WKO+ Manual entry strategies?



jetnjeff

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Mar 17, 2006
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I was wondering what different peoples strategy for Manual entries is.

Because TSS is calculated from NP, making a manual entry back calulates NP for the entry and has to use this number for AP as well.

For times when I don't have my PM I wanted to use HR and Polars exertion rates. So I did several rides with both to get a comparison. With My Polar settings, which are arbitrary, the Polar Exertion was about 4 times the TSS and the KJs were about 85% of the Polar calcualted Calories.

So, while the TSS seemed in the ball park from a RPE stand point, the KJs and APs were inflated. Some of the APs made the top 10 on the PMC chart, which is mileading.

One other thing that I noticed, when you overide the TSS it does not change the TSS on the under lieing gragh or in any charts. Same with any non- bike exercises.

It might work if we assign an average watts when making the manual entry.
 
jetnjeff said:
I was wondering what different peoples strategy for Manual entries is.
The two things I focus on for manual entries is Duration and IF. TSS is calculated from those parameters as is NP based on the current FTP based on the relationship:

TSS = IF^2*hours*100

RPE seems to map pretty well to IF and the rest falls out of that.

Like you, I've observed the downside of manual entries in terms of the long term power distribution histograms. Manual entries seem to be treated like an entire block of training time carried out at the average power. So I get great big histogram bins at those typical average powers whereas a real power meter reading would add to all the various bins that made up that average.

For instance I've been doing a few workouts a week at a gym at lunch. I get on the erg and enter appropriate power levels for warmup, interval sets and cooldown. I tend to work in 5 minute blocks so it's easy to calculate TSS with an Excel spreadsheet. When I enter the manual workouts the TSS, NP, IF and Duration are fine and for purposes of TSB/CTL the data is useful. But my 28 day power histogram shows huge spikes at the average power (probably NP actually) for those workouts that included 5 or 10 minutes of L1/L2 warmup, maybe 2x20 L3+/L4 and 5 to 10 minutes of L2/L1 cooldown. The 28 day histogram is very misleading because of those workouts.

Anyway, the manual entry isn't perfect but it's still worthwhile to add those erg workouts into the overall TSB/CTL calculations. And the RPE estimates I use for mountain biking or other cross training seems useful as well, but it does create some misleading data.

-Dave
 
daveryanwyoming said:
The two things I focus on for manual entries is Duration and IF.

-Dave
I manipulate the IF for a given Duration to get what seems to be the appropriate TSS.

I had't thought of the Histograms. Yes that is also misleading.

I have been charting some long CPs 60 and 120 minute, due to the length of some of my races and rides. And some of these back calculated APs make the top 10 as collected on the PMC chart. When I am sure, like you said if the watts were in different buckets the avg power would be lower.

I am considering lowering the TSS,(Via IF), to at least below top 10 levels.

Will loose some TSS on the TSB, but the KJ will drop a bit as well as it KJ is in direct relationship to AP but not NP.

Not that the polar is totally accurate in the counting calories, but it was pretty consitently between 75 and 95%. But manual entries supper crank up the KJs
 
daveryanwyoming said:
When I enter the manual workouts the TSS, NP, IF and Duration are fine and for purposes of TSB/CTL the data is useful. But my 28 day power histogram shows huge spikes at the average power (probably NP actually) for those workouts that included 5 or 10 minutes of L1/L2 warmup, maybe 2x20 L3+/L4 and 5 to 10 minutes of L2/L1 cooldown. The 28 day histogram is very misleading because of those workouts.
My way of dealing with this is to set the sport to "other" in the manual entry, and then set my power histogram chart to only display "cycling" (you do this through Options->Customize this chart->sport tab). If you do this then the histogram only shows power numbers from actual powermeter files. I would do the same thing for mean maximal charts too because for the longer durations it's likely that one of your manual entries will look like an average power that's higher than anything you've actually done (since manual entries set AP=NP).
 
rr9876 said:
My way of dealing with this is to set the sport to "other" in the manual entry, and then set my power histogram chart to only display "cycling" ....
Great point. I'd been setting my erg workouts to cycling but your idea makes a lot of sense. Thanks.
 
rr9876 said:
My way of dealing with this is to set the sport to "other" in the manual entry, ).
Thanks and ditto on the great idea to handle the histograms.

I do want the TSS recorded in the PMC chart though. In order to chart responses to work load.

I tried to create a manual with TSS only (no Avg watts or IF)(If you have two of the 3 WKO+ calculates the other), But the TSS would drop out and not show in the calendar.

When I tried to override the TSS value, it shows in the calendar with an asterics "*", but is not added into the PMC chart.
 
jetnjeff said:
Thanks and ditto on the great idea to handle the histograms.

I do want the TSS recorded in the PMC chart though. In order to chart responses to work load.

I tried to create a manual with TSS only (no Avg watts or IF)(If you have two of the 3 WKO+ calculates the other), But the TSS would drop out and not show in the calendar.

When I tried to override the TSS value, it shows in the calendar with an asterics "*", but is not added into the PMC chart.
I think that you need to include time and power in the manual entries in order to get TSS out, so you can't just put in TSS and leave it at that. If you want to use the "sport trick" and still have the PMC show TSS from your manual entries, you can. Just make sure that the PMC is allowed to display "other" (or whatever sport you set the manual workout to.)

If you want the PMC chart to also include your best 10 average powers or something similar, and you are afraid that the manual entries will scew your 10 best data, you can still use the same trick, but you have to do something like set the time for the manual entry to something ridiculously long and the power to something low that still spits out your estiamted TSS. If you do this then you need to make sure that any charts that show time or IF are set to not display the sport you set your manual entry to. If you want TSS, power, and time or IF all on the same chart, well in that case I'm all out of bright ideas.
 
rr9876 said:
I think that you need to include time and power in the manual entries in order to get TSS out, so you can't just put in TSS and leave it at that. .
Yes time has to be there I did not even think to remove it.

.[/QUOTE]If you want the PMC chart to also include your best 10 average powers or something similar, and you are afraid that the manual entries will scew your 10 best data, you can still use the same trick, but you have to do something like set the time for the manual entry to something ridiculously long and the power to something low that still spits out your estiamted TSS. If you do this then you need to make sure that any charts that show time or IF are set to not display the sport you set your manual entry to. If you want TSS, power, and time or IF all on the same chart, well in that case I'm all out of bright ideas.[/QUOTE]
This will work in my PMC, 4 peak powers, TSB,CTL and ATL.

One of my earlier charts that has IF, TSS, Duration and KJ will be an issue.

May split them.

As to the TSS with the Asterisk not adding in, I suppose a work around is to assign every work out a IF and AP so that you get the TSS. Manipulating them along with time so the program will calculate and include them in the charts.

Would be nice if you could do TSS only files though. Or for WKO+ allow and include an overide for TSS, AP, Duration and IF. Because weight training and rowing for example may need to be treated differently than cycling.