How your weekly TSS (training load) target is set

One of the most common questions is: how does IntervalCoach decide how much I can train in a given week? Here is exactly how the weekly TSS (training load) target is set, and how you can shape it yourself.

It starts from your fitness (CTL), not your FTP or VO2max

The weekly load target is anchored to your CTL — your 42-day rolling training load (the "Fitness" number on your dashboard). CTL is the best available answer to "how much can this athlete absorb right now," because it already reflects exactly what you personally have been training, week after week.

Your FTP and VO2max are deliberately not used to set volume. They describe how strong you are, not how much load you currently tolerate. FTP still drives your zones and the intensity of each workout — it just is not what decides your weekly hours.

In short, the weekly target works out to a little above your target fitness level, multiplied across the week. The small buffer above your current CTL is what actually nudges fitness upward over time.

What happens with no training history

If you are brand new and there is no history to learn from, the system does not guess from population averages or last year. Your first week is anchored to your current fitness (roughly 1.5x your current weekly load), and the plan ramps up from there. The starting point is always "where you actually are today," never an abstract target dropped on you. If you have already proven you train more than that, your demonstrated volume wins and the cap steps aside.

How fast it is allowed to climb

Week-to-week increases are capped by a ramp rate, measured in CTL per week. You choose the aggressiveness in the CTL target wizard:

• Conservative — around 3 CTL per week

• Moderate — around 5 CTL per week

• Aggressive — around 7 CTL per week

There is also a hard safety ceiling (around 10 CTL per week) that no setting can cross. If your goal needs a big jump in fitness, the plan stretches the build across more weeks rather than overloading you in any single week.

Progressive overload

Because the early ramp weeks sit below your goal, the plan keeps track of the load you "missed" during the ramp and adds it back as a small overload in the later weeks, slightly above your goal — just enough that you still accumulate the total stress needed to reach your target fitness, instead of falling short.

You can also verify this is actually happening: the Analytics page has a Progressive Overload view that compares similar workouts week over week, so you can see whether your sessions are genuinely getting harder over time, not just whether the plan intended them to.

Periodization shapes the curve

On top of the ramp, the weeks are not flat. Build weeks rise, then a recovery week pulls volume back (typically to somewhere between 55% and 75% of the base, depending on the model), and as a race approaches the plan tapers. So your weekly-TSS line climbs in steps, with regular easier weeks baked in, and dips into each race.

Fine-tuning it yourself

None of this is locked. If you think like a coach, you can shape the model and let the system handle the week-to-week bookkeeping:

• Periodization model (Settings > Goals) — linear, undulating, block, polarized or pyramidal.

• Recovery depth — how much recovery weeks cut back.

• Mesocycle length — 3 to 6 weeks.

• Taper profile — aggressive, standard or conservative.

• Training methodology (Settings > Training) — standard, Norwegian singles, Norwegian doubles, or the Easy Interval Method.

• Ramp aggressiveness — the conservative / moderate / aggressive choice in the CTL target wizard.

Why it works this way

The design avoids inventing a number for you. It reads what you have actually done (CTL), starts there, limits how fast it is allowed to grow, and lets you reshape the model if you disagree with it. Training age is handled implicitly: a beginner has a low CTL and a veteran a high one, so the ramp naturally starts from each person's real level.