Getting to grips with power based training

It being the start of a new training season and my first with a Powertap, I thought it worth doing a bit of background reading.

Some excellent resources can be found here:
WKO 411

including a pretty difinitive introduction to the subject by Andrew Coggan
Coggan Power Intro

and Joe Friel's guide including power based drills is here
Friel Power Guide

As part of this I discovered a feature of WKO that I had not spotted before, the Performance manager. An explanation for this can be found here

Performance Manager

The terms used are a little complicated and, I think, slightly misleading.

Basically:
CTL = Chronic Training Load = Long Term Load: Default = 42 days
ATL = Acute Training Load = Recent Training Load: Default = 14 days

TSB = Training Stress Balance and links CTL+ATL. A positive number should mean being fresh and ready for action, a negative should mean being less so.

There are some examples included in the last link that explain how these interrelate.



The one above gives most easiest image to comprehend.

The line to focus on is the blue "CTL" line. You can see how it gradually builds through the season leading up to a peak that coincides with the riders main season target.

It will increase through the pink "ATL" lines gradually increasing in amplitude (reflecting the fact that training load is gradually increasing week by week).

The yellow TSB line is negative throughout this time then just before the target event shifts to go positive.

Overall this all seems to make a lot of sense and I will start using it this year to see how it helps addess one key question of how to best plan training to balance increasing load to increase performance without risking overtraining.