Thoughts of the makers of myTRS

But one thing is worth mentioning before we get into the subject: The whole thing with the build-up training should not be at the cost of your health. Because what use are the most beautiful and most attractive body shapes when your joints will be damaged? Or if your tendons and ligaments are constantly aching or get ripped off? One thing is quite clear for you: You are looking for a reasonable, in a way for a “sustainable” form of build-up training. Supported by a healthy lifestyle, but at least without the dangerous game of direct intervention in the hormonal control of your organism. So: Healthy, natural gains.

And exactly at this point the topic “regeneration” comes into play. Because it is the phase of recovery, in which the actual build-up takes place following intensive training stimuli: First the microscopically small damages and injuries are repaired, which were caused by the heavy load. And then there is the adjustment that is responsible for changing the body of the people who train: Their muscles adjust to better dealing with such stress in the future by increasing their ability to perform. Whether you are specifically concerned with increasing strength or muscle mass, it is always the regeneration phase in which this desired build-up effect takes place.

So far, so good. But how can this knowledge best be used in everyday training? The question is not only how soon one should load a previously trained muscle again, but also: What do I do when the madness of everyday life destroys my plans? When I have to leave the ideal line of my well thought-out training plan and have to improvise?

Obviously – real professionals know at any time exactly which muscle parts are ready again for a hard workout. But how about us, who use our build-up training as a mass or popular sport? We do not have the years or even decades of experience to rely on our instinct. We also don't always have the complete overview, when we last trained which areas how hard – and which muscle parts these exercises actually strained.

In order to find a way out of this dilemma, we have developed myTRS: The name stands for: “My Training Regeneration Status”. Let this web service offer you suggestions on how you could design your training today! Get answers to questions like ...

• Status: Which areas of my body are currently in which state?
• Overview: Which muscle parts are ready for training again? Which should be spared? Which ones could be used for training, if you absolutely want to?
• Preview: For which muscle parts does the complete recovery last even longer, for which should a training stimulus be set soon again?
• Review: What have I trained so far? What weights have I used?
• And additionally: What do my training partners actually do in the meantime?

You see: Simple questions from the everyday life of people in training that are often anything but easy to answer. Let yourself be inspired by the suggestions of myTRS – and then decide for yourself what you want to do with today's workout.

However: After some discussions it became more and more clear that a serious and scientifically founded planning of a build-up training has a very considerable measure of complexity to cope with. Because when you consider that different muscle parts need different lengths of time to recover and to be ready for the next training load, it quickly becomes clear: Here is a smart exercise selection needed, which deals with the current recovery state of the user, in order to avoid counterproductive overtraining. And to keep an overview of everything, is surprisingly not that easy.

Soon we had first sketches and drafts: On body diagrams one should be able to see which zones are still stressed after the last training and which are candidates for the next workout. A preview of the coming days should be possible as well as a review of everything you have done so far. And based on the current regeneration status, it should also be displayed which exercises would be advisable or from which one should rather refrain.

All in all, myTRS has become a kind of assistant that should help the users with the spontaneous but individually tailored planning of their workout. It is also a tool for personal trainers who can see the status of their clients at a glance and respond to it. Last but not least, it is a platform for training partners to keep track of each other's activities as well as their own.

But what we rejected from the very beginning was the development of a system using sensors that would allow people to constantly get measured and monitored. Quite apart from the delicate question of whether such sensitive personal data could get in the hands of unauthorized persons and be misused by them, we wanted from the start a system that puts the human being at the center: He himself feels into himself and defines whether or not to perform an exercise. We think that's better than those systems that suggest to users, how they have to feel.

Are you ready to start your personal experiment with myTRS? Are you ready to leave well-trodden paths and to explore unconventional exercise combinations based on your current state of strain? And are you prepared to give more space to spontaneity and improvisation in your everyday training? Then the results of our programming work could be an effective help for you.

Welcome to myTRS – and your training will be more vital than ever.