Should "fatigue" be lower than "fitness" before activity

Good morning all,

Hope you all well and safe
I am sure the question was asked before and it should be a simple one but may be unique to individuals.

Can anyone suggests or advise how to turn my Fatigue digit lower than my Fitness, please?
I know is an obvious question and I believe that I do rest covering the 8 HR sleep, I am not doing any extra sport excluding the EVO stretching and Yoga. My legs also feel heavy.

Since freshness = fitness - fatigue , I want to maximize fitness and/or minimize fatigue .

So the only way to increase freshness in the short term is to take a rest. I hoped my fatigue would go down quickly, but my fitness follows also downward. So I am not sure how to turn the clock as whatever I am trying is not working.

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If you might have any suggestion I would appreciate.

Best Regards
Lucsi

Fatigue is taking your average 7 day TSS average. So to have less fatigue you would need to do less TSS on the 7 day average compared to the 30 day average of TSS (fitness)

So actually I don’t like how TrainingPeaks refers to your ATL (acute training load) to freshness. How fresh you are really is your form (TSB - training stress balance).

So if you have been training more over the last 7 days (ATL / fatigue) then the last 30 days (CTL / Fitness) you are going to be fatigued (TSB / Form) as you are not use to doing that much training stress.

Typically during a rest week your form should come up to the positive side as your fatigue should be low your fitness. You do less training stress and training load on a rest week. Yes your fitness will drop some during this time but its the old take 1 step back to take 2 steps forward.

Your fitness score will drop also as you taper for a key event. But at the same time your form comes up as you are gaining freshness. This is a good thing. Typically and training takes 2 weeks to adapt from so any training you do within two weeks of a key event you won’t reap the benefits of. That is why typically the training load is less as you benefit from the rest more than higher training stress.

Hello coach Jake,

Thank you for the response and it is making complete sense now,
I tried to recover with resting and recovery drinks proteins but nothing worked

Thank you again I will follow the advice
Best regards
Lucsi

Not sure how the Fascat coaches feel about this chart. Probably just a general rule of thumb.

If you’re training regularly you can expect to be in the negative. You have to accept that a negative number is not bad.

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I like that table a lot :slightly_smiling_face:
Thanks for the smiles @jamesstevens

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Hi James
Thank you for this table

I would like to clarify the first entry
What is the table telling me that if my TBS going above 25 it’s means I am not training or is saying over training?

Sorry if is a stupid question
Many thanks

The table says the following:

  • Form/TSB is over +25 → You are not training enough

  • Form/TSB between +10 to +25 → You should be feeling fresh/rested and might be able to do some personal best times/results (as you have been resting for quite a while)

  • Form/TSB between -10 to -25 → When training, try to stay in this bracket, but also remeber that you need rest from time to time

  • Form/TSB below -30 → You might be overtraining and might hurt yourself or become too fatigued.

Even though the table isn’t scientific by anymeans, I personally start to feel extremely fatigued if my TSB goes below -35, so it might be both funny and accurate :wink:

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Hi
I much appreciated your explanations
It is very clear now

Thank you very much
Best regards
Lucsi

Here is another resource on this topic:

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