The danger of ramping up too quickly
Training loads your body, encouraging it to adapt.
But it’s a balance. Load the body too little, and it will not adapt; load it too much or too quickly, and it will break down instead of adapting; load your body correctly, and sustained long-term improvements are possible.
Training loads are cumulative – as you continue to train, you continue to encourage adaptations.
Your training load is the sum of these cumulative stresses.
Monitoring your training load helps ensure your training is productive, and that you minimise injury risk.
Training Load metrics
Your Training Load Balance indicates whether your training is productive, with a negative (but not too negative) score indicating productive training. You may use a different name for this metric – Training Stress Balance (TSB) or Running Stress Balance (RSB).
Your Ramp Rate shows if you may be adding training load too quickly, replacing ‘the 10% rule’ with a metric based on your training volume and intensity.
Ramp Rate
Ramp Rate is the week-on-week difference in your Chronic Training Load (CTL) or your 42-day weighted average, depending on which set of metrics you’re using.
Why week-on-week? Because Long Runs will tend to impact your training load more than shorter interval sessions or easy/recovery runs.
Using a week-on-week calculation will ‘smooth out’ any fluctuations caused by your workout mix while still producing a useful metric.
What’s a good Ramp Rate target?
It depends.
Runners that have been running for more years and that are less injury-prone may be able to cope with a ramp rate of 2 – 3 or higher.
New runners or those that are more injury-prone might find a ramp rate of 0.5 – 2 safer and more sustainable.
For more about Ramp Rate, see:
🔹 ‘CTL Ramp Rate for Runners’ in the Facebook group Palladino Power Project.