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cycleRtools (version 1.0.4)

Wbal: W' balance.

Description

Generate a vector of W' balance values from time and power data. The underlying algorithm is published in Skiba et al. (2012).

Usage

Wbal(data, time = "timer.s", pwr = "power.W", CP, .string = FALSE)

Arguments

data
a data.frame/matrix object with time and power columns.
time
character; name of the time (seconds) column in data.
pwr
character; name of the power (watts) column in data.
CP
a critical power value for use in the calculation.
.string
are column name arguments given as character strings? A backdoor around non-standard evaluation. Mainly for internal use.

Value

  • A numeric vector of W' balance values, in kilojoules.

Details

The algorithm used here, while based on Dr Phil Skiba's model, differs in that values are positive as opposed to negative. The original published model expressed W' balance as W' minus W' expended, the latter recovering with an exponential time course when P < CP. An issue with this approach is that an athlete might be seen to go into negative W' balance. Hence, to avoid assumptions regarding available W', this algorithm returns W' expended (and its recovery) as positive values; i.e. a ride is begun at 0 W' expended, and it will increase in response to supra-CP efforts.

References

Skiba, P. F., W. Chidnok, A. Vanhatalo, and A. M. Jones. Modeling the Expenditure and Reconstitution of Work Capacity above Critical Power. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 44, No. 8, pp. 1526-1532, 2012. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22382171{PubMed link}.

See Also

Wbal_plots.