Nuanced that is often overlooked. Or simply cannot be accommodated (life, bratty kids, etc.)
Yep. And this forum is a testament to how much un-coached amateurs simply cannot get this right most of the time. It’s not science’s fault. Or logic. Sort of a different conversation though. Science didn’t say add more intensity than you can absorb. Neither did TR. They can’t give you that answer.
Well, heck, @tshortt don’t sugar coat it. 
Not excluding myself from the guilty parties. 2017-2018 was a lot of intensity for me.
Zone 1 for sure. At the time I based that on Seiler’s 60-65% of HR max for his zone 1 in the 3 zone model.
It was an interesting experiment. At the time I tried this because I was stalled out, fatigued, and walking around with heavy legs all the time. I clearly wasn’t resting enough. Doing this full polarized was ridiculously slow at first, like 12mph. By the end of the block I was cruising at 17-18mph at 120bpm. That was one of the most beneficial changes.
In retrospect, I should have switched to some kind of build at week 8. Or, I should have added another intensity session like the 4x8s and see if it got me farther.
I want to address the chief complaint levied against Seiler by those that practice bro the science. They will say: I don’t have 20 hours per week to noodle around so I have to ride sweet spot.
There may be a small amount of truth in that but I don’t think it slams the door on polarized. I’ve read most of the David Bishop papers on mitochondria and I have come to the following conclusions:
Total volume regardless of intensity contributes to mitochondria biogenesis. So to build mitochondria, you can ride around in Seiler’s zone 1. Six hours of sweet spot isn’t required.
Intensity improved mitochondria respiration. Here is where you can periodize your training and mix in some hitt, threshold, or sweet spot training to get those adapations.
Most people cannot do 6 hours of sweet spot per week so if you were the 6 hour rider, one can still do mostly easy Seiler zone 1 and do your 2x20s a couple of times per week. Maybe 3x per week if you can keep the fatigue in check. Many seem to have difficulty with this!
The other adaptation is the blood plasma volume increase. We get this by doing any type of exercise and volume counts. This is another point in favor of noodling around and basically doing any kind of training. One might as well do a lot of easy, low fatigue riding, to get the gains rather high fatigue sweet spot. Noob gains!
(I’m not saying this is the whole story to training but it covers a lot of ground.)
Having only one 6h block in a week seems too contrived even for a thought experiment. But if that was the case, one could do THR, vo2 and Z2 in one ride….I often do! You could also do 2-3h of sweet spot that’ll get you somewhere as well.
But If you relax your thought experiment to 6h in a week, probably all days should have intensity. This is how I keep my fitness during the long winter, but I do some of the intensity skinning up the hills, some in the bike.
The trade off is that after 10 weeks of this the body starts responding a lot faster if you add long low intensity. So It’s not a long term plan. If you only have 6h you are going to hit the wall sooner or later doing the same, so the key will be constant changes.
If I had 6h only and was forced to stick to 1 plan for 1 year it would be something like this
Mon Off
Tue 1h THR, Vo2 combined
Wed 1h SST
ThR 1h Z2 Fasted
Fri 1h THR, Vo2 combined
Sat off
Sun 2h z2 Fasted
When I hear Seiler, Coggan, or ISM on a podcast, I don’t remember which one I’m not supposed to like.
This has been a really interesting and [mostly] insightful discussion. Thank you, everyone.
The key points that Seiler has long been making seem to me to be:
1 in the long run, for a given genetic endowment, volume is king. More volume means more capacity to ride fast – but this relationship is subject to diminishing returns [each 10% increase in volume induces a smaller and smaller percentage increase in capacity].
2 more volume means number of hours per week * ability to do those hours consistently [minimal breaks due to sickness, injury, fatigue].
3 intensity improves respiration, the delivery of oxygen to muscles, and therefore power. Other contributions too. But requires long recovery times.
4 therefore, in the long run, high volumes of training require that one limit the amount of intensity. As it turns out, for athletes that train a lot [eg, pros], that limit seems to be about 10% or less of their total training time.
[But, 5: the logic of this argument suggests that the proportion of time spent at intensity depends on total training time, training status and personal factors. After all, a day off training is in effect recovery time for us; a pro would fill with that day a long ride.]
That seems to me to be classic Seiler. In this podcast and in others recently, however, he has brought the discussion to a more basic level, through the concept of stress.
What do we want to do through training? Adaptations of various kinds. How to get them? Stress the body and perhaps particular organs, muscles. So what are the stressors that we apply?
6 total volume, as above.
7 rides of a duration and intensity that require long recovery times [eg, more than 24 hours]. These could be Z2 rides of 6-8 hours, which would stress me, or an hour ride with 3*15 30/15 VO2 max intervals, which would also stress me. And, of course, anything in between, including 2 hours of sweet spot.
8 and now we are back to the optimisation problem: how to raise volume while including some high stress rides.
8a for some people, there is just not enough time to allow Z2 rides to become stressful. Therefore, for them, all stress is through higher intensities and we are in classic Seiler land. These people have to optimise high intensity and low intensity to fill out their available volume.
8b for others, either because they have more time or they are less trained, Z2 rides can be long enough to be stressful. Seiler thinks that decoupling is an index of whether or not a ride is stressful [I think]. These people have to optimise long Z2, higher intensity and shorter Z2 to maximise their volume [or to fill out the available volume].
Importantly notice that this formulation provides support for those riders who swear by long duration low-intensity rides and those who advocate more high intensity approaches. They are two approaches to the optimisation problem 8b.
All of this is long run thinking. You can do bouts of, say, a month of high intensity every day of the week. And people do. But we are talking about the long term – years or more.
This went on a bit – sorry for that.
No problem! 
I liked Seiler. He probably agrees more with Coggan, ISM, and most others than they disagree. Seiler’s answers are all very nuanced 500 word answers.
The bros that hate him always come up with “I don’t have 20 hours to train”.
Seiler’s not a coach though. He doesn’t talk about TTE for example like KM or Cusick. Building out TTE using tempo was a game changer for me. I only got a slightly higher FTP out of it but I got a ton more durability and performed much better. Probably no exercise physiologist has studied TTE on trained athletes.
Are you sure about that? When Dylan Johnson interviewed him (this video at 9:55), he was talking specifically about using heart rate reserve instead of heart rate max as the metric to use for training. That’s an important distinction. Maybe his advice has evolved since you got that info or maybe you are mis-remembering.
I’m 100% sure that he’s said HRmax many times on many podcasts in the past. He often says different things or maybe he’s changed to HR reserve.
In any case, it’s not hard to figure out your Seiler zone 1 by any number of methods. Easy talking pace - not the ISM tempo where you can still have a conversation but your respiration rate has ticked up.
Also, I tried to do all these rides with a 125bpm HR cap rather than do them by power.
In the end, the easy Z1 volume just needs to be easy enough to induce very little day to day fatigue. You don’t have to be overly precise.
Just watched that clip from Dylan Johnson. I calculated my HR reserve and come up with 140bpm. That would definitely put me at tempo pace.
In the next sentence, he does say 65-70% of HR max. That works better for me. I guess everybody is different.
At 11:44, he says 60% of HR reserve. For me that would be a ridiculous 80bpm.
This is why people have so much trouble with Seiler. Either he mis-spoke or it’s a “it depends” situation.
Just ride easy!
I don’t think that’s how HRR works. I think it works like this:
Resting HR: 55
Max HR: 185
Heart Rate Reserve: 130
But, when talking about HRR, you’re supposed to add back in the resting HR. So 60%*130 = 78, add 55 = 133. That’s equal to 72% of my HRmax. Which he then says the 60%HRR corresponds to 55-70% HRmax, so I think I have that right. Besides, if that’s not the right math, then clearly you would need zones that go far beyond 100%HRR and I’ve never seen that.
I do agree Seiler is too wish washy to try to base your training program off him. But I think there’s some merit in his broad strokes. He’s also more recently admitted many pro athletes do pyramidal, but he lumps that in with polarized.
FWIW (and it might not be much), this is very close to what he uses with his daughter in practice (he measured her directly, but numbers of very close):
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-5-Zone-Intensity-Scale-Used-by-the-Norwegian-Olympic-Federation-and-the-3-Zone-and_tbl1_259652575. (it’s %max in this case, but to your point—and math—he has referenced HRR in several pods over the years). The percentages, etc. he has thrown around on pods have always aligned with these Norwegian zones (makes sense, since it’s his paper).
Zone 2 in that system (dang it, ANOTHER “Zone 2”) is not dilly-dallying around. Got TTE written all over it.
Hey, that’s not what they said in the video! I guess I’m now following the logic of taking a percentage of the HR reserve and then adding back the resting. But when I do that I get 126 BPM which is right on the 125bpm I used for this style of Z1.
The way I’ve come to think about polarized is that you want to go easy enough between structured workouts so that you arrive at that next workout somewhat fresh.
If one does a series of workouts, competitive ride with some buddies, chasing KOMs one day, a group ride, etc. then they keep arriving at the next workout tired. It’s no wonder that so many people flame out after some weeks or months.
@huges84 is 100% correct.
At which point in the video?
In that same area of the video. Johnson posted a graphic of the formula:
HRmax - HRresting = HRreserve.
And then Seiler said 60% of HRreserve. They never once said add back HRresting. Maybe that’s the video editor’s fault or Seiler just goofed?
In any case, I don’t get stuck on exact percentages. I know to keep it under 125bpm and I’m good. Adding back the resting gives me 126bpm so bang on.
Coincidentally, this is also my MAF (Maffetone) HR.
At 11:46 he says “I’m going to want you at 60% of your HR reserve”.
It’s hard to believe that Seiler does his Z1 at 80bpm.
