11/9/2017 Interpreting the Powercenter Heat Map

Interpreting the Powercenter Heat Map

Interpreting the Powercenter Heat Map

By Steve Palladino
Coach and Consultant, Palladino Power Project
October 23, 2017

From Stryd Powercenter:

A visual description of your running history in terms of both intensity (power) and duration. Bright Red,
hot areas, indicate combinations of power and duration that you frequently achieve in your training.
Dark blue areas occur less often. Moving your cursor over different parts of the heat map will reveal the
average power, duration, and frequency for that range of power and duration. The Orange Dot will
always display the maximum power that you have achieved for that given duration. This gives you a
sense of what you are able to accomplish in your next race!

The Stryd Powercenter Training Power Heat Map is a form of personal power-duration curve (power on the y-
axis and duration on the x-axis).. It has two useful components: 1) the athletes own recent maximal power-
duration tracing (solid orange line), and 2) the heat map (the tie-dye looking color fill in below the individual
maximal power-duration tracing). (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Stryd Powercenters maximal power-duration tracing and heat map

Maximal power-duration tracing

I am more familiar with the WKO4 power-duration curve model and meanmaximal power curve, which is
optimized to 90 days. Information provided by Stryd states that the Powercenter Training Power Heat Map

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samples data from inception of using Powercenter. I am not certain that the maximal power-duration tracing is
composed entirely of absolute true maximals (its very close), or whether it involves some smoothing.

Suffice it to say that the maximal power-duration curve tracing represents maximal or near maximal power that
the athlete has achieved for every duration on the spectrum - from 1 second to 170 minutes - since starting to
use Stryd Powercenter. This assumption still allows valuable use of that component of the chart.

If one were to scroll over the chart, the orange dot will identify the maximum power that the athlete has achieved
for the given duration. (Figure 2) Furthermore, the pop-up box will report the curve power, which represents
the maximum power that the athlete has achieved for the given duration. In Figure 2, we see that the athletes
maximum power (curve power) for 9 minutes has been 288w (over a period of X weeks/months/years).

Figure 2. Scrolling the Powercenter Training Power Heat Map

Orange dot = maximum power that the athlete has achieved for the given duration
Cross hairs = power for that cross hair location and number of runs in which power was held for the selected
duration

Heat Map
The heat map will give the athlete a representation of what power-duration relationship is most frequently being
utilized. (Figure 2) Again, the heat map portion of the Powercenter Training Power Heat Map samples data from
inception of using Powercenter. One must be wary of duplicate files in their Powercenter calendar, since the
heat map will include duplicates. For greatest heat map utility, make sure that you delete duplicate workouts for
any calendar day on which they appear.

The Training Power Heat Map has a color coded legend that translates frequency to color, with red being high
frequency, and blue being low frequency. Furthermore, if one were to scroll over the chart, the cross hairs can
be positioned over any color area on the heat map, and the pop up box will reflect the real power (the name
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given to the power depicted at the cross hairs), duration, and the number of runs in which that particular
power/duration has been achieved (again, since inception). In Figure 2, the cross hairs were positioned over a
red spot (high frequency), and we can see that the athlete has completed 13 runs over X period in which the
power was 230W for 9 minutes.

How to use these features

Where are you spending your time?

In Figure 3, Ive drawn in the approximate demarcations of the upper limit of Zone 1 and the lower limit of Zone
2 (from Palladino Power Project - Power Training Zones) that I know for this particular athlete. The chart
indicates active training around this athletes lower end of zone 3 in durations around 20 minutes +/- 5 minutes.
Also note how long and flat the athletes maximal power curve tracing is. This is the influence of a recent
marathon that the athlete completed. Naturally, maximal power-duration relationships were set in the longer
duration, right hand area of the curve.

Figure 3. Heat Map with zone depiction and athletes FTP added. (zones from Palladino Power Project -
Power Training Zones)

In Figure 4, we have an athlete that is training for a marathon. We can see what I would suspect is an 80/20
type program (I do not coach this athlete). There appears to be increased activity near this athletes maximal
power for 60 minutes - threshold training. But, we also see high activity at much lower power from maybe 10-80
minutes. There are also some less frequent extensions out beyond 90 minutes - presumably from long runs (or
perhaps a prior half marathon race).

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Figure 4. Athlete training for marathon. Presumably using threshold training and 80/20 format, along with
long runs.

What do you need?

Of course, what you need to be focusing on in training is a) dependent on what race you are training for, b) the
training period or phase that the athlete is currently in, and c) individual. Therefore, I have to be careful in
generalizing here. Nevertheless, Ill give an example.

In Figure 5, we have a runner that is training for a 5k race. The heat map shows higher frequency at near-max
in the 15-30 minute range - solid threshold to slightly suprathreshold work. That is very good for 5K training, but
since the 5K is run at fairly close to maximal aerobic power / VO2max for many athletes, it would be ideal to add
some training focused on maximal aerobic power development as well. However, the heat map also shows a
dip in the maximal power curve at 2 minutes, and some paucity of training intensely at 2-4 minutes - a prime
area for development of maximal aerobic power / VO2max.

The recommendation, based on this heat map, would be to add some 2-4 minute intervals at about 95-97% of
the maximal power curve (95-97% of 2 minute max, or 95-97% of 3 minute max, etc). For example, the
maximal power tracing at 3 minutes appears to be in the vicinity of 355W. The corresponding workout might be
6x 3 minutes @ 337-344W with 3-4 minute recoveries. After 3-5 weeks of training in that area, re-test with
either a flat out 3 minutes test, or a CP test with the 3 minute / 9 minute protocol - to see if the dip resolves.

Figure 5. Runner Training for 5k. Dip at 2 minutes, relative paucity of intense training at 2-4 minutes.

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Another example can be found in figure 6. This runner is now in the offseason, so whether or not it is the right
time to focus on the dips and under-addressed areas is questionable. But for demonstration purposes, note that
there is a dip in the maximal power tracing at approximately 8-9 minutes. The athlete has some training
coverage of this area, the 8-9 minute area is somewhat low hanging fruit for development, should the target race
and training phase indicate importance of this area.

At the dip (roughly 8-9 minutes), the maximal power tracing lies at about 315W. Training this area might call for
something like 4x 8 minutes @ 300-305W with 3-4 minute recoveries. After training this area for 3-5 weeks, re-
test either 9 minutes flat out, or perhaps a 3&9 minute CP test - to see if the dip resolves.

Figure 6. Dip at approximately 8-9 minutes.

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Summary
The Training Power Heat Map offers the user two useful components: 1) the athletes own recent maximal
power-duration tracing, and 2) the heat map. It is beyond the scope of this article to delve into all of the
nuances of training by ones own power-duration curve, but a few examples were, nevertheless, provided.

For the heat map portion to have greatest utility, it is important for the user to keep their Powercenter calendar
clean of any duplicate workouts on a given calendar day. Further, realize that the sample period for the data
within the maximal power-duration tracing and the heat map is currently defaulted to all data since inception of
Powercenter usage for each user. It would be beneficial if Stryd would allow the user to toggle the look-back
period between the current default (all data) and perhaps 30, 60, and 90 days.

Thank you to Fightin Phils, Bill, Shan, and Chris in the Powah! chat group for sharing their Training Power Heat
Maps with me for this article.

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