1 - Stress index

Question 1

What is stress index?

Answer 1

A metric that can describe to us the cost of a given training intervention (sets, reps, RPE and others) - what’s going to be the difficulty and the recovery cost?

Question 2

Why is volume alone insufficient to determine stress/fatigue etc?

Answer 2

3x12 vs 3x3 - volume equated can produce vastly different effects. Volume alone does not predict difficulty/fatigue from our experience and observations

Question 3

What are the two primary types of fatigue?

Answer 3

Physiological - muscle damage and perhaps nervous system etc

Psychological fatigue - mental drain

Question 4

What 3 rough areas combine to make Mike T’s version of ‘stress index’?

Answer 4

1) Number of hard sets
2) Not all sets are the same stress
3) Volume + psych fatigue

= stress index

Question 5

What type of stress is the stress index trying to look at?

Answer 5

Total stress (as opposed to central stress, peripheral stress, etc)

Question 6

What are the limitations of SI?

Answer 6

• It’s not exact because of subjectivity, RPE, etc
• Error in execution - eg: you assign 9 rpe for a set but someone does an 8/8.5 maybe a 10.
• Lifter and lift variability

Question 7

What is one KEY assumption to avoid (slight aside but related to SI)

Answer 7

More stress and more volume = better gains etc

Not true.

Athlete guided response is key