How AI is Shaping Endurance Training: Insights from Athletica

Marjaana Rakai (00:00)

I think education is so important, putting that education into your context don't look at the plan as the Bible, because you have to make those individual changes so that it works for you and it's okay.

Paul Warloski (00:40)

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. In 2015, Dr. Paul Laursen started work on creating Athletica, an AI-based training program that has in many ways revolutionized the endurance sport training world. We often refer to Athletica on the Athletes Compass podcast and today we're gonna dig in.

to the specific structure and format of Athletica and its workouts as a way of showing what a scientifically based training program can look like. So Paul, let's start with the origin story of Athletica and HIIT Science. How did that all get started?

Paul Laursen (01:18)

Thanks.

yeah, so I've told the story on a number of different occasions. But the general gist is that.

I was a guy growing up loving the sport of triathlon as a young and wanting to be an Olympic athlete. And that didn't pan out. So when I kind of failed at my mission within that training, I was like, why was it that I wasn't going fast? And I turned to science, studied it lots and then moved it.

through a long career of research in the area. And, you know, 20, is a 20-year story, 20, 30-year story that kind of cuts to a book. then, you know, at the end of the day, after 150 peer-reviewed publications and a textbook on the whole topic, you know, we have sort of a real foundation of now understanding if we advance kind of that 20 years. So...

And then, you know, after writing the book and building the course at HIIT Science, was, well,

Now with all of the, you know, input sensors, we can really get insight.

and bring intelligence into training. So that is really the origin story of Athletica. How it's moved from my pain point as a failed athlete through to HIIT Science and the textbook through to the app that you see today. We're trying to always answer the question, whether it's HIIT Science or Athletica, what is the best session I can do right now today to enhance my performance tomorrow?

And that's what Athletica tries to deliver to you. And because of sensor technology now, we can come at this so much better than 20, 30 years ago when I was a young and kind of trying to do it blindly. We've got excellent guide rails now that really change the game in terms of how you can make forward progress in your training.

Marjaana Rakai (03:26)

So we often have like several sensors. have heart rate, we have running pace, cycling power, we have HRV, sleep data. We have so much data today.

What are we trying to do with Athletica with all that data? Because it gets confusing for everyday

Paul Laursen (03:47)

Yeah, yeah, it certainly does. So the very first thing, even before we put all that data in there, we have to have a plan, right? And we had Andrea on with us last time and he always mentions that the crux and the real advantage of Athletica are indeed

the plans that are within the backbone of Athletica. So that's the plans that you as a user of Athletica are getting. You're getting a training structure that is similar to what an elite athlete would get. Now to your question, MJ, all of those input data go into feeding and answering the question, feeding the engine and answering the question, did you actually do what the

the foundation plan template suggested. you know, and even before we go there, we have to think about all the different things that Athletic is doing for you as a user. With your historical download of your data, whether you're using a Garmin system or another system via Strava, you are, capturing your profile. And we just went over...

the last two podcasts with Andrea, we went over what your profile is, right? How fast you can go and how long you can go ultimately. that's the very first thing. So we're already starting at a better place than we were many, many years ago. We've already gauged what those capacities and capabilities are in you. And now we can begin to take those template plans

and make and just curve them down a little bit, but make them appropriate to what you are available to do. It's fine if we've got Alistair Brownlee's amazing plan, but the, and his coach Malcolm Brown said, it's not the plan, it's can you do it? And it's just so true, right? Like there's no point for the bulk of us, 99 % of us to do what Alistair Brownlee

two-time gold medalist in the triathlon can do, right? Because we just don't have that ability. But now with the wearable and the download of that, we actually have something that is what we can do. So we can still do a plan like Alistair Brownlee does, but we're doing it at our own, to our own level. And when we do it like that, that means the adaptation

is going to be in theory optimal, right? Because we can, and we've spoken about this many times too, right? But it's like you, there's no point in absolutely flogging yourself for any one given workout. With the exception of the race, that's the only time when you should be going absolutely all in with nothing left and putting it all on line. But if you did that in every training session, you're not gonna advance to the level that you can't.

And that's why you're always doing little pieces of this race. You're having a workout, but you're not binning yourself. So we're doing away with the no pain, no gain sort of philosophy. So yeah, again, sorry, I'm sidestepping all around your question, Marjaana, but it's like the power, the heart rate, the pace, that data all goes into saying, how did you do that workout?

relative to what the template plan prescribed first and foremost. And then, again, back to some of the work that Andrea's discussed last podcast, he was talking about Bannister's fitness and fatigue modeling. We can again go through and say, what should we do now tomorrow based on how fatigued you are or how fit you are on what your form is or your freshness?

So again, we can dial in and give, again, what is a theoretical optimal. So it's always giving your theoretical optimal best session, the best session you can do today, now, or tomorrow to get the results that you're after for whatever event you are, you're targeting. Again, always with the goal of building up your fitness potential, right? Your chronic training load and your total fitness potential, theoretical.

So those are the main ones, MJ. I know you mentioned HRV as well. And that's a load response marker. That's another little fine-tuning one that we get to. At this point in the game, that's just one that we're using to get insight and tell the user about. It's hooked up to the large language models as well. So if you read those markers and you're monitoring HRV with the Garmin system, you can also sort of see

what's actually recommended based on how you're responding to that training, remembering that we all respond different to the same individual plan.

Marjaana Rakai (09:04)

So I want to double tap on the adaptation to individual athlete. So practically we have the template plan and then when somebody hooks up their variable or historical data, then Athletica calculates training zones and takes the template. Okay, this is a good plan.

And then gives, for example, intervals. Okay, let's start this guy with five times 30, 30s instead of what Alistair might be doing, like 20, 30, 30s or 30, 30, 30s, you know, so it's just adapts from the template plan where the individual athlete is so that it doesn't give the highest possible.

training this guy as he's starting to train with Athletica. What other adaptations is Athletica doing for the athlete? We we have how many intervals and then we have the pace of power targets.

Paul Laursen (09:58)

That's right.

correct.

Marjaana Rakai (10:18)

What else does Athletica do?

Paul Laursen (10:22)

Yeah, so all those different things. it's through your, again, with the podcast we did last with Andrea Zignoli, we're always leveraging maximal mean powers. And again, if you don't really understand what those are, have a listen to the last podcast. So basically how hard you can go for how long right across the power duration spectrum. And...

And yeah, it continues to adapt in those different domains. it's giving you, it's always, as we learned with these new zone updates that just came out, where there are adaptations that are occurring all around your own profile, that power duration profile. So your zones are always updating in accordance with what Athletica is seeing from your training.

And that's your fingerprint that Athletica is eyeballing. So those adaptations are occurring. At the end of the day, we always want to be adapting to be able to do more work. So we have the ability somehow to build our engines to be able to deliver more work at the end of the day. Sometimes more work in a short period of time, like high intensity work, or more work over a

longer duration, right? So you're going faster over the long durations like, you know, like Iron Man. So both are desirable for, you know, from the adaptation standpoint. And yeah, Athletica is building out the duration using that same banister model we spoke about. And it's building up the, I guess, the duration or the amount of work that you can actually do at

these higher intensities too. Andrea spoke about the workout reserve, which is his baby, and it monitors that too, right? So you can actually see that the work that you're doing in these different power domains, these little bin units of maximal mean powers, that part of the equation is adapting as well. But it's, again, back to the...

the no pain, no gain philosophy that we're not about. You're just getting, it's just hitting enough so that your battery is not fully depleted, not completely crashed every single time. Maybe a little bit. Sometimes I like to go a little bit into the negatives because I know I'm going to adapt the next time, but it's like, these are the things that it's kind of looking at from an algorithm sort of standpoint.

always to make you do more work for longer or more work in a short period of time.

Marjaana Rakai (13:10)

So what, happens when somebody goes and bins themselves, goes a little too hard on their boys group ride. What happens to the, the day after training session?

Paul Laursen (13:21)

Yeah.

That's a great question. And what happens as you know, MJ, is that Athletica recognizes that and then all of a sudden it usually down regulates the next couple of days because we always take a conservative approach. Our goal is to keep you healthy. the aim of Athletica is to not, if you've all of a sudden been yourself on the group ride, because there's been some fast rabbits in there or whatever the case may be.

know, Athletica is going to take note that that effort was harder than usual and it wants to in theory, this is the logic Andrea was talking about and yeah, it will slow things down in the next day to make sure that your theoretical recovery is optimal. So yeah, again, giving you the fastest road to Rome, so to speak.

Marjaana Rakai (14:22)

so there's no hiding.

Paul Warloski (14:22)

Is the opposite still true if you don't go hard enough and for a workout does it adapt down the road as well? Okay.

Paul Laursen (14:30)

Yeah, it does. Yeah, for sure. And the same sort of thing. And you'll notice these if you're paying attention to the different icons that are on Athletica. You'll say, and in some of them, I think it's an I. It's a little I with an asterisk sometimes over the load change. So you can change your settings on Athletica to actually see what the adaptations are going. So sometimes it will say, in the former example that we were talking about with MJ,

or you've been to yourself, you'll hear it actually say, session is lowered to prevent overtraining. So reduced load to prevent overtraining. And then in the opposite case that Paul just mentioned, would say training load increased to enhance adaptation. So yeah, so it's a two.

to extend progressive overload. think that's the exact term.

so it does both,

Paul Warloski (15:31)

So there are training plans for cycling, running, triathlon, and now rowing. How did you settle on the template of those workouts, the structure of those workouts?

Paul Laursen (15:45)

Yeah, yeah. So everyone's a little bit different, but for the most part, those will, you can find those right here in the Science and Application of High Intensity Novel Training book. And the structure is generally speaking more or less what the expert, let me just tell you about the book. So the book is 10 chapters for the most part written by Martin and I, 10 science chapters. And then we have 20 experts that are, you

individuals that are like embedded within the sports, real professionals that are at the coalface of elite sport, they come in and they explain how they use the principles that Martin and I profess in the 10 chapters, but in their sport, because we always say context over content. So that's, and it's all every sport is a little bit different from that perspective. So the foundation of the plans are right from the book.

If it's cycling, they're Mark Quad's cycling plans from the template standpoint. Mark Quad has been with Orica GreenEdge, Garmin Slipstream, and a mess of other pro teams. He's kind of done that for last 20 years. then, so for Triathalon Dan Plews and myself, for running, Jamie Stanley and others,

we've got and then for rowing also Dan Pluse who's worked with the New Zealand New Zealand rowing squad. And then MJ is actually running the cross country plans at this point. So she's actually she's right in the the trenches right now and she's working with Oivin Sandbach, Professor Oivin Sandbach who's written the cross country plans in the the textbook. So she's using his templates.

moving them into the backend. Perfect time, to segue to you. How's that all going for you?

Marjaana Rakai (17:39)

Yeah, it's super interesting. I love it and it makes me even more keen on switching over to skiing again. I just need some more snow in Texas, but yeah, I'm enjoying it.

Paul Warloski (17:52)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (17:55)

Great. Yeah, well, we're grateful for your contributions over there.

Paul Warloski (17:59)

So the basic workouts within the templates get repeated. For example, in my cycling program, it's typically a recovery ride on Monday, 30 30s on Tuesday, strength endurance on Wednesdays, endurance on Thursdays, thresholds Fridays, endurance Saturdays, and temples on Sundays. But we'll talk about the workout wizard in a moment. But why did you pick?

the workouts in those orders? it because of what the people said in the the hit science textbook?

Paul Laursen (18:30)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it tends to be actually it's probably the biggest consideration across all of our sports and all of our programming. It's discussed at length in the book and it is the neuromuscular variable for lack of a better term, right? The neuromuscular musculoskeletal strain at least perceived as the biggest

biggest player to when you kind of should be able to adjust a session in any across any given sport. This is kind of the fundamental thing that's clear across all of them. A lot of work being done to this. And actually I was just listening to, know, Martin on our sister podcast, Training Science Podcast, right? And he was interviewing, I forget the expert, but it was, they again were back talking about

the importance of appreciating the neuromuscular variable. And this is, again, just so everyone's on the same page, you'll know this if you have muscle damage feeling or real soreness the next day, right? That is the neuromuscular variable. And you always, in any given training session, you're gonna get a degree of that because it's like there's some little bit of damage in there. Think of the...

the extreme would be like running down a hill for long, long periods of time. You know you're gonna be just absolutely killed the next day or you're doing a crazy weight workout, say for example, right? And you really feel the muscle damage the next day. These are the neuromuscular strain, but even in a cycling exercise, like a strength endurance session, that's the purpose of it. You should be delivering some kind of a neuromuscular stress in that.

either a low cadence or a high cadence work, it doesn't really matter. Either should sort of have that. And even in the case of a short interval work, there's kind of a degree of neuromuscular strain also that's in that one too, because it's done it with high power. So I guess that is the long-winded answer to the question, Paul, is that related to the neuromuscular strain, that those tend to

And this kind of comes from coach feel, but the coach feel about those sessions is that that's kind of the optimal order to move those into place based on that, the feel of that coach, but it's not, and the likely individual response. But this is where coaches I, both you and MJ, Paul are like, is so key because you might have a person where they need to do things different or.

That might be too much neuromuscular strain at this point in the game for that one individual. And maybe I'm only doing a short interval one week and a strength endurance the next week. It's just, everyone is a little bit different. We always say context over content.

Marjaana Rakai (21:39)

I think for people who don't have a coach, it's important to really recognize that and think, how do I feel like if you have Tuesday, like in triathlon plan Tuesday, strength endurance, then you have short intervals Wednesday, and then you have on the bike and then you have short intervals often Thursday running.

Paul Laursen (22:01)

Running. Yeah.

Marjaana Rakai (22:03)

And if those three days is too much, try to spread them out. Look at your plan during the weekend and make sure that you spread them out just a little bit to give enough time for your body to get rid of that gig. So you need to do something Monday, and then Wednesday, and then Friday.

Paul Laursen (22:17)

Yep, exactly. Yeah, or totally.

Exactly. even like, again, it's just, this is why I really, you know, I'm reflecting when we went on the athletic journey with my colleague, Martin, from HIIT Science, he said, you're never going to do this because there's so much context. And yet we're just highlighting this right now, right? Obviously we've come a long ways and he's changed his mind, but it's like,

because he's quite aware of all these little small nuances. And it isn't easy for the individual to know of every one of these sorts of things. And this is where discussion on our forum and educating the individual is kind of so important, right? Like it's, you might not get the perfect plan right out of the gates and you might have to go out there and fail a little bit.

But if you think about things, really listen, reflect, and learn, you really find that optimal. And this is what people are reporting is happening to them, right? So it's cool.

Marjaana Rakai (23:34)

Yeah, I think education is so important, putting that education into your context and, and, and really like, don't look at the plan as the Bible, because you have to make those individual changes so that it works for you and it's okay. But tell us why should we repeat workouts in a long

Paul Laursen (23:58)

Aha, yes, yes, the infamous question of why are these always the same every week in, week out, right? And yeah, I mean, this is good training because you've got that, every week you have a test. You're testing without testing because if you know your numbers in those 30 30s, do you know what you should sort of be targeting?

Paul Warloski (24:05)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (24:28)

You know what your average power should probably be in those various different things. And you've got your, you you've got a new tool, you've got your workout reserve number that you can reflect on. It's, remember we learned last time with Andrea, this tool, every week you can actually see a reflection of the last six weeks. So you know if you're hitting personal bests in that 30-30, because you can either watch it live on your watch, or you can just...

you you look at the green line in your session analysis and reflect on it. But that's the reason why, right? Like you don't have to, you can switch it up with the workout wizard. Do a 40-20 like you sometimes do, MJ, or, you know, do a 20-10. There's all those different things. But the template is 30-30. It tends to be the best middle ground for a short interval workout that is a relatively low stress.

workout, even though the power is high, the 30 seconds in the 30 seconds, the 30 seconds of rest and recovery, which should be done mostly towards passive, right, zone one or even less, you know, just just turning legs over that make the emphasis on the work interval, that recovery period. We've spoken about this before on other podcasts, use utilizes the the myoglobin, which is the the

protein that's in the muscle that resaturates really quickly in terms of its oxygen level, lowering the lactate, you lower the lactate, you lower the sympathetic response, you're more fresh than if you were gonna bin yourself. So even in a strong 30-30 workout, you're still usually less stressed than say for example, a four by four minutes.

like VO2 max kind of, know, between zone five and six. Like that's really taxing from a lactate sort of standpoint. It can be at least. Depends on the diesel versus twitchy athlete. Spoken about this before, but yeah, that's why 30-30s are repeated day in, day out, week in, week out.

Marjaana Rakai (26:43)

We're doing them together with the group every week. Once we start doing the efforts, the 30 second break, it's very quiet. There's like no talking.

Paul Warloski (26:57)

just to clarify, Paul, you talked about the workout wizard, but that is a drop down menu that for each day you can choose a different kind of workout that meets the same relative load. Or if you're sick or injured, it gives you an alternative to.

Paul Laursen (27:12)

Yep, exactly, Paul. for sure. So different sessions that are of a similar load. Remember, load is the stress on your body, right? So every day, that algorithm we spoke about that's there to keep you from overtraining, it sits there as the foundation of that workout wizard so that any one of those, you can go in there and kind of flick things around, swipe right, swipe left kind of thing.

and figure out if you want to do something a little bit longer, something a little bit more intensity, depending on how you're feeling, or if you're injured, there's options there as well. And diversity as well. Diversity is another one. Just if you get bored of that same 30-30, as people are kind of, you we get that feedback sometimes, then you can mix it up.

Marjaana Rakai (28:05)

Yeah, I want to talk more about the workout wizard because I have a feeling a lot of people want to stick to the template plan and not do any changes.

Can we

about why we maybe should diversify a little bit more?

Paul Laursen (28:24)

Yeah, yeah. it's like the old quarterback that is wanting to call an audible in NFL football kind of analogy, like the context over content. So sometimes you want to change things up. There's so many different reasons that are in front of you on a daily basis in terms of reasons why you will want to switch that thing up.

So make sure that the context in front of you is the thing that's driving your plan over the content. just, you know, every day you sit in front of you, you've got this plan, but is that fit lining up with your daily life? You know, how much work stress do we have? How's your calendar looking? You know, are you able to sort of slot that in? How is your health and fitness? you know, so really think about your context before you

you double-click on that session, that that's the one you're going to do. So you've always kind of got that option with the Workout Wizard. So that's what it's there for, because we know the context rules over the content.

Paul Warloski (29:40)

That is a lot and I appreciate your time talking about Athletica. You know, I use Athletica both, you know, as an athlete and as a coach, you know, Marjaana does the same. You know, it's a great product and it's, you know, in terms of wrapping up, you know, the three things that I've learned today, you know, Athletica started

And it's, it's foundation is in the structure of the hit science textbook, the science and application of high intensity interval training that Paul and Martin wrote. number two, the workouts are always focused on what is the best session today to enhance your performance tomorrow. And it really, look, there's no point in flogging yourself. There's no point in beating yourself up. It's like, what's going to be best for tomorrow.

And the workouts are always the same. I you can, you can change them with workout reserve, but it's good training. It's good to do that kind of work day in and day out, because every week, as Paul said, there, you have a test. you ha you can look in the workout reserve and really see that you're hitting your, your personal bests and your, your workout targets, but it is solidly good training.

Paul Laursen (31:01)

Yeah, I would like to maybe just on the very last point it segways perfect Paul and maybe I wasn't clear enough, but you know, every also, you know, with those sessions, they're there to prepare you specifically for the demands of the event that you've chosen, right? So when you're on athletic and you've chosen your event, you know, whether it's a time trial in cycling or a middle distance, triathlon or, you know,

a 10K running race. The sessions are specifically made to prepare you. Even if it's a strength endurance session that has components, the neuromuscular componentry to prepare you. The short intervals typically enhance the VO2 max aspect that we know is important. And then the specific weekend sessions, almost across all of them, tend to be race specific efforts, especially within the build phase of Athletica.

So I probably did not bring that forth enough in this podcast, but make no mistake about it, principle of specificity rules. And that's why the template plans are used for. They're specific sessions, they're pieces of your event that are going to prepare you physiologically to maximize your training on D-Day. So I think it's a pretty important thing to add and a good place to potentially leave it,

Paul Warloski (32:27)

That's all for this week. Join us next week on the Athletes Compass podcast. Ask your training questions in the comments or on our social media or in the forum on athletica.ai. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to give us a five-star review. For more information or to schedule a consultation with Paul, Laursen, Marjaana, or myself, check the links in the show notes.

For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen, I am Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening.