Training Peaks is the software/app that we use to deliver your training to you. By now you should have received the log in information from your coach. If you previously had a Training Peaks account you should have received from your coach a link to connect your athlete account with Training Peaks to their coaching account.
Training Peaks is an online service that acts as a virtual training diary for you to receive your training from your coach, record your training and allow your coach to review your training. It has many great functional tools that benefit athletes training with devices such as heart rate monitors, GPS watches and Power Meters that load up onto a computer. Training Peaks can automatically upload this information, quickly, easily and seamlessly.
Phone App
Training Peaks is available online by logging in here. For those that prefer to use their phone, tablet or iPad it is available as an app for both iOS and Android (click on the platform to be taken to the download link).
Receiving Your Training
When you first log in to Training Peaks you will view a calendar. Each day will have your workout(s) loaded onto it and from the calendar you will be able to see a summary of the session (sport, duration or distance and a name). When you click on the workout you will be able to view more detail. You will need to do this prior to conducting the workout to see the detail of the session.
Review your weeks training in advance and if you are unsure of how to conduct a particular session contact your coach as early as possible. This gives them time to review what they set for you and get back to you with an answer. Sending a text saying: “Hi Coach I’m heading to the pool in half an hour can you please explain….” Doesn’t leave much time to get an answer to you.
Recording Training
The best way to record your training is to use a training tool that loads directly to Training Peaks. We highly recommend Garmin devices as they link easily and seamlessly into Training Peaks, but products from other brands also work too. Polar has a few good options, however they can be complicated to connect up.
Alternatively you can use a phone app such as Strava to record your training on your phone and then use Tapiriik to synchronise the data from Strava over to Training Peaks. The downside of Strava is that it isn’t as accurate and as reliable as a Garmin and doesn’t record as much data. But a small amount is better than nothing.
Recording Other Data
We recommend that you record other metrics that can give your coach a great insight into how your training is going or more accurately how your recovery from training is going.
Resting Heart Rate
Resting Heart Rate (RHR) is a good indication of how well you have recovered. But this information is only good if you have been doing it for a long time and we know what your baseline metrics are.
First thing in the morning whilst lying in bed, count your pulse at your wrist for a full 60 seconds. Count full beats only, start at 0 then continue as normal 1, 2, 3 etc….
Record this by clicking on the ‘plus’ symbol on the Training Peaks calendar, then add a metric and record your RHR as Pulse.
Weight
It’s recommended that your weight is monitored on a regular basis without being the focus of the programme (unless your goal is weight lose). The best way to do this is to weigh yourself whilst naked, first thing in the morning having defecated and urinated but prior to showering, eating or drinking, preferably on the same day of the week. This creates consistency.
As with the RHR, this can be loaded into Training Peaks in the same fashion.
Percentage Fat
Your weight doesn’t really tell you much about your composition. BMI is just as bad (don’t get me started about BMIs unless we are sitting down and have got some time maybe over a beer or wine)! Getting your body fat measured is the only way to reliably see the changes in your composition.
If you weigh 80kg and try to get leaner as you train, hypothetically you may lose 1kg of fat and grow 1kg of muscle. You still weigh 80kg but without measuring your body composition you have no idea and all you can see is that you are STILL 80kg and supposedly nothing has changed.
| Weight | Muscle | Fat | Percentage | |
| Start | 80kg | 56kg | 24kg | 30.0% |
| Now | 80kg | 57kg | 23kg | 28.7% |
You have made some significant positive changes but you can’t see it and therefore get de-motivated. If you are interested in getting a set of Tanita Body Composition Scales see the details below.
Load this data in to Training Peaks just like you would with Weight or RHR.
Sleep Quantity
Have a rough estimate (to nearest 15min) of how long you slept for. Usually you don’t know exactly when you fell asleep, but if you went to bed at 9pm and took about 30 minutes to fall asleep and your alarm woke you up at 5:30 then you can estimate that it was ~8hrs.
As with RHR, Weight and Percentage Fat it can simply be recorded in Training Peaks as a metric.
Events
Your coach will prepare your training based on the events discussed in your initial consultation. As your training develops you may hear about another event that wasn’t considered or discussed at the initial consultation. This is fine and if you want to do it your coach can work it into your programme. At the very least your coach can advise you on the disadvantages of doing the event (i.e. it might totally screw up your training for your main event, however we can usually adapt the training to accommodate it).
There is nothing more frustrating to your coach than planning and preparing your training and not be aware of an event you plan to do and only finding out after the event that you did it.
Worse still is seeing on Facebook that your athlete did an event that they didn’t have the courtesy to let you know about and they also omit uploading those details onto Training Peaks.