Comparison of methods to evaluate

decoupling in cycling
Konstantin Varbenov
Graz University of Technology
konstantin.varbenov@gmail.com

May 3, 2020
Abstract

Decoupling is used as a way of objectively measuring cardiac drift in cycling. It is used for assessing
fatigue and also, as a way of determining whether the combination of intensity and duration of a session
have been enough to provide a training stimulus. In this short paper, I examine different quantitative ways
of calculating decoupling. I start with implementing Seiler’s method to real-world data and, based on the
method’s weaknesses, develop two further ways of calculating decoupling. Also, the inherent limitations of
using decoupling are analysed.

I. Introduction and
P
Prel = , (2)
he basic idea of decoupling is compara- CP6

T tively simple. The ratio of power, mea-

sured in [W ], and heart rate in bpm,
changes over time in such a way that with
enough time, a higher heart rate is required for
the same power.
Let us begin by implementing Seiler’s method
[Seiler, 2020] on some real world data.
The idea behind the method is the following:
• Split the ride into 20 minute sections.
• Calculate the average heart rate and power
for each section.
• Normalize these values as shown in 1 and
2, so that both are dimensionless.
• Calculate the ratio of HRR/Prel.
• Re-normalize these values such that the
first ratio (of the first 20 minutes) equals 1.
• plot the efficiency over time (the ratios
mentioned above).
The normalization is given by
HR − HRrest
HRR = (1)
HRmax − HRrest
where
HRR
HR
= Heart rate reserve in %
= Current heart rate in bpm
HRrest = Resting heart rate
HRmax = Maximum heart rate
CP6 = Critical power for 6 minutes
P = Current power in [W ]
Prel. = Relative power in %.
The theory is that as the ride progresses,
HR will increase for the same power and thus
efficiency will drop. This will become visible
in the plot: positive decoupling will occur.
Implementation
The method described above was implemented
on a real ride. During the ride, power and
heart rate data were collected using consumer
products. The ride itself was 3:30h long, pre-
dominantly flat and without any time (only
about 30s) spent above zone 2. Figure 1 shows
the power and heart rate data for the ride.
The ride was analysed as described above,
see Table 1. Analysis showed one weakness

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 Quantitative methods for decoupling assesment • May 2020

of the method: it relies very heavily on the Figure 2: 20’ Decoupling

first 20 minutes of data! This is a significant
issue in real-world data as the first 20 minutes
are usually very noisy (they include, above all,
warm-up and ride through traffic). Also, a 20
minute normalization period appears to be too
short.
To remedy these issues, I discarded the first 20
minutes and normalized over the following 1h.
That is, the efficiency in the timespan of 0:20h -
1:20h is defined as := 1.

Figure 1: Ride data

physiological pathways lead to higher effi-

It is obvious that the general trend of the
decoupling 2 is indeed increasing. The second
half of the ride (escpecially towards the end)
shows some noticeable decoupling of up to
20%.
However, a few limitations are visible:
• This method only applies to steady, Z1/Z2
rides. Because it relies on the ratio of
power and heart rate, it cannot be extrap-
olated to higher zones, where different
Table 1: Seiler decoupling
ciency and alter the result.
• This method was based on indoor train-
ing. As such, it is inherently incapable
of dealing with the large variability of
power when riding outside. In particular,
downhill sections are hard to handle be-
cause power drops to 0, while HR doesn’t
go back to resting HR. Computationally,
this can be a problem, because the ratio of
power to HR will require a division by 0
if there is a sufficiently long coasting. The
same applies to pauses.
• Splitting the ride into 20 minute segments
is a very coarse resolution and makes
analysis very hard. Splitting it into 5’ sec-
tions instead introduces huge, unrealistic
fluctuations (decoupling of up to 70%),
rendering this method useless for fine-
grain analysis. Instead, the method can
be modified to be coninuous by using a
moving average instead of fixed segemnts.

Start End øPow. [W] øHR [bpm] øPow. [%] øHR [%] Eff. Norm. eff. Dec. [%]
0:20 0:40 106 126 0,29 0,50 1,74 1,17 17,14
0:40 1:00 154 136 0,42 0,56 1,35 0,91 -8,77
1:00 1:20 144 136 0,39 0,56 1,43 0,97 -3,23
1:20 1:40 156 139 0,42 0,58 1,38 0,93 -6,98
1:40 2:00 147 140 0,40 0,59 1,48 1,00 -0,42
2:00 2:20 134 139 0,36 0,58 1,59 1,07 7,37
2:20 2:40 146 143 0,40 0,60 1,52 1,03 2,78
2:40 3:00 131 141 0,35 0,59 1,68 1,13 13,26
3:00 3:20 109 136 0,29 0,56 1,90 1,28 28,31

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 Quantitative methods for decoupling assesment • May 2020
II. Methods
I have devised a new method of analysis that
aims to address some of the shortcomings men-
tioned above. The main considerations while
developing it were the following:
• Seiler’s method normalizes heart rate
based on the assumption that an athlete’s
HRR (Heart rate reserve) ranges between
the resting and maximum heart rate. How-
ever, the resting heart rate is never reached
during rides. There exists a practical lower
bound for HR which can be determined
by stopping during the ride for 5 minutes
and looking at your heart rate monitor.
This heart rate will be called HR0 . When
normalized this way, the new HRR met-
ric (in %) will now be within the range of
[0; 1].
• For reasons that will be apparent below,
we normalize power by dividing it by CP1 ,
or the power that can be sustained for
a minute. This ensures that Prel is also
within the range of [0; 1].
• A finer analysis than the 20’ sections
is desired, that is, decoupling should
be a continuous metric, such as imple-
mented in the analysis software intervals
[intervals.icu]
• The metric needs to cope better with noisy
data: pauses, stopping; and also be robust
with its comparison period. As we saw, the
first 20 minutes are not an ideal choice.
The method I devised goes as follows: first,
HR and power are normalized, similar to
Seiler’s method:
HR − HR0
HRrel = (3)
HRmax − HR0
and
P
Prel = . (4)
CP1
Power is then averaged over 1 minute to mini-
mize noise (hence the normalization in 4). The
data points obtained, HRrel and Prel , are plot-
ted against each other and a linear regression
is applied to determine their dependence. For
the regression, only the data points between
the 20th and 80th minute are used: this is the
reference period, which means that for this
hour, decoupling is defined as zero.
For the rest of the ride, HRR is predicted and
compared to the real HRR. The difference is
the decoupling. Finally, decoupling is plotted
as a 10 minute moving average1 to negate the
effects of short-term noise.
The analysis of the same ride as in the previous
section is described below, see figures 3 and 4.
Several important observations should be
made.
• Firstly, 1 minute average power and heart
rate (at the end of this minute) correlate
well (r = 0, 88, R2 = 0, 78).
• The values for HRmax and HR0 don’t mat-
ter mathematically when regression is per-
formed. They are used, here, solely for
the purpose of plotting both heart rate
and power in the range from 0 to 1. Of
course, when normalization is in the form
described in equation 1, the denominator
shouldn’t be equal to 0 and also the frac-
tion should be positive, so that the result-
ing decoupling also has the correct sign.
• The main reason this method generalizes
better than Seiler’s is that when regression
is applied, information from data points
with high heart rate and power are better
preserved. When a period of 20 minutes
is averaged over, much more of this infor-
mation is lost: this is the price one pays
when binning before regression.
• The inherent weaknesses of decoupling
become more clear, they will be discussed
in section III.
1 The value of 10 minutes is somewhat arbitrary and
subject to change. It has to be long enough to be able to
account for short descents etcc. where power is low. Also,
being the same magnitude as Seiler’s 20 minutes, we get
comparable absolute values.
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 Quantitative methods for decoupling assesment • May 2020

Figure 3: Relative power vs. relative heart rate

Figure 4: Decoupling over time

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 Quantitative methods for decoupling assesment • May 2020
Several additional techniques can be applied
to try and deal with the the major shortcoming
of the analysis: low wattage. As is visible from
the plot in figure 4, low power quickly results
in momentarily higher decoupling - note that
there is always a slight offset. To try and rem-
edy this, I experimented with two approaches:
• Filter power below a certain wattage con-
sidered to be "coasting" - here, 80 Watts.
• Multiply the decoupling value with the
averga power for the last minute. The idea
behind this was that low power will then
counteract the decoupling it caused.
Unfortunately, both methods did not work out
to a satisfactory degree. Multiplying by the
average power actually only introduces noise
and doesn’t really compensate for coasting, so
the method is not further pursued.
Filtering for power below 80 Watts is more
interesting, so I will present it quickly.
Generally, regression works just as above, but
the data points with Prel < 0, 16 are removed.
This even has the effect of reducing correlation
slightly to an r of 0,86. The main issue is that
now, with data removed, the ride is sliced into
many separate chunks, which introduces an
otherwise non-existent discontinuity. This is
a substantial problem because parts of the ride
which were not next to each other are now
neighbours and the averaging over time may
Figure 5: Relative power vs. relative heart rate
be physically nonsensical if it contains such
jumps.
Another issue is that analysis is now non-
intuitive: the x-axis doesn’t represent physical
time 2 . Finally, the physiological process of
recovering during coasting/pauses cannot be
captured and measured.
As expected, a generally lower absolute
value comes as a result: when low power is
excluded, this is a natural consequence.
III. Discussion
Implementing a computational method to asses
decoupling in real world, outside cycling can
be a useful tool. However, it exposes some of
the method’s weaknesses. They include:
• the inability to properly cope with large
power variations. This mainly includes
coasting and pausing, but also any riding
above Z2 influences the HR response and
makes data interpreting more difficult.
• To automate this analysis is not easy. An
algorithm that detects the appropriate cut-
off point (to discard useless data at the
beginning) and also the appropriate refer-
ence period (used to define the decoupling
of 0) is not easy to develop. Alternatively,
the user of the software may individually
2 Here, 20% of the data was filtered out
Figure 6: Decoupling over time
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 Quantitative methods for decoupling assesment • May 2020

select those values based on some guide-

lines, as in intervals.
• Which averaging durations are used affect
the absolute values, and so making con-
clusions that inform training depends on
them. As such, these durations need to be
tailored to each athlete based on his/her
history.

The practical significance of decoupling as

a metric to asses field data will ultimately de-
pend on the success of these points.

References
[Seiler, 2020] Seiler, S. (2020). Low intensity
endurance training.
Youtube video

[intervals.icu] Cycling analysis software.

go to webpage