WKO5: Cycling and triathlon analytics with Tim Cusick | EP#199

WKO5: Cycling and triathlon analytics with Tim Cusick | EP#199

In this Episode you'll learn about:

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Shownotes

Why the upgrade to WKO5

• The goal with WKO4 was to bring a truly analytic engine to endurance sports. 
• People have better access to data and information than ever before, we wanted to give people a tool to use this data in a custom and unique way.
• We've found that because the development of the custom analytics had a learning curve, it was people who saw themselves as a high end user that were leveraging the advantage of the software. 
• With 5, we wanted to take the learning gathered from using WKO4, and make it a more user friendly environment so more people could access it. 
• With analytics in sport, it's the everyday user that would benefit the most. 
  
  Someone who is already deeply educated and does a lot of analytics already may get a couple percentage points, but the everyday user may stand to gain much more. 
• We wanted to make sure it was easy to navigate, and had the great insights right at the surface. 
• We're still adding more and more data in the endurance sports world - I recently worked with someone adding glucose insulin, which we can do in this software.  
• We have packed in some great new features - some are really obvious from the start, but others are more important downstream. 

New features in WKO5

WKO5 changing coaching techniques

Training Impact Score

24:21 -

• The Training Impact Score (TIS) is a great example of using insights, where we're bringing data to the surface. 
• We make energy in two ways: aerobically and anaerobically. 
  
  WKO4 and 5 have a robust power duration model, and it's a human performance model. 
  
  When you have this type of model as a basis, and the individual athlete goes out a does a workout, the power duration curve is two curves: aerobically and anaerobically. 
• Since we understand how to make energy, when you go out and workout we can understand which of those two systems you were impacting for that workout. 
• You can begin to measure how the workouts that you do strain those systems.
• Stress is external, and a training stress score is just how much stress you apply to a system.
  
  When you put stress on a system it goes under strain. This is the internal response - what happens to your body under that load.
  
  It is strain that leads to adaptation. 
• You can apply the same stress to five different athletes but it doesn't mean they go through the same strain. 
  
  They may have different muscular metabolic system and make energy differently. 
  
  They therefore won't have the same TIS because it's specifically measuring strain. 
• We've taken that system and we've simplified the scoring and it's now 1-10. 
• 1-3 means you haven't done enough work to have any impact. 
  
  4-7 means some varying form of maintenance. 
  
  8-10 you're putting load to put quality stress on that individual system. 
• It gives feedback on the system that was impacted, and insights into future effective workouts. 
  
  For example if you do a 3 x 20 min at sweet spot workout and you do it 10 watts too hard, you might be generating a lot more anaerobic energy than you thought. 
  
  You go out the next day and do it 10 watts slower, and you can see aerobically it was really impactful. 
  
  It helps quantify the output.

Dynamic Functional Reserve Capacity 

29:41 - 

• This isn't the same as maximum power available but it's similar to this metric. 
• This is your anaerobic work capacity generally - Functional Reserve Capacity (FRC) is different because it takes into account the small amount of aerobic contribution when you're over threshold.
• The simplest way to think of FRC and Dynamic FRC is the measurement of how much continuous power you can do over threshold.
  
  It's measured typically in kilojoules and joules. 
  
  To simplify: it's your anaerobic battery.
• Go really far over threshold, you're draining the battery fast, go a little over and you're draining at a controllable rate. 
• Dynamic FRC is an optional piece of data - you can see over the course of a workout, or a series of workouts, how quickly you're draining that anaerobic battery. 
  
  You can also see the rate at which it restores. 
• Dynamic FRC is starting out with the full battery (e.g. 20 kilojoules).
  
  You go out and do a 5 minute near maximal effort, which might drain your battery down to 5. 
  
  You then rest for 3 minutes in between which might restore it back to 12. 
  
  Then the next effort might drain it down to 1 because you didn't filly restore the battery. 
• If you're using Dynamic FRC as an observation of intervals or short intense work, or even longer harder races, you can see how you were burning down and the effect over time. 
• Dynamic FRC is based on the idea that we have an anaerobic battery and it's more limited than our aerobic system. 
  
  We can get the burn rate down pretty easy, but it's hard to quantify the recovery rate. 
  
  Ours is now good observational data but I don't think it ever would be or could be perfect. 
• If you went out today and did 4 x 5 minutes near max effort with 4 minutes rest in between. 
  
  We can score the burn rate pretty well. 
  
  If you do that well rested having eaten well, the burn rate is the same but your recovery rate is likely good because you entered it well rested. 
  
  For the next four days you don't ride your bike, you don't sleep or eat well. 
  
  Repeat the same workout, the math would say your recovery should be the same but it would actually be pretty rare for you to do as well in that workout because your personal training environment hasn't been good. 
• We think we have enough data to begin to get these things down, but the reality is to understand recovery rate you need to know exactly what the athlete is doing at all times outside that workout. 
• Subjective data begins to connect these dots, and increase the precision of metrics like this. 
• By understanding and using these metrics you're putting together data to make an analytic, and then using this to prescribe and predict a performance. 
• If an athlete goes out and says they found it really hard but the session output doesn't agree, I go back and check other factors. 
  
  Was the life stress too high maybe.
  
  However, if I don't see those, maybe they're just not good at going hard or they're not mentally ready for that. 
  
  You then might need to do some work on that side - using the data for example can be really helpful. 

Multiple thresholds 

39:04 - 

• In the last 6 months development of WKO4 running power began being measured, so we knew we wanted to have this in WKO5. 
  
  We needed to spend time vetting and testing, and making sure it was applicable to the analytics. 
• Running, cycling, swimming and rowing are the core ones we see activity in. 
  
  FTP or threshold is not the same across these disciplines. 
  
  Even what is recorded to generate the power is not the same, so we had to re-invent power analytics for each sport. 
• In cycling we had honed it already and it's a very controlled sport, but we had to deal with all the variables in the other sports and we feel this now works well. 
• We have the universal - a sport type selection with different sport types and you can individual pick which ones you want to see. 
• Or you can hard code it as you build your own custom analytics if you choose. 
  
  We've given really good sets of these so you shouldn't feel you need to, but if you choose to you can do it there. 
  
  With sports specific you can use the sport picker. 
• When you do different disciplines across different days you're not using the same threshold and you're not generating the same threshold score. 
  
  You're doing it off the individualised threshold of each and they'll simply interact and work. 
  
  Kevin Williams - the driver of WKO - calls it 'automagic'. One setup will manage all the data individualised to each sport. 
• The power duration model that we use, designed by Andy Cogin, is highly accurate but it's a highly accurate estimate and needs a certain amount of data. 
  
  It needs one hard short effort, one hard medium effort and one hard longer effort. 
• Most runners involved in endurance sports don't do much sprinting, but if you do add the sprint the model works well, but it's not perfect. 
  
  It doesn't know what you can do, it takes what you've done and estimates what you can do. 
• Some of the best coaches in running mix the power duration curve and the CP curve, which might be a better use for runners. 
  
  You can run that in WKO! 
• I personally would run both the power duration and the CP model and use both as the basis for my analytics. 
  
  The CP model is probably a more appropriate tool than the power duration if the athlete doesn't want to do a 100m sprint. 
• If you have an athlete running who will give you a 100m sprint every once in a while - say 12 seconds - it will give you good numbers. 
• You can now, in WKO5, make recommendations for what durations to test to get an even more accurate power duration model for estimating. 
  
  This is in the insight section, and it even gives you a power to exceed rather than just a time. 
• The model does a good job of estimating what you can do it just can't predict. 

Smart segments

50:35 - 

• Kevin Williams and I were doing a bike ride and we were doing climbs, we had a friendly competition and we thought after it would be cool to have all the analytics of that.
  
  We came up with the idea of doing smart segments!
• A smart segment is where you do a workout and you have your local climb - for example Alpe D'Huez. 
  
  At the bottom you hit your lap button and the same as the top, so that climb becomes a lap. 
  
  When you load that into WKO you can save it as a smart segment.
• Then, every time you do that smart segment WKO will search and find it and it'll show you all the times you've been up there. 
  
  In the simplest version you can then rank by speed or by power. 
  
  You can then see where you do better and worse. 
• You can then use the WKO compare mode and build custom analytics to look for trends of when you perform great - e.g. cadence, power trending up, going harder at the bottom etc.
• You can do the same on any geographical track - most of us train in a few specific locations. 
  
  You can then create a dashboard to particularly analyse that segment if you wanted too. 
• I was over in Harrogate in England and we were pre-riding the course. It's highlight unique because it has three distinctive areas, and in the middle one that also has three distinctive areas.
  
  We rode it day 1 just to experience it, I marked my laps and saved them as smart segments. 
  
  The next day we rode it closer to race pace, and then looked at those numbers - we learned something between slow and fast. 
  
  We then ran the course and focused on each segment, and by the time we were done we had 10-12 of each segment which meant a whole lot of learning! 

Tim's coaching workflow in WKO5

Top 3 things on WKO5 for time efficient coaching

1:07:17 - 

• We put a set of good basic views that should give you 99% of everything you need. 
• What you should do when you first bring data into WKO5, look through the different views and find the one that matches your athlete. 
  
  Look through it, click through everything, and see if you've got everything you need. If not, try another. 
  
  Once you've found one, start using it and stick with one at a time. 
• Then read the insights dashboard. 
  
  It's always changing, and it's things we can feed to you as the user. Any new science and features can come through this way. 
  
  We're trying to give the best new science in actual insights that can help your coaching. 
• Join and ask questions in the Facebook Group! It's a polite and interactive group. 
  
  Most questions have been answered so always search first, and if not ask away and you'll get a plethora of views. 

Learning more about WKO5

1:11:18 - 

• On WKO5 there's a question mark in the top right, and this will launch the quick start guide. 
  
  This is a series of walk throughs with screen shots to help you get rolling. It also has short video tutorials.
• It also has a link top right called 'education centre' which has five key categories, and it's true learning for the software. 
  
  Each has a recorded webinar that lasts an hour, and also has follow on videos. 
  
  1. Getting start with WKO - how to maximise a setup early on.
  2. Individualise your training - benefits of a power duration model, and other things. 
  3. Training and coaching with WKO - that's literally the recorded process that I use. It has an overview, initial testing, strength and weaknesses etc - all in individual videos. 
  4. Track and monitor performance - insights on how to use ongoing data.
  5. Creating analytics - Kevin does a one hour webinar of how to create your own, and we roll out individual videos on the different steps. 
• We've got a much better support centre now in WKO5 because we've learnt from WKO4. 

WKO as a tool for coaches and self-coached athletes

1:16:12 - 

• One of our main goals was to give the self-coached and everyday athletes a tool - that's why there is a lot of focus on the user experience. 
• The demand to use it for the individual athlete is high, which is why we've tried to reduce that learning curve. 
• An individual athlete should probably use WKO5, and will find it easier than WKO4. 
  
  If you're totally new to training with data you might want to start with TrainingPeaks premium and then WKO, but WKO5 should be totally fine for an every day athlete too. 
• It's the same experience for coaches and athletes, but because coaches often invested the training in WKO4 they're still the masters.
• I think the best relationship is when both the coach and athlete are using WKO. 
  
  Accountability of both the coach and the athlete is the pathway to success, and this synergistic cycle improves relationships. 

• Example of an amateur athlete with two peaks in the year, so they have two 16 week macro cycles - 12 week for capacity development. 

Links, resources and contact

Links and resources mentioned

• About Tim Cusick

• WKO5 website

• WKO Power Users Facebook Group