System Engagement Explained: How Much Is Left in the Tank?
About this episode
The episode discusses Athletica’s Workout Reserve and Systems Engagement features, explaining how they help athletes optimize performance.
In this episode of The Athletes Compass , Paul Warloski, Dr. Paul Laursen, and Marjaana Rakai explain Athletica’s Workout Reserve and the new Systems Engagement feature. Workout Reserve is described as a battery-like metric that shows how close an athlete is to their historical best across different durations, from short sprint efforts to long aerobic performances. The team discusses how athletes can use it in real time through Velocity or Garmin, how negative values can signal breakthrough efforts, and why good historical data is essential. They also explain how Systems Engagement helps athletes and coaches see which physiological systems were stressed in a workout or race, making it easier to reverse engineer training toward the actual demands of an event. Key episode takeaways Workout Reserve acts like a “battery” showing how much capacity an athlete has left relative to their recent historical bests. A value near 100% suggests the athlete is fresh relative to that effort, while 0% means they are approaching a known personal limit. Negative values indicate new, uncharted territory. Workout Reserve can be viewed retrospectively in Athletica, live in Velocity sessions, or…
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