Overall Fitness Monitoring and Data-Driven Training Decisions with WKO+
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 2:39PM By Jim Vance
Are you using WKO+ to its fullest? Sure, you probably look at individual workout files, and see how a session went, but do you see the bigger picture? Do you see quickly and easily if your athlete is progressing at the rate and in the ways you want to see?
WKO+ is known as a popular software program for analyzing power files, and seeing how a specific workout went. Though the software is great for individual workout analysis, this pales in comparison to what a coach can see and how they can better manipulate the training and periodization of the athlete, based on the bigger picture of fitness and performance.
WKO+ allows coaches to see the entire picture of fitness and performance, not just a single session. Most coaches never look past the single session, and therefore miss the opportunity of seeing if the athlete is truly progressing or regressing toward their goals.
After athletes record and log workouts, uploading data from their training devices, we want to look for trends within the data. WKO+ allows coaches and athletes to set-up charts which show the trends of output and performance. Here is an example of a chart I use for some of my cyclists:
The chart shows the trend of the average watts per kilogram by week, that I am tracking for the season of outputs for all rides. I want to make sure I’m seeing the upward trend I want to see, as this athlete prepares for their goal race in October. The continual upward trend shows me if the athlete is progressing as we hope. If we are not seeing this upward trend, then we must make decisions on how to adjust the training, given the data. Data-driven training decisions are the key to avoiding performance plateaus and regression.
This chart below, does the same thing as the previous chart, only it focuses on running and the average run pace for the athlete of all runs, in kilometers per hour, by week of the season.
Again, I want to see an upward trend, and that is what I’m seeing. When I don’t see the trend, I must make decisions as a coach, on how to rectify the trend. Though I may typically think that my training decisions are correct, individual differences in athletes make data-driven decisions much more effective for all athletes we coach.
I believe more in studying the bigger picture of fitness than the smaller, individual workout files. I have been doing this long enough to begin to see a plateau in performance before the athlete can. This is critical, because by the time an athlete tends to notice, the damage is already done. They have lost quite a bit of confidence, and maybe even seen fitness regress.
Many coaches make training decisions based upon tradition. “We always do six weeks of base work,” or “We must do eight weeks of VO2 max training,” for example. This is training by tradition, not by data. What if the data shows your athletes already have the aerobic base they need by week four? What if after five weeks of VO2 max intervals, your athletes are at a plateau? These are lost weeks where a coach could switch the training focus to other areas of weakness, and make the athlete ready for even better performance. This is data-driven decision making, and WKO+ is a key tool for seeing this.
Set up your charts in WKO+ to look at the bigger picture of the season. Many coaches pay attention to the Performance Management Chart, (PMC), and it’s a good tool for monitoring, but it is not the only one for monitoring fitness and adaptations.
In the next article, I will discuss how you can adapt the PMC for better overall monitoring of fitness thru the season.
Jim Vance is a USAT Level 2 and Elite Coach for TrainingBible Coaching. You can see many of his webinars on WKO+ at Performancewebinars.com and follow his writings and training advice at his coaching blog, CoachVance.blogspot.com. Questions or comments can be sent to jvance@trainingbible.com.
Reader Comments (8)
How do you set up such a chart?
hi jim
how do i create the run pace chart in wko please?
thanks
nick
Tobias and Nick,
Thanks for the questions. The charts used above are simply, "Periodic Charts", because they look at performance over a certain periods of time.
To create the run pace chart, do the following:
1. Click on the top right "Options"
2. Choose, "Add a chart to this page"
3. Choose "Custom Periodic Chart"
4. A new window will pop open, to set the parameters of the chart. On the "General" Tab, Choose the title and the time period you want to look at. In the chart above, I chose "This season", and made the chart "Full" sized.
5. Click on the "Details" tab, to select the specific items you want to look at. "Days per point" should be 7, if you want a weekly average, 1 day if you want to track every run.
6. Click "Add", choose the title, in this case, Avg Pace/wk
7. For "Content", select "Average"
8. For "Channel", select speed.
9. Choose the units for the graph. I chose kph, (kilometers per hour), because it is a smaller unit, easier to track changes than MPH.
10. Choose the color for the graph lines.
11. Choose between a line or bar graph. Above is a bar graph.
12. Click on the "Sport" tab.
13. Push "Deselect All", so no boxes are checked.
14. Check the box next to run. Only check that box.
15. Push "Apply", then close. Your chart should appear.
16. Manipulate it as you wish.
I cover this and many more charts and ways of tracking performance with WKO+ at my blog, and in webinars at PerformanceWebinars.com. If you're a USAT coach, you get 1 CEU for each webinar.
Hope this helps!
Jim
Good stuff. Are there any plans in WKO+ to overlay linear regression lines on top of the graphs? I am assuming that the line was manually drawn on top of the graph.
Thanks.
Robert
Robert,
You are correct, the line was drawn manually, on top of the graph. The line helps show my interpretation of a trend I see in these graphs. Hard to get a software program to see the trends I see as a coach, and they should be related to the goals, trends and training the coach is prescribing. The trends are related to the training, and need to be considered as such. There's so much subjectivity, any automatically generated lines might not take them into consideration. A simple example would be linear vs. reverse periodization.
Hope this helps, and thanks for asking.
Jim
thanks for this jim, i'm a training bible coach in england, would i be able to see these under training bible?
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