HomeWHATWhat Is A Trimp

What Is A Trimp

03 FEBRUARY 2020

Measuring heart rate is one of the most popular ways of monitoring load in team sports. If the heart rate of players were high during a session, we assume that it was a physically challenging session and vice versa. Because of this very intuitive method of monitoring load, it is one of the most popular methods in team sports. However, for achieving positive training outcomes we are not only concerned with the intensity of a session. Ultimately, the interaction between the volume (i.e. duration) and intensity will determine our training stimulus and our training outcome. Several researchers have developed methods to determine this training stimulus based on heart rate data. In this blog, we will explain Heart Rate TRIMP methods and their differences.

BANISTER’S HEART RATE TRIMP The easiest way of combining both volume and intensity in one variable would be to multiply the average heart rate of a session by the duration. Eric Banister was the first one to come up with an adjusted version of this approach. He called this variable Training Impulse (TRIMP) and included the duration, average heart rate, and an exponentially weighted factor for the intensity of the session (see formula 1 in the footnote).

HEART RATE TRIMP IN INTERMITTENT SPORTS Even though Banister’s TRIMP can be used in endurance sports, this approach is hard to implement in intermittent sports like football and field hockey. In these sports, the average heart rate is not a good representation of the intensity of a session. The average heart rate will not reflect the times when the heart rate is near the maximum heart rate of a player (for example during repeated sprints). It also wouldn’t be a good indication of the time spent in the lower speed zones (in essence around 70% of the time in matches). For these reasons, the use of this approach will not give an accurate value of the load placed on the players in team sports. Table 1: Edwards’ method

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EDWARDS’ AND LUCIA’S HEART TRATE TRIMP To better account for the intermittent nature of team sports, Edwards and Lucia both defined different heart rate zones. For Edwards’ method, the maximal heart rate of a player (i.e. 100%) is used to define five relative heart rate zones and their corresponding coefficient (see Table 1). Lucia based her heart rate zones on the heart rate of the player which corresponds to low, moderate and high intensity exercise (see Table 2), and allocated arbitrary coefficients to each of these zones.

TIME SPENT IN A HEART RATE ZONE For both methods, the time spent in each of these heart rate zones is multiplied by the corresponding arbitrary coefficient to determine the TRIMP score. The drawback of Lucia’s approach is that each player has to perform a maximal exercise test in a lab setting to determine the heart rate zones. To make matters worse, improvements (or decrements) in physical fitness will affect these zones. For the successful implementation of this approach, players need to perform these maximal exercise tests multiple times in a year. Hence, in most player monitoring systems Edward’s TRIMP is used to determine the Heart Rate TRIMP. Table 2: Lucia’s method

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