So hard to keep track, because, you know, …work. 
Anyways, I haven’t seen much discussion about TSS. I believe the TR model is based on TSS and the premise (theirs) that any TSS, regardless of source, is stress. So a “high intensity” session at 100 TSS for an hour + is equivalent to a 100 TSS over several hours at much lower intensity (Z1-2). So in essence, DJ is challenging TR’s premise of TSS…yes? no?
Categorically no. They’ve said as such previously.
@Dr_Alex_Harrison
I’m responding to your whole post, not just what I’m quoting above (trying to use space etc)
So ok. Fine. Very plausible scenario. But then what? I think the “then what?” stage is the source of much of the criticism (at least from me).
After some initial successes I think I would want a more long term relationship. As in, I’m happy to keep giving you money and foster a great working relationship but you gotta give me something more than what you gave me when I was new and clueless. Everything is awesome (and worked) then.
Looking back on some of the little debates I’ve had about TR (here and offline) and often I just thought: “well, let’s see how you feel in two years”.
Your post brings up an interesting question that I’ve been keen to ask on this forum for the last couple of years. Obviously you are referring to Dylan’s experience as a coach but perhaps it’s worth look at the other side here. How much real world coaching experience does the TrainerRoad team have and in particular Chad.
One of the things that makes a coach different to a training plan is the feedback loop, not just for the benefit of the athlete, but also for the benefit of the coach.
From what I can see (and I’m not so sure if it’s up to date or not) Chad Timmerman has 10 years of coaching experience and is a “Level I USA certified Cycling and Triathlon coach”.
Two things of note here:
TrainerRoad is 11 years old and I think Chad is one of the founders so it would appear that all of his coaching experience is from that period.
The text I quoted above is a bit ambiguous, as far as I can see. A Level 1 cycling coach is top bracket whereas a Level 1 Triathlon coach is much lower down.
From memory, Nate and Chad met when Chad was teaching spin classes in Reno (that may being doing him a disservice).
Anyway, I’d really like to get a handle on just how much experience there is there, not to discredit Chad and the work he has done (I actually enjoyed his part in the podcasts up until the point I got bored with it in general), but more to get a perspective on the relative experience levels between the sides.
Hopefully this post isn’t taken in the wrong vein.
Mike
Uh, you can easily manipulate HR by just training in hotter/cooler temps… Not sure that’s a great metric. Also, if you’re overtraining it will be harder to raise your HR which would imply you’d need to work HARDER to hit your intervals which would then only further increase overtraining.
exact same thing can be said about power.
I did L’Etape du Tour a few years ago. A few km up the Semnoz (the final climb) I looked down to see I was doing 12kph. I was about 12 km from the top at that stage so I figured one more hour I’ve got this. ~15 mins later I look down again and I’m doing 10kph an hour and I’m effectively still an hour from the top. Another 15mins and now I’m doing 8kph and my mind is starting to crack.
This thread feels exactly like that.
You can’t arbitrarily raise power by changing temperature. You may change the RPE required to hit a desired wattage target but if it’s 70 vs 90 degrees, the force required is still the same. Conversely, if I want to ride at say 200 watts, I could simply raise my HR by 10-20 BPM by wearing a parka on the turbo as opposed to no shirt in front of a fan. So definitely not the same.
Yeah, which is why I expect they will respond to Dylan’s critique. Something like “here are the studies that support our approach, and the relevant tradeoffs”.
Yes, you pretty much answered your own question. Your RPE can change even if you are doing same amount of power. So does HR.
Almost all these points are moot because 99% of us will never be actually fast, merely faster (per TR’s tag line).
So train however you want, just know that if you never have more than a handful of hours in a week, and aren’t growing younger, you’re always going to be limited.
:
My take-away (compiled from several sources):
If you max out volume and then max out intensity, you might come close to your true potential (w/ a discount for age).
Unfortunately, almost all hobby cyclists don’t have the ability to do either; see first line. You’re better off just to enjoy riding your bike.
If that’s the one I think it is, the last 6-7km are just relentless 
I watch Dylan’s videos and find them interesting and entertaining but a lot of the research studies that he presents are from Seiler and people associated with him so it is coming from one point of view. The problem with what Seiler presents (the whole on average 20% of sessions being hard) is he’s looking at elite athletes and how they train. Google "Seiler’s Hierarchy of Endurance Training Needs* and look through the slides. These elite athletes are training a ton, as in 40 to nearly 60 times a month so multiple times a day. It shows a rower who had 598 training sessions and 1041 hours of training in a year. Some months he did hardly any zone 3-4 training and no zone 5 and other months nearly 50% of his training sessions were zone 3-5. So the whole you can only go hard twice a week and everything else has to be zone 2 doesn’t hold up. You need to be cautious when comparing training of an elite athlete and someone who trains 175 times a year and 300 hour and saying they should be training the same way.
Also, Seiler’s Scand J Med Sci Sports 2013 article where the whole 4 x 8 intervals came out as the best thing to do in the world has an interesting watch out besides it had a very small sample size. There were 4 groups and the only group which didn’t contain any women was the 4 x 8 group. All the other groups had women as 30% of the participants (2 of 6 or 7). Obviously I don’t know how the individual participants performed but maybe there is gender difference in the response to interval training. So had the 4 x 8 minute group had women in it, they wouldn’t have done as well. Or maybe the women were raising the results of the other groups and they would have done worse without them?
So just because someone says something and they quoted a bit of a scientific article doesn’t mean it is absolutely true. You should go out and try to actually read and understand the articles and look at the data they present. The great thing is you can experiment on yourself and see what works and what doesn’t for you. But just because something works for you doesn’t mean it is the best way to do something for everybody else.
So if I do all my turbo workouts in hoodies, I can just do 20-30 watts less but experience the same physiological benefits?.. I understand the concept of RPE being a result of life stress + training stress but just because your HR is higher doesn’t mean the actual benefits are being had. The fact you can alter HR by simply increasing body temp, spinning a higher cadence, etc means that you could do substantially less work and still hit your “targets”. Similarly in running, no one (who’s any good at least) trains on HR because there are too many factors that influence variation and hence workouts are written to specific paces.
Yes, but in a 3 Zone Model the Zone 2 is the Threshold Zone 
Between the two Thresholds LT1 & LT2
Or could be a multiude of other items, busy life, busy work, anything else.
Oh and you can be 50+ and follow MV(+) plans with no cheater drugs.
@Nate_Pearson If they follow Nate’s speech on constructive criticism, I think that they will not give an extended push back. Dylan has (in his mind) some valid criticism based on his firm convictions on polarized training. TR has the data (which also probably shows that not everyone succeeds). No need to show “we are the best” way. Nate and his team use the plans as a starting point, modify them as needed, and have seen improvement. To say they (or we) would see better improvement using another approach is impossible to qualify unless we are duplicates, same timeframe, same stresses, doing two approaches at the same time. Have civil discussion but don’t seek one approach alone to the detriment of anyone else doing something different. Enjoy your improvements regardless of how you think they came by.
That’s a quite an extreme example. Hopefully you are smarter than purposely overheating your self when you are training.
If you want to do everything in your power to manipulate your HR I guess you do that… lol
HR is simply a better data of knowing where you are physically conditioned at current time.
Sure you can train with power and ignore what your body tells but not the best way in the long term.
I would personally like to see this topic addressed during a Beers with Chad episode with Nate as the host.
I think that’s right, and probably the right way to go about it. I think it’s all about the compromises. A well-regarded food scientist I know from the internet often replies to questions about his field with “It’s complicated and it depends”. I think that really applies to this big question about The Best training plan.