You open Capacity. Your score is 54 — yellow. The question that immediately follows: “Can I train today?”
It’s the right question. But the answer isn’t in the color alone. It’s in understanding what yellow (and green, and red) actually represent — and what they’re asking you to do about it.
TL;DR
- ✓ Green (70–100): your body is recovered — good day to push intensity
- ✓ Yellow (40–69): the most common state — train, but skip PRs and max efforts
- ✓ Red (0–39): your reserves are low — rest, light movement only
- ✓ Single-day colors are data points; 3-day trends are the real signal
- ✓ Green days are earned by respecting yellow and red days, not by ignoring them
- ✓ Use the 3-day rule when you're on the fence: look at the last 3 days before deciding
Green (70–100): you’re recovered
💡 Green means go — not must go
A green score means your body is ready for effort. Your sleep held up, your HRV is at or above baseline, and yesterday’s activity didn’t leave significant residual load. Your nervous system has had enough time to restore.
This is a good day to push — but it’s not an obligation. Active recovery on a green day still has value. The point is that intensity is available to you, not that you’re wasting something by being easy.
Green is when you schedule your hard sessions, your PR attempts, your long runs, your heavy lifting days. If you’ve been waiting for the right day to test yourself, this is it.
What green looks like in practice:
- Sleep was solid — duration and timing close to your usual pattern
- HRV is at or above your 14-day baseline
- Yesterday was a rest or easy day — Strain score is high
The mistake most people make with green: seeing it consistently and raising their baseline intensity until green days become rare. Green scores are earned by respecting yellow and red days. If you ignore those signals, you grind your recovery window down until nothing scores green anymore.
Yellow (40–69): pace yourself
Yellow is the most common state for anyone who trains regularly. It’s not a problem — it’s cruise control.
Something is slightly off: maybe sleep was shorter than usual, HRV dipped a bit below baseline, or yesterday’s activity left some residual load. You’re functional. You’re not depleted. But you’re not at peak either.
🔑 Yellow doesn't mean don't train
Moderate-intensity training on a yellow day is completely fine — a tempo run, a mid-weight session, a long bike ride, a swim. What yellow means is: skip PRs and max efforts. Don’t chase a personal best when your body is already managing some load. Save the breakthrough sessions for green days.
Yellow is also informative during warmup. If you start a session feeling better than expected, you can push a bit harder. If you feel flat and sluggish even after 10 minutes of warmup, that’s your body confirming what the score said — back off.
What yellow looks like in practice:
- Sleep was slightly shorter or later than usual
- HRV is mildly below your baseline — not dramatically, but noticeably
- Yesterday had moderate activity that hasn’t fully cleared yet
One yellow day is just noise. The pattern to watch is yellow trending toward red over several consecutive days — that’s when fatigue is accumulating faster than you’re recovering.
Red (0–39): protect your recovery
⚠️ Red is a signal, not a failure
A red score means your body is under significant stress and your reserves are low. This could be from a hard training block, poor or disrupted sleep, the early stages of illness, high-stress life events, or travel across time zones.
What red doesn’t mean: you’re broken, weak, or failing. Elite athletes get red days after races and intentional overload blocks. Red followed by real recovery is how adaptation happens. The problem is only when you ignore red and keep pushing.
On a red day, the calculus changes. A hard training session on top of an already depleted system doesn’t produce adaptation — it digs the hole deeper. The fastest path back to green is often a genuine rest day.
What to do on a red day:
- Prioritize sleep — this is the single highest-leverage intervention
- Light movement only: a walk, gentle yoga, stretching
- Nothing that significantly elevates your heart rate
- Eat well, hydrate, and let the recovery process do its job
A forced rest day when you’re red almost always results in a green or solid yellow the next morning. It feels counterintuitive, but the math works out.
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The 3-day rule
Single-day scores are data points. Three-day trends are the actual signal.
🔑 Look back before you decide
Before any training session, glance at your last 3 days of scores — not just today’s. The recent trend tells you something today’s number alone can’t.
- 2+ green days before today’s yellow → you can probably push. Your body has been well-recovered.
- 2+ yellow or red days before today’s green → that green might be fragile. Train, but don’t max out.
- 3 consecutive red days → something is systemically wrong. Reduce load, fix sleep, check for illness or life stress.
The color system is designed to be simple enough to act on in 10 seconds every morning. But the more you learn to read the trend behind the colors, the more useful it becomes.
Patterns that tell you the most
Beyond the 3-day rule, a few patterns are worth recognizing:
Declining trend over 5+ days: You’re in a recovery deficit. Add rest, fix sleep, reduce training load until the trend reverses.
Green → Green → Green with no hard training: Either you’re not training hard enough to create meaningful stress, or your baseline is still stabilizing (common in the first 2–3 weeks). Both are fine — just different situations.
Red after a big event: Expected and healthy. A hard race, a long travel day, a stressful week at work — red is the appropriate response. Let it resolve naturally over 2–3 days without forcing intensity back in too soon.
Yellow slowly creeping up toward green over a recovery week: This is the pattern you want to see after a hard training block. Your body is responding. Stay patient.
The colors are a starting point. Your body’s feedback during warmup, your sleep quality, your mood — these are all data too. The Battery Score gives you a calibrated baseline. What you do with it is still yours to decide.
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