Does TrainingPeaks work for strength training?

It records strength sessions as activities and will let a coach prescribe them in text, but its load model — Training Stress Score and the fitness, fatigue and form curves built on it — is derived from endurance intensity relative to threshold. A heavy squat session contributes almost nothing to those curves regardless of how much recovery it actually cost.

Can you track TSS for lifting?

Not meaningfully. TSS is defined as intensity relative to threshold power or pace multiplied by duration, and resistance training has neither a threshold power nor a meaningful duration-at-intensity. Various manual workarounds exist and all of them are estimates layered on a model that was not built for the input.

Is TrainingPeaks worth it for a hybrid athlete?

If you work with an endurance coach, yes, unambiguously — the coach-athlete workflow is the best in the industry and no analysis tool substitutes for a good coach. If you are self-coached and lifting is a real goal, you are paying for a model whose central abstraction does not include half your training.

What is the best alternative to TrainingPeaks?

Intervals.icu for depth and price if endurance is the whole picture. For an athlete where lifting is also a real goal, the useful alternative is not another endurance platform at all — it is something that reads both loads against one recovery budget.

Does TrainingPeaks track nutrition?

It has basic nutrition logging, and it is not the reason anyone uses the platform. It does not derive maintenance from your weight trend, so a calorie target there carries the same problem as any prediction-based figure.

Base vs TrainingPeaks for Hybrid Athletes

What TrainingPeaks owns

The coach-athlete workflow. Prescribed sessions, athlete compliance, comments, plan adjustment. Nothing else in the space matches it, and this is the actual product.

A mature load model. TSS, CTL, ATL and TSB are well understood, widely used and genuinely useful for endurance periodisation. Decades of practice have gone into interpreting them.

Multi-sport endurance. Swim, bike, run, with sport-specific threshold handling. A triathlete gets three disciplines handled properly, which Base does not currently offer.

The plan marketplace. Structured plans from real coaches for real events.

TSS is defined as intensity relative to threshold, multiplied by duration. That definition requires two things a resistance-training session does not have: a threshold-relative intensity and a meaningful duration at that intensity.

A set is thirty seconds. The rest is three minutes. Over an hour-long lifting session, the time-at-intensity is perhaps eight minutes, at an intensity the model has no way to express relative to a threshold that does not exist for the movement.

So a hard lower-body session — which may cost you two days of running quality — enters the model as a small number or as nothing. The fatigue curve does not move. The form curve says you are fresh.

Workarounds exist and none of them fix the abstraction. Manual TSS entry is a guess. "Strength TSS" heuristics are a guess with a name. The model was built for a sport where intensity relative to threshold is the meaningful axis, and resistance training is not that sport.

Where this bites

Two specific cases, both common.

Case one: form says fresh, legs say otherwise. Three heavy lower-body sessions this week and moderate running. TSB looks great. The threshold session on Thursday goes badly and nothing in the model predicted it.

Case two: the ramp is measured on half the load. You add lifting volume while holding endurance steady. The endurance load model reports a flat, sustainable build. Your total training load rose substantially and the model has no way to say so.

Neither is a bug. It is a model doing exactly what it was designed to do, applied to an athlete it was not designed for.

The comparison

	TrainingPeaks	Base
Coach-athlete workflow	Best in class	None. Not a coaching platform
Endurance load model	TSS / CTL / ATL / TSB, mature	Acute-to-chronic on endurance minutes, deliberately crude
Threshold handling	Excellent, per sport	Run and ride, with confidence labels
Swim	Yes	No
Structured workout push to device	Yes	No — you set it on the watch
Resistance training in the load model	Effectively not	First-class
Set, rep, RIR logging	No	Yes
Nutrition	Basic	Full, with measured maintenance
Recovery scoring from HRV	Limited	Against your own baselines, drives a decision
Cross-discipline deload trigger	No	Two-signal reactive
Price	Paid, tiered	Beta

On load models, and why Base's is deliberately cruder

TrainingPeaks uses a sophisticated, well-validated model of endurance load. Base uses total endurance minutes against a four-week average, which is much cruder.

That is a deliberate trade and worth explaining rather than defending.

TSS requires either a power meter or a well-calibrated threshold pace on every session. A load history with holes in it — the run where the watch died, the ride without power, the session on a treadmill — is worse than a crude history that is complete, because the model silently under-reports exactly the weeks that were unusual.

Minutes needs nothing. And the thing it is being used to catch — a large sudden jump in load — is coarse enough that a coarse measure finds it. Base is not trying to periodise your season; it is trying to notice when this week is 1.6 times your recent normal and tell you that also has a cost on the lifting side.

Different jobs, and TrainingPeaks does its job better.

When TrainingPeaks is the better call

You have a coach. This is close to decisive on its own.
You are a triathlete. Swim is a real gap in Base.
You want structured workouts pushed to your device.
Your event is the organising principle of your year and lifting genuinely is support work.

Lifting is a real goal with its own progression, not injury-prevention work.
Your form curve says fresh and your sessions say otherwise, repeatedly.
You are trying to gain muscle and nothing in the platform can tell you whether your surplus survived the training week.

What to do next

If you have a coach, keep TrainingPeaks and read what hybrid training does to the energy side — that half is usually unmanaged even in well-coached athletes, and it is where the failures come from.