Anyone with experience of merging polarized (80/20) and TR bike plan?

Training
42

^ runners, mostly targeting 5000m race: Impact of training intensity distribution on performance in endurance athletes - PubMed

anything for cyclists?

43

Iā€™d be very cautious to draw any conclusions for cyclists based on studies with runners. Intense running is so taxing for the body, taking it easy/logging more Z1 can have a complete different purpose for runners. And adding mid-zone time can be far more stressful than for cyclists.

44

which I specified earlier. They were doing a 10k XC race though. If I remember correctly, they are normally 5k and other middle distance specialists for the track season and were doing XC to get faster.

45

Quick glance this is what I see:

  • single participant
  • novice runner
  • trained lactate threshold season 1
  • trained polarized season 2
  • improved by 7% in season 2

Am I reading this correctly? This is not a study, it is n=1.

46

Not sure what that is, maybe it references the other article.

47

sorry Iā€™m in back-to-back meetings and googled the title, that was the first pdf that came up. Not the article I googled.

48

I havenā€™t, mostly because what Iā€™ve been doing has worked for me for a number of years, and making a change was compelling based on the info that I found. I was turned off by one of the Velo News podcasts with Seiler when even proponents of Polarized said theyā€™d use Tempo and SS in certain situations, where the whole time before they were saying to absolutely avoid this.

Iā€™m sure it works but for some but Iā€™ll pass on it for most for that reason and others.

49

seems to make sense, cause they are doing so much zone 3, theyā€™d need the less intensity. but to another comments point, since this is running data Iā€™m not going to jump in on this, thanks though. Also, Iā€™m not here to bash polarized or defend it, so quietly bowing out of this one. Thanks!

50

Itā€™s actually really easy as a runner to get in to the middle zone without even traditionally calling it intensity, probably moreso than in cycling. Either way I was just saying it is plausible based on those results, considering most people are saying it wonā€™t even work as well as more middle intensity for lower volume athletes. One of the main reasons that it is said to train at this level is more for what is going on at a cellular level, so while there are some nuances between sports, endurance training is actually pretty straightforward and has many consistencies between sports.

In my case I did go through and change up my plans to have more like 10-15% of cycling time as intensity, 5-10% of my running as intensity, and swimming is a bit more, 30 minutes of middle intensity or 1/3 of total swimming, but that is roughly 5% of total time, so my distribution is like 80-85% easy conversation pace, 5% middle, and 10-15% above threshold. So in doing that, I also have been able to work in more volume because Iā€™m not so fatigued. I donā€™t have any super big TSS weeks, but have been holding steady and not quitting/failing many workouts. Iā€™m in the 10-11 hour range/week, but cycling is 5-6 hours of that time. This is my third year using TR and by far my most successful build/specialty block, gaining 15-20 watts on the bike and dropping 30s/mile on the run.

So you can see, consistency when following the TR plan with no modifications wasnā€™t as consistent. I think the best thing about following this sort of plan is it does a good job of keeping the hard days hard and the easy days easy. I almost feel like rest weeks arenā€™t quite necessary, but they do allow me to catch up on dad/husband duties so still very beneficial.
image

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we all need rest!

good luck!

52

hi, just came across this. did that deep dive podcast ever happen? i think i listened to most of the podcast and canā€™t remember them discussing polarized training per se. also searching for polarized in the blog had no results. itā€™s a bit odd i find, given it seems to be a popular topic.
i guess what it all comes down to is what to do with sweet spot, tempo and possibly even threshold work. dump it all? my best guess is, that it (again) serves to make up for a lack of volume in the LIT.

53
  • Nope.

The best we have are Nateā€™s comments from another thread. He covers several points and what I expect would be the prime takeaways from their thoughts on Polarized. Here are the direct links to his comments from that thread.

My gut tells me they really donā€™t see POL as a good option for their user base (at least the majority) and we wonā€™t hear about this until (if ever) they release the magic goodness that has been teased and hinted at over the last few months.

54

thatā€™s already helpful, thank you.