Ever since reading the Training With Power book, lurking on the Google Wattage Forum, and using Cycling Peaks WKO+, I can see why so many power users become TSS addicts. TSS or training stress score is a way to quantify the effects of training as a fraction of your functional threshold power, terrain, time, and intensity of the workout. It is defined here.
In using WKO+ the past 3 years, you can create a graph called the Performance Manager that tracks chronic training load, acute training load, and training stress balance (freshness) over time. The meat and potatoes to causing changes in these values is training stress and the TSS value that you acrue in each workout.
The standard of 3 weeks training/1 week rest has been abandoned by many cyclists training with power in favor of using training stress alone. These riders look to build their preparation for events by looking at how much/what kind of TSS they should accumulate each week before their body stops performing optimally. For some power users, the addiction results in just seeing how far you can push the envelope with TSS in terms of daily, weekly and monthly amounts.
It allows you to think of workouts differently. Here is an example from my own riding. I have around 5-6 hours during the work week to ride. If I want to keep my fitness at a specific level I would have to do workouts that increase my CTL and lead to positive changes in FTP in tests. So I know that if I time trial at my FTP for an hour I should earn 100 tss points. Right now to make improvements, I have to be doing an average of 70 tss points per day for 7 days. So an easy day of 50 tss would mean that I would have to make up the other 20 points somewhere else during the week. I also know now howe many tss points I will earn on group rides, intervals, and other rides I commonly do (with some variation on intensity).
But, not all TSS is equal. I can ride for 1 hour at my FTP and get 100 points, or ride for 2 hours at 50% of that and get 100 points. However, the physiological effect is very different. In the forst workout I am stressing my threshold power capabilities while in the other I am primarily using the aerobic system. Depending on my goals, one may be better than the other.
So, two riders with CTL's of 70 tss/d could physiologically have a very differerent FTP depending on their workouts.
It is easy to become addicted in a loose sense to TSS. Watching how the CTL and TSB lines change with even 1 day off per week (given my schedule) can be enough to not take easy days or time off. It can become onsessive to make the CTL line ramp up and the TSB line decrease to negative. Eventually something has to give and one has to be careful to not overtrain or get sick because of it.
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I think this is why I sold my PowerTap this year, because I was ALWAYS confused when using it last year, there's so much to interpreting power data correctly, especially when you only have a power meter set up on one of several bikes that you ride (road, cross, mtb). Once I get my base fitness where I want and I start looking for smaller, more accurate performance changes I may go back and give it another try. But in the past it has only driven me nutz.
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