doctorSpoc said:
can someone compare and contrast the pros and cons of each?
is it true that TRIMPS (the zone weighted variety) may be better at predicting training "stress" (i.e. am I going to crash and burn) while TSS might do a better job at predicting training "stumulus" (i.e. how much am i provoking addaption though exersise 'stimulus')?
1) TRIMP is based upon heart rate, and thus may be somewhat more variable due to extraneous influences.
2) TRIMP is based upon heart rate, and thus gives you less "credit" for supramaximal efforts (i.e., there is a ceiling effect, in that heart rate can't exceed maximal heart rate).
3) On the other hand, TRIMP places more weighting upon intensity, which may tend to counteract the impact of point #2 above.
Philosophically, you
could argue that since power is the independent variable and heart rate is a dependent variable, TSS is a measure of stress, while TRIMP is a measure of strain.
If you accept this premise, then what you have concluded above would, at least at first, seem logical. However, not all TSS points are created equal, which makes it difficult to say that TSS is a
direct measure of the training stimulus (i.e., you have to take the composition of said TSS into account). Moreover, which is a better measure of stress vs. strain hinges in part on the considerations listed in 1-3 above. I would therefore say that the best way to view them is as simply two different ways of estimating the training load, one based on heart rate and one based on power, and essentially leave it at that. (Certainly, when used as inputs for the impulse-response model of Bannister there isn't a lot of reason to favor one over the other...although in the few cases I've examined, which happen to include a lot of supramaximal intervals, TSS seems to work a bit better.)
