You MUST know your Zones…
I guess we all have different views on what that “most” needs to include. Sometimes, for some people, it includes more than the bike (Gasp!!!)
I guess this is where I think you are being pretty dishonest with your screen caps. Nate very specifically says that he is not, “saying that no pros” use polarized training but that there are professional riders who use different modalities.
I would hate it if I was on a two hour zoom meeting and somebody took a one second sound bite of a statement that I immediately corrected and then used that to make a sweeping generalization about my company.
I don’t want to sound like I’m coming at you personally, but I do think that you are engaging in a pretty blatant bad faith attempts to take Nate’s statements out of context and then use them to make a larger point about trainerroad.
I think there are lots of valid criticisms about the training plans in this thread and you and others bring up good points about the level of intensity, but what you’re doing with those screen shots is not productive, fair, or honest, in my opinion.
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Nah, not dishonest at all. Like I said…or like Nate said, he most definitely made it out – first and foremost – to be that a) almost no pros do polarized and that b) no pro has become a pro by doing only polarized.
A) tons of pros do “polarized” blocks, perhaps not in a strict classical sense, but very removed from “lots of SS & threshold”.
B) it’s a 120% disingenuous and false “argument” designed to denigrate a particular modality.
I guess I could say that no pro has ever become a pro by doing only sweet spot and threshold training, therefore TR is crap.
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I would wager money this is true.
The focus on training zones this intensely is new I would imagine, as people did not historically ride on trainers with erg turned on all the time, and lock themselves into specific zones, but I would guess historically most people had a fairly pyramidal style distribution, just by virtue of that being where a lot of riding naturally takes place.
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I don’t disagree with the points that you made after this. I think polarized training is effective and commonly used by top level riders and that many high level riders also utilize blocks of threshold and SS sessions depending on discipline and time of year. I think we’re in agreement on that.
What I do disagree with is what you allege Nate said (“or definitely made out”) which I heard in a totally different way. Maybe we just interpreted it differently, but I really don’t think it’s fair for you to take one comment, remove all context, and then make these wild logical leaps that you’ve been making.
Is that fair? I might be totally off base, but I have a tough time reading your responses and thinking that you honestly believe you provided appropriate context when discussing Nate’s specific comments on that podcast.
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Exactly right.
Oh dear, just when this thread was starting to die out. 
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Iv been a TR user for a couple of years and have noticed the burn out which has lead to time off the bike ect. This video DJ put highlights what i have been thinking for about a year now. I thought i was just a crappy cyclist and have considered doing traditional plan or paying a coach to try something different. It would be nice to see polarized training plans on there. a lot of people who i have talked to about TR that know nothing about it say 2 max intensity days but 3 or more holy crap. I just look at them funny… jokes on me i guess. I will give it to TR my FTP had been up 100 watts at one point but has declined over the last six months. I have considered replacing mondays with Z1 and filling the rest of the week with Z1 and just doing the two TR intensity rides. to see how that works. I for the most part watch movies when im on the trainer… will be interesting what TR response is to this!
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He raises lots of valid criticisms tbh. I’ve said for ages the 'recovery" weeks aren’t recovery weeks at all, well, they are compared to the bombardment you’ve received leading up to them 
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Wow 1000 replies in 2 days must be a forum record
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As a data scientist, this is interesting for a couple of reasons…
- I have no idea if TR actually has any kind of internal data science team but I’ve never seen any kind of job postings for data science related roles, only dev jobs. Maybe they do have them and they’ve simply never hired for them so that’s a bit unknown.
- While TR has a lot of data that could/should be a mix of TR workouts and other rides from uploads, they have a couple major pitfalls in that they don’t know where an athlete starts at prior to TR and they don’t account for any non-cycling upload during that time. To address the first, they could at least do a quick survey when you create an account asking about background, athletic/cycling experience, etc to gauge a little bit of a profile. While quantifying strength would be hard for the latter, they could still read in all uploads from Garmin/Wahoo/whatever and account for basic TSS/time/any sort of metric.
I think the second part of not knowing background is very key because while endurance doesn’t translate 1:1, having an aeroic engine more or less does. For instance, when I started riding, I came in and did 4+ W/kg on my first FTP test. I’m not insanely talented, I just had 4 years of running 80-140 miles a week under my belt so aerobic efficiency was already well trained. If they want to use “big data” to predict how I’m going to improve over time, they would probably want to know that I’m well trained already.
So assuming that Nate has data and that it is/isn’t properly used is a bit of stretch, especially with no actual evidence in TR products.
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I love TR and also respect DJ reliance on science as I have watched perhaps all of his videos. I applaud his catch and replay though of Chad chatting about being on week 3 of a 5 week base plan and struggling at the end. Even though the prescribed amount is 5 weeks on some of those, by the end of the 3rd week i listen to the body and insert my recovery week because history has shown me that i need it.
I do have a question along these lines and in regards to a possible flaw in Plan Builder. Does the algorithm actually take AGE into account? I have been racing for 10 years and know for certain that using Plan Builder at 34 and at 44 are very different experiences.
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I can’t think of a worse interface than Zwift’s.
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I think we all need a short intermission. 
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The plans 100% do not account for age. If you have enough experience you know you stretch 5 sessions in a week out to 8 to 10 days with some easy filler rides.
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There’s a great recap on DJ’s YouTube channel, btw.
Right, there are other complexities as well:
- They need variety of stimulus to test interventions. If everybody does only SS plans. How do you test the counterfactual of POL or PYR.
- Once you condition the subjects on experience, age, etc. You’ll rapidly notice that your sample size is A LOT smaller than you think.
- This is the most important, is that all the studies they do must also look for signals of engagement to the program, which might or might not contribute to performance.
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RIght. You’d end up with a lot of inference because you don’t know things like diet, sleep, etc. Not to say they still couldn’t derive some valuable insights from that data because they certainly could, but it’s obviously not controlled in the same way that a scientific study would be.
Tbh I’m more interested in what TR does for data science than this whole SS vs POL debate. If you want to get faster just go ride your bike 
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