
This is obviously a simplified example as in reality an athlete heart rate will vary over time. For men this will give a TRIMP value of 0 to 4.37 per minute and for women 0 to 3.4.Ī worked example would be a male athlete with a HR max=200 and HR rest=40 training for 30 min. These constants were developed based on the experimentally observed relationship between heart rate and lactate level. y is the HR r multiplied by 1.92 for men and 1.67 for women.HR r is the Heart Rate as a fraction of Heart Rate Reserve.D is the duration in minutes at a particular Heart Rate.

Finally, using %HRmax is inferior to using Heart Rate Reserve.ĥ TRIMP exp Exponential Heart Rate ScalingĪ more sophisticated approach uses Heart Rate Reserve and an exponential scaling factor to account for the fact that higher intensity training as a disproportionately high training impact. By contrast, exercising at 100% rather than 90% is far harder than the 0.25 increase scaling factor would suggest. The scaling factors are also linear, but moving from 50-60% HR max to 60-70% is far less than doubling the difficulty. The most obvious is that a small change in heart rate could move from one zone to another, which could double the TRIMP zone score. However, there are some serious flaws in this technique. This approach works well if you are using a Heart Rate Monitor that will display the times spent in each zone, but without transferring the details to a computer for more sophisticated analysis. One common approach is based around the book by Sally Edwards that uses a five zones and assigns each a scaling factor as shown below. These zones are based on the percentage of the Maximum Heart Rate (HR max). Instead of treating Heart Rate is a continuous range of values, it is divided up into different zones. The equivalent TRIMP avg suggests that both workouts are equally difficult, but in practice the interval training is much harder.Ī slightly better approach is based around Heart Rate zones. Both workouts have a TRIMP avg of 60 \*130 = 7,800. of intervals and 180 BPM which is also an average of 130 BPM. The second workout is an interval training session, where 50 min. The first is a steady-state workout with a Heart Rate of 130 BPM. Consider two workouts, each an hour-long. However, the floor in this method is that the average Heart Rate does not really reflect the difficulty of a workout. This method has the advantage of using the absolute measure of Heart Rate, and the simplicity of a trivial calculation. So if an athlete runs for two hours with an average Heart Rate of 140 BPM, the TRIMP avg is 120 x 140 = 16,800. The simplest and most basic form of using Heart Rate to evaluate training load is to simply multiply the average Heart Rate for a workout by the time in minutes. In addition, the perceived exertion may work better for workouts such as weight training, or plyometrics, where Heart Rate alone does not truly capture the training load.

However, while this method lacks the precision of a Heart Rate based training load, it does include some aspect of the athletes Mood State, which may be useful in determining Overtraining Syndrome. Also, the last part of the workout tends to disproportionately influence how the athlete perceives the overall exertion. The subjective nature of the RPE scale can introduce some repeatability problems. The units for this session load are not absolute, nor of a really comparable between athletes. So if an athlete runs for two hours and rates this as an RPE of six, the TRIMP cr10would be 120 x 6 = 720. This scale goes from 0 to 10+, and multiplying this session RPE value by the session time in minutes gives a value for the training load of that session. of finishing) the athlete rates the intensity of the session using the Borg CR10 RPE scale. At the end of the training session (ideally within 30 min.

Using a Rating of Perceived Exertion has the advantage of needing no technology. Running 10 miles at an easy pace is far removed from 10 miles of hard Interval Training. This approach is attractive because it is simple, but it does not take into account exercise intensity. The simplest and most common way of measuring training stress is to use training volume either mileage or time. 5 TRIMP exp Exponential Heart Rate Scaling.
