Training Status Explained: How Simma Reads the Pattern Behind a Form Score

A swimmer's form score is -12. Is that a problem?

The number cannot say. If she has been oscillating between -8 and -15 for three weeks, loading and recovering, it is what training looks like. If she has fallen from +5 to -12 across four consecutive sessions with no recovery between them, it is something else. Same number, different story, and the story is what a coach wants.

Training status is how Simma reads the story. It is not a coaching judgment. It is a set of rules applied to the shape of recent sessions, and this piece sets the rules out so you can see exactly what a badge is claiming and decide for yourself how much to trust it. How to Read Your Squad View is the shorter companion: what each badge means on the screen.

Three things the rules need first

Status is computed per sport, from the athlete's last sixteen weeks of sessions in that sport. Before any rule fires, three things are derived.

A form score per session. Fitness minus fatigue, as described in Training Load Explained, evaluated at each session and sampled daily in between.

Zones calibrated to this athlete. Once there are at least four weeks of days and four sessions, the athlete's own distribution of daily form is cut into zones by percentile: the deepest tenth of their days is their strain zone, the next fifteen percent grind, the middle half coast, the next fifteen taper, and the top tenth decondition. Everyone has a deepest tenth, so the two extremes also have to clear a fixed threshold before they are called; otherwise they soften to the zone beside them. Before the four weeks exist, fixed zones are used.

Their normal cadence. The typical gap between sessions in this sport, from the same sixteen weeks. Every judgment about silence is made against this, not against a calendar.

The pattern

From the last several form scores, one of four shapes is chosen:

• Monotonic decline. Three or more consecutive sessions each lower than the last.
• Oscillating. Form changing direction at least twice, with the size of the swings noted as gentle, moderate or volatile.
• Recovery. Two of the last three changes upward.
• Steady. None of the above.

The rules, in order

Rules are tried in this order and the first match is the status. Each comes with a reason line, which is shown under the badge and is usually more useful than the badge itself.

No sessions ever, or a gap of more than five times normal cadence (at least 21 days) → Inactive. For someone who trains several sports, an inactive sport is often a season, not a problem.

Only one or two sessions → Getting started. No pattern to read yet.

Sessions again after a gap of more than 14 days → Welcome back. The first sessions back look harsh in the numbers; this badge says so.

Gap of more than 2.5 times normal cadence (at least 7 days) → Disengaged. A daily runner after three days, a weekly swimmer after about seventeen. If the athlete is active in other sports the reason says so, because a pool gone quiet during a cycling block is a different case from silence everywhere.

Past normal cadence by more than two days, nothing in the last seven → Quiet. Due, not yet gone. The weekly swimmer reads as quiet from about day nine. This exists because "disengaged" waits a long time on purpose, and a coach may want to know earlier.

Then, for an athlete who is training within their own cadence:

Monotonic decline, in strain or grind → Overreaching. Falling without recovery, and already deep. Monotonic decline elsewhere → Monitor: trending down, not yet in the deep zones.

Oscillating and volatile → Monitor. Big swings between stress and recovery, wherever they sit. Oscillating in strain → Monitor: a healthy rhythm, but all of it deep. Oscillating in grind → Building: loading and recovering while regularly fatigued, which is what a productive block looks like. Oscillating anywhere else → On track.

Recovery from strain or grind → Recovering. Recovery from elsewhere → On track.

Steady in decondition → Undertrained: regular sessions, load too light for them. Steady in taper → On track, well rested. Steady in strain → Overreaching: sustained deep fatigue with no variation. Steady elsewhere → On track.

Separately, ten or more sessions across all sports in seven days adds a high-volume flag to whatever status was chosen.

That is the whole classifier. Nothing in it is a judgment about the athlete; it is a description of the shape of their recent numbers against their own history.

What it cannot know

It does not know the cold, the planned rest week, the closed pool, the exam, the new job. It does not know that this athlete always looks like this in March. It cannot tell productive overreaching that was planned from the unplanned kind, except by whether recovery shows up between sessions, which is the only evidence it has.

Two consequences follow. An amber or red badge is a reason to open the athlete, not a conclusion about them. And a green badge means the numbers look like training, which is not the same as nothing to say.

What this looks like in practice

Three shapes we see often, described as numbers rather than as advice.

A runner's form dips to -10 after Tuesday's intervals. The last three weeks oscillate cleanly: load, recover, load, recover. Status: On track. The dip is the pattern.

A cyclist six weeks from a target event has form swinging between -8 and -18 for a fortnight, deeper than usual, bouncing back each time, in their grind zone. Status: Building.

A cyclist's last four sessions read -5, -11, -16, -22. Race Saturday, long ride Sunday, intervals Tuesday, group ride Thursday, no easy day between. Status: Overreaching, with the reason "form declining without recovery". What to do about it is not in the data.

What should your assistant be able to do here?

The thresholds are Simma's defaults: three falling sessions, 2.5 times cadence, two days of grace, the percentile cuts. If you want your assistant to read a pattern these rules do not cover, or to apply different thresholds to one athlete, email coaching@getsimma.com and tell us what you want to ask it. We build tools from those.

Simma computes this status for every athlete, every sport, every week, and shows it with its reason on your squad view and to the assistant you already use, so the reading is done before you decide what to do with it. Create your coaching account.