper dive on heart rate assessments in John’s chapter on The Tired Athlete and my article on Using Heart Rate.
Marco Altini’s Guide To Heart Rate Variability in a good introduction to HRV. I capture my morning metrics with the HRV4Training app. My evening metrics are captured with the HRV4Biofeedback app.
We will cover end of season recovery in a future section. A fatigue washout is an in-season choice to re-establish a positive trend in mood, metrics and performance.
Active recovery strategies don't make us tired. What you are feeling is the accumulated effect of chronic stress. See my series on Overtraining & Burnout.
Hey Gordo! Great article!
What time do you recommend to measure RHR? A long time ago I was following the Altini's protocol, reading the HRV right after waking up, is it a good protocol?
Cheers from Brazil!
Great article!
Your algorithm suggests measuring morning HR (and I assume HRV) as well as evening HR in a seated position. My personal experience (I know n=1) is that resting HR measurements don't change very much, even under extreme loads (ie something like Epic Camp where TSB reached -103). It was suggested to me, by Paul Laursen, that measuring morning HR and HRV in a standing position adds a little bit of systemic challenge via gravity. This may magnify any small changes in the data. I am just starting to gather some long term resting HR/HRV data from a standing position, so I can't comment on my n=1 experience yet.
I'm curious if you have read anything about, or tried, measuring resting HR/HRV in varied positions: lying vs seated vs standing?