Training Monotony

Monotonous training produces increased fatigue and is a risk factor for Overtraining and Overtraining Syndrome.

It is long been recognized the athletes cannot train hard every day. Modern training plans recommend a few hard days per week, with the other days as easier or rest days. A lack of variety in training stress, known as training monotony, is considered a key factor in causing Overtraining Syndrome. There is also evidence that increased training frequency results in reduced performance benefits from identical training sessions as well as increased fatigue.

1 Training Monotony and Supercompensation

Training Monotony is related to Supercompensation and the need for adequate rest to recover from training.

Exercise produces a temporary decrease in fitness, followed by a recovery and supercompensation.

With sufficient rest between workouts, fitness improves.

Without sufficient recovery time, the fatigue builds up until injury or Overtraining Syndrome occurs.

2 Quantifying monotony

One approach to measuring monotony is statistically analyze the variation in workouts. The first stage is to work out a measure of the daily TRIMP (TRaining IMPulse). From this daily TRIMP it's possible to calculate the standard deviation for each 7 day period. The relationship between the daily average TRIMP value and the standard deviation can provide a metric for monotony. The monotony value combined with the overall training level can be used to evaluate the likelihood of Overtraining Syndrome.

3 Monotony Calculations

The original work on training monotony used TRIMP^cr10 and TRIMP^zone, but I substitute TRIMP^exp for TRIMP^zone because of the advantages noted in TRIMP. From the daily TRIMP values for a given 7 day period the standard deviation can be calculated. (If there is more than one workout in a day, the TRIMP values for each are simply added together.) The monotony can be calculated using

Monotony = average(TRIMP)/stddev(TRIMP)

This gives a value of monotony that tends towards infinity as stddev(TRIMP) tends towards zero, so I cap Monotony to a maximum value of 10. Without this cap, the value tends to be unreasonably sensitive to high levels of monotony. Values of Monotony over 2.0 are generally considered too high, and values below 1.5 are preferable. A high value for Monotony indicates that the training program is ineffective. This could be because the athlete is doing a low level of training; an extreme example would be a well-trained runner doing a single easy mile every day. This would allow for complete recovery, but would not provide the stimulus for improvement and would likely lead to rapid detraining. At the other extreme, doing a hard work out every day would be monotonous and not allow sufficient time to recover. The Training Strain below can help determine the difference between monotonous training that is inadequate and monotonous training that is excessive.

4 Training Strain Calculations

A similar calculation can be used to calculate a value for Training Strain.

Training Strain = sum(TRIMP) * Monotony

The value of Training Strain that leads to actual Overtraining Syndrome would be specific to each athlete. An elite level athlete will be able to train up much higher levels than a beginner. However this Training Strain provides a better metric of the overall stress that an athlete is undergoing than simply looking at training volume.

5 A simple TRIMP^cr10 based calculator

This calculator will show the TRIMP^cr10 values for each day, the Monotony, the total TRIMP^cr10 for the week and the Training Strain.

Day	Duration (min)	CR10 Rating	TRIMP(CR10)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Monotony:
Total TRIMP:
Training Stress:

6 TRIMP^exp Examples

For these examples we will use just a few simple workouts. Let's assume a male athlete with a Maximum Heart Rate of 180 and a Resting Heart Rate of 40, giving a Heart Rate Reserve of 140. Let's assume our hypothetical athlete does his easy runs at a 9 min/mile pace and heart rate of 130. We'll use only one of the type of workout, a tempo run his easy runs at a 7 min/mile pace and heart rate of 160. This gives us some TRIMP^exp values for some workouts

Type	Miles	Name	Duration	TRIMPexp
Easy	4	Easy 4	36	11,132
Easy	6	Easy 6	54	16,699
Easy	10	Easy 10	90	27,831
Easy	20	Easy 20	180	55,662
Tempo	4	Tempo 4	28	17,421
Tempo	8	Tempo 8	56	34,841

Here is a sample week's workout with three harder workouts, a 4 mile tempo, a 10 mile mid-long run and a 20 mile long run with four mile easy runs on the other days. This is 50 miles, total TRIMP^exp of 145K, Monotony of 1.35 and a Training Strain of 197K.

Monday	Tempo 4	17,421
Tuesday	Easy 4	11,132
Wednesday	Easy 10	27,831
Thursday	Easy 4	11,132
Friday	Easy 4	11,132
Saturday	Easy 20	55,662
Sunday	Easy 4	11,132
Stdev		15,353
Avg		20,777
Total		145,442
Monotony		1.35
Training Strain		196,824

If we give our athlete a single day's rest on Sunday, we reduce the mileage by 4 miles to 46 miles, total TRIMP^exp goes down 9K to 134K, but the Monotony of drops more significantly to 1.14 and a Training Strain to 154K. So the mileage has dropped about 9%, but the Training Strain has dropped by 28%.

Monday	Tempo 4	17,421
Tuesday	Easy 4	11,132
Wednesday	Easy 10	27,831
Thursday	Easy 4	11,132
Friday	Easy 4	11,132
Saturday	Easy 20	55,662
Sunday	Rest	0
Stdev		16,780
Avg		19,187
Total		134,310
Monotony		1.14
Training Strain		153,574

A further rest day on Tuesday drops the Training Strain by a further 27%.

Monday	Tempo 4	17,421
Tuesday	Rest	0
Wednesday	Easy 10	27,831
Thursday	Easy 4	11,132
Friday	Easy 4	11,132
Saturday	Easy 20	55,662
Sunday	Rest	0
Stdev		17,955
Avg		17,597
Total		123,178
Monotony		0.98
Training Strain		120,723

If we compare this with an extreme example of a monotonous training plan, we have a slightly lower mileage (46 v 50), and a considerably lower total TRIMP^exp (128K v 135K), but the monotony is remarkably high at 4.7 and the training strain is more than three times higher (601K v 197K). In practice, there would be greater day to day variations, even within the same 6 mile easy run, so the results would not be quite so dramatic.

Monday	Easy 6	16,699
Tuesday	Easy 6	16,699
Wednesday	Easy 6	16,699
Thursday	Easy 6	16,699
Friday	Easy 6	16,699
Saturday	Easy 10	27,831
Sunday	Easy 6	16,699
Stdev		3,895
Avg		18,289
Total		128,025
Monotony		4.70
Training Strain		601,092