Louis Passfield

Most coaches and athletes keep track of how much training they complete in order to monitor and optimise their training programme, prevent under- or over-training and to minimise the chance of illness and injury. Typically, the amount of training completed is tracked by calculating the athlete’s Training Load (TL), a metric that takes account of the training intensity, duration and frequency. Moreover, the development of wearable devices in recent years facilitates this process as an athlete’s data is seamlessly uploaded to a website, and TL can be calculated and analysed with little or no intervention from the athlete or coach. The basis for TL stems from research that was conducted in the 1970’s and has been little changed since. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are some major issues with the way in which TL is calculated. This seminar will review the quantification of TL, the issues with its quantification, and provide some initial thoughts on how we might address them.

Louis Passfield is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary and an Honorary Professor at the University of Kent. He has conducted research and published papers that focus mostly on modelling cycling and training. Louis has worked with many leading coaches and Olympic medalists and has collaborated with British Cycling, the English Institute of Sport, and Chinese Speed Skating.