Seven days, seven lines. Minutes and an effort score for each, and the week becomes one number you can compare with the next one.
Your effort card
Seven days, seven lines. Minutes and an effort score for each, and the week becomes one number you can compare with the next one.
A week of training is hard to hold in the head and easy to hold on a card. Each line takes the minutes and the effort out of ten, and multiplies them; the column adds to the week's load. The example week comes to 1,875 over 335 minutes, and the shape matters as much as the total: two genuinely hard days, a rest day, and the rest easy enough to talk through.
The knowhow
What to look for when the card is filled in. First, whether the easy days are actually easy: a card where every session rates five or six is the collected-in-the-middle pattern that the zones day warned about. Second, whether the week is much larger than the last few, since the load week later in the year shows that a sharp jump is the pattern associated with injury. Third, whether the total moved at all over a month, because a season of identical weeks asks nothing new of you.
And so
The block figure at the foot multiplies the week by the number of weeks you intend to hold it, which is the honest way to look at a training block before you start it rather than after it hurts.
And so
Edit the rows to your own week. The numbers that matter are yours, and the point of the card is the comparison with your own next one.
Keep this
Minutes times effort, added down the week. Compare it with your own last week, not with anyone else's.
Now try it with your own numbers. Replace the example week with your own: the minutes you did each day and how hard each felt out of ten. A rest day is a zero.
Session-RPE load as a weekly total (Foster C, et al. J Strength Cond Res 2001;15:109-115). | Polarised intensity distribution in endurance training (Seiler S. Int J Sports Physiol Perform 2010;5:276-291).
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My tries: every time you save, your numbers, what they came to, and your note are kept here so you can compare later.