The next frontier in training science, in publications like the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, sounds like it was torn from the pages of Robert Pirsig鈥檚 1974 road novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig鈥檚 narrator is obsessed to the point of madness with the seemingly intractable question of how we know what is good. 鈥淪ome things are better than others,鈥 he proclaims, 鈥渢hat is, they have more quality.鈥 That鈥檚 true of training, too, according to Norwegian sports scientist Thomas Haugen: some workouts are better than others, in ways that aren鈥檛 necessarily indicated by stats like pace, power, heart rate, and cadence.
Earlier this year, Haugen, a professor at Kristiania University College in Oslo, with colleagues attempting to transform this observation into a more concrete definition of training quality鈥攁nd suggesting ways that athletes and coaches can improve it. It鈥檚 a riddle Haugen has been contemplating since the 1990s, when he was a sprinter and an assistant coach with legendary sprint guru Leif Olav Alnes, who currently coaches Karsten Warholm, the world record holder in the 400-meter hurdles. 鈥淥ne of the things I observed was that all other sprint groups in Norway tried to copy our training program, without achieving the same progress and success,鈥 Haugen says. 鈥淭hat made me realize that the training program itself was of limited importance.鈥
What does it mean, then, when you complete a training session feeling that it was a great鈥攐r at least high-quality鈥攚orkout? The easy answer is that you went faster, lifted heavier, or felt less effortful than you had in comparable workouts. But that鈥檚 a trap. Hammering your workouts at the wrong time can blow up a season and torpedo your competitive goals. When Australian researchers interviewed elite swimmers to understand how they viewed training quality, their answers were more nuanced. A common theme, in the words of one of the study鈥檚 participants, was 鈥渨hether you鈥檙e hitting the times you鈥檙e supposed to be hitting鈥濃攖hat is, not necessarily going faster, but nailing the intended pace.
The swimmers also emphasized less quantifiable quality benchmarks like 鈥渇eeling my stroke鈥 and 鈥渇eeling determined and driven.鈥 On that basis, the researchers, led by Stephanie Shell of the Australian Institute of Sport, scale that asks athletes to rate, from one to ten, their agreement with three statements: I met my physical training objectives in this session; I met my technical training objectives in this session; and I was mentally and emotionally engaged in this session. The STQ, Shell and her colleagues suggest, could be incorporated into training logs alongside conventional metrics like pace and subjective effort, offering a reminder of how well you鈥檙e doing at following your workout plan.
There鈥檚 a gap in the STQ, though, as Haugen and his colleagues point out. What if you do an amazing job of following your plan, but your plan is bad? Part of high-quality training is having workouts that are well chosen for a given athlete at a given time working toward a given goal. And even with a good plan, rigidly observing it doesn鈥檛 always make sense. 鈥淏ased on how you felt today, was the easy long run slightly too fast?鈥 Haugen asks. 鈥淥r, if you felt really good on the intervals, why didn鈥檛 you add two or three more to the session?鈥
In their paper, Haugen and his colleagues define training quality as 鈥渢he degree of excellence related to how the training process or training sessions are executed to optimize adaptations and/or improve overall performance.鈥 It鈥檚 hard to argue with so general a definition, but it鈥檚 also tricky to figure out how to make practical use of it. How do I assess whether this morning鈥檚 fartlek was very good, very bad, or somewhere in between for my overall performance in a race a few months from now?
Some workouts are better than others, in ways that aren鈥檛 necessarily indicated by stats like pace, power, heart rate, and cadence.
Haugen鈥檚 practical advice focuses on three key windows. Before a workout, you should be clear about the purpose of the session; make sure you鈥檙e properly fueled, hydrated, and equipped; and get yourself in the right head space. During the workout, you need to monitor how well you鈥檙e adhering to your goals, whether with a smartwatch or by tracking subjective effort; make adjustments based on how you鈥檙e feeling; and stay focused, fueled, and hydrated. After the workout, you need to recover well and鈥攑erhaps most crucially鈥攄ebrief and assess how the workout went in relation to your goals. 鈥淭he best practitioners have established a culture of continuous learning,鈥 Haugen and his coauthors write.
The great clich茅 of the Strava age, borrowed from corporate management gurus, is that what gets measured gets managed. But even the business world knows that isn鈥檛 the full story. Management writer Simon Caulkin : 鈥渆ven when it鈥檚 pointless to measure and manage it.鈥 Much of the fire hose of training data that our wearables collect could be said to fall into this category. But the broadest definitions of training quality land at the opposite end of the spectrum, so vague and generic in their guidance that they risk being ignored. To manage training quality, or at least keep it on our radar, maybe we do need something to measure.
A useful option is the STQ; a simpler one is the intention-execution gap: How close did you come to doing what you meant to do in the workout? You could quantify this with average pace, power, or heart rate. But the easiest and most generalizable option is your subjective perception of effort. How hard, on a ten-point scale, is the workout supposed to be? And how hard did you actually push? This approach works whether you鈥檙e in the gym or on the bike, out for hours or crushing short intervals. It adjusts for whether you鈥檙e feeling better or worse than expected. It gives you a quick and easily understandable metric for whether you pushed yourself to the degree your training plan called for. And if you start noticing a pattern of big misses, it tells you that you鈥檝e got a problem.
Haugen recognizes the benefit of tracking some quantifiable quality metrics. But that is just part of the story, he says. The core of training quality is, well, qualitative. 鈥淭his involves a strong sense of ownership of the training process, motivation, dedication, determination, and training intelligence,鈥 he says. These are the characteristics that athletes and coaches spend a career or perhaps a lifetime pursuing, and they don鈥檛 lend themselves to checklists and shortcuts. But they matter. Training quantity is nothing without training quality鈥攁nd for now, the best way to improve quality might be to keep arguing about what it means. After all, as Robert Pirsig pointed out, 鈥淚f no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn鈥檛 exist.鈥