Moxy and Training Peaks
For the past few years, leading endurance coaches and serious athletes have integrated Moxy’s Oxygen and Hemoglobin data into warm up, training, recovery and racing protocols with tremendous results. Realizing the value of Moxy data, these forward thinking men and women often created their own training workarounds whether engaging in-house or online.
I am extremely excited to officially announce the release of support for Moxy data in Training Peaks and WKO4+ software. This integration allows athletes and trainers to seamlessly share muscle oxygen data using an industry leading training platform.
This development is the next step in our strategy of expanding the availability of critical and accurate physiological data to an ever expanding base of users. Since our founding, we’ve taken the position that the Moxy data belongs to the athlete and should be leveraged in ways that are most effective for the athlete and by extension their coach.
The Technical Stuff
If you’ve been following us you already know that we have been proponents of using the ANT+ standard to broadcast our live data and for using the .FIT standard for saving the data in files. This commitment has made the integration with Training Peaks a natural fit as Training Peaks also uses the industry standard .FIT format.
For those that follow the technology, there were a couple technological speed bumps in this integration. First, as you may know, Garmin ConnectIQ system recently drove a major revision of the FIT format from 1.0 to 2.0. Second, Moxy’s flexibility, i.e., athletes and coaches often use more than one Moxy sensor at a time, posed a unique challenge that FIT users had not encountered. Previously, the data could be identified solely by the sensor type, but now the sensor location also needed to be identified. We worked closely with Garmin, Dynastream, and Training Peaks to overcome these issues in a way that supports wide interoperability for the data. No small task.
No Shortcuts
Another important aspect of the integration is that it supports the Muscle Oxygen data in its most valuable format and is presented directly as SmO2 and THb, echoing our strategy of presenting muscle oxygen data to athletes and trainers in the most accurate and useful format possible. It’s tempting to take a short cut by using the muscle oxygen data as a surrogate for lactate or other types of zoning thresholds but we know this is fraught with potential errors that will limit improvement. We very much appreciate the leadership of Training Peaks and their commitment to providing athletes and trainers the most useful data possible.
The Practical Stuff
The support by Training Peaks helps to make the data handling invisible to the users as the data is automatically synched with other performance and physiologic data like speed, cadence, power, and heart rate. It is transferred through the same channels that athletes are already using, allowing them to use their Moxy on a ride, run and swim.
This deep level of automation unlocks the huge potentials of using Muscle Oxygen Monitoring for daily training. Our partners and individuals have blazed paths applying the Moxy to assessments; identifying training intensity zones and determining what aspect of physiology is limiting performance and of course training to the data. However, leveraging the Moxy and Training Peaks for daily use of muscle oxygen data opens a wealth of additional useful information:
- Athletes can learn how to effectively warm up, even practicing their warm-up as a part of their training.
- Athletes can see how their physiology is affected by a hard training effort on the previous day (Physiological feedback for your R.P.E.).
- Control the intensity of a recovery ride in real time and share this data effortlessly with their trainer.
- Each workout becomes a new physiologic assessment without having to visit visiting the training center or lab.
Looking Ahead / Global Impact
Remote training has become increasingly viable as data management tools have become available. Most athletes have some elements of remote training in that the majority of their workouts are done outside of the training studio.
Athletes and trainers have used Training Peaks to share data such as power, cadence, routes, and heart rate without “borders”. Now with availability of Moxy’s muscle oxygen data they are able to move onto the physiologic aspect of their bodies, understanding the performance data in ways that until now were only possible in university labs.
Enabling a more effective coaching relationship through Training Peaks, the coach can determine if the training protocols based on real time physiological data is having the desired effects, he/she can make adjustments, and communicate the adjustments to the athlete all within a single integrated platform.
The integration of Moxy data into Training Peaks is a culmination of efforts to make Muscle Oxygen data available in its most valuable form in platforms that athletes and trainers are already using. This marks the start of a fundamental change from training based solely on performance to training that integrates both performance and the physiology of the athlete.
Stay tuned, we’ll be releasing more information over the coming months as our leading coaches & athletes report back on creative ways to help athletes perform.
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