Analytics

Reading your session analytics: decoupling, drift and load

What the numbers after a workout describe, and what they do not claim.

Decoupling compares output against heart rate between your first round and your last.

If you slow down while your heart rate climbs, output per heartbeat has fallen and the number goes negative.

You were producing less for more.

If output holds while heart rate rises, that is a different and more encouraging pattern.

HR drift is the simpler cousin: how far average heart rate moved from the first round to the last.

On its own it means little, because heart rate rises in any hard session.

It becomes informative next to pace: rising heart rate with steady pace reads very differently from rising heart rate with collapsing pace.

Round split (same stations every round)Avg HR
R1
2:40
138 bpm
R2
2:48
146 bpm
R3
3:02
153 bpm
R4
3:18
158 bpm

An example of decoupling gone negative: every round is the same work, yet the bars grow while the heart-rate column climbs from zone three into zone four. Less output per heartbeat, round over round.

Training load, expressed as TRIMP, weights time by the intensity it was spent at, so a long easy session and a short brutal one become comparable numbers.

It is the metric worth tracking week to week rather than session to session.

Long and easy60 min - similar TRIMP
Short and brutal25 min - similar TRIMP

Bar length is duration; colors are the zones the time was spent in. An hour of mostly zone two and twenty-five minutes living in zone four can carry a similar training load - TRIMP is what makes them comparable at all.

These describe what happened.

They are not instructions, and no single session says much on its own.

A slow round can be a missed grip or a water break as easily as fatigue.

The patterns worth acting on are the ones that repeat.

These metrics live in Rep The Set Pro, computed from sessions the free app already records.

The app shows every one of these on the session screen, and explains each one behind the information icon.

Same list, same words, so nothing here is a translation of something you will meet differently in the app.

Session summary: intensity 3.2 of 5, load 6714 TRIMP, density 71 percent, working time 24:50, 146 average bpm, 39 percent in zone 4 to 5.
The session card, and the six numbers it opens with.

Session

The whole workout at a glance.

Intensity (1 to 5)Your average heart-rate zone across the session, weighted by time. 1.0 is the whole session in Zone 1, 5.0 is all of it in Zone 5. A 3.2 means you sat just above Zone 3.
Load (TRIMP)Total training load: duration combined with heart-rate effort. Its value is in the comparison, not the number itself.
DensityShare of the session spent working rather than resting, so work divided by total time.
Z4 to Z5Percentage of time in the top two heart-rate zones, which is to say your hardest efforts.
ZoneThe heart-rate zone you spent the most time in.

Per exercise

Shown on each station card.

DecouplingDid your output hold up against your heart rate? Negative means output dropped faster than heart rate rose, so you were fatiguing.
FatigueHow much each round slowed down. Positive means getting slower round to round.
HR driftHow much your average heart rate climbed from the first round to the last.
Consistency (CV)How even your round times were. Lower is steadier pacing.
Trajectory (rising, flat, falling)The tag on each station card. Rising means your heart rate climbed through the exercise, flat means it stayed steady, falling means it eased off.
Pace (stable, moderate, severe)A tag shown on rep-based workouts. Stable means your pace held, moderate means it slipped a little, severe means it dropped off a lot.