Ah, sorry to clarify, “easy” in this case was still above threshold. It’s the kind of climb you can’t avoid going into the red. On a Hard day I would go all out for a pr. The accumulated fatigue was immense after 2 weeks. Eventually I had to stop. My point is that there are many ways to crack a nut. There is a lot of pseudo science out there. And just thinking of all the good riders in my area, every single one trains completely differently. At the end of the day, you are going to find what works for you naturally.
Totally setting aside the rest of your post, which makes sense, and more as an FYI - nearly every fitness study has incredibly small sample sizes. Calling this out as a weakness of this study in particular isn’t too meaningful since they all (or nearly all) suffer from this weakness
IDK, but maybe a non-elite who is only training 4 days a week for an hour each time could handle all of those sessions being over zone 1 (3 zone model). From what I’ve heard and read from Seiler, he considers anything above zone 1 as intensity. So a non-elite performing a total of 4 sessions a week and all of those sessions being 2 x 20 at 85% of FTP would have done 4 sessions of intensity according to him. That’s more than the 2 or 3 times a week as concluded from the study. I don’t think training as the hypothetical non-elite I’ve described is going to lead to over training. It probably won’t lead to the best performances either.
It is meaningful to call out sample size because it’s poor research and the field allows mediocre research to perpetuate. As someone with a background in public health research I’d have a hard time seeing such small sample sizes as being routinely accepted in peer review publications due to lack of generalizability
They propably don’t have much of a choice 
Can’t imagine there is a lot of funding for research into super specific sports performance.
I think the argument is mostly about training volume (and the ability to sustain it). If you, say, train 20 hours per week, 6 days a week, then a large part of this has to be at low intensity. The reason is simple, even very gifted athletes can only do so many hard workouts, so the only way to add volume is to add Z1–Z2 workouts (in the 7-zone scheme). So I would expect that the “optimal” intensity distribution will shift when you lower training volume towards a higher share of higher-intensity workouts.
Also, I‘d say that we speak of training volume, we have to be clear whether we refer to time or TSS (or some other metric that quantifies how much time we spent in what zone). A lot of us are time constrained, which implies constraints on intensity (e. g. because we do not have enough time to rest or to sleep or to make sure we are eating healthily). If we accept TSS as a placeholder for the amount of fatigue you will need to offset (which is certainly arguable), then replacing e. g. sweet spot workouts with endurance workouts of the same duration will lead to lower TSS, and therefore lower fatigue.
I cannot make up for 20 years worth of training. Also, I cannot increase 50% on a yearly basis. The 600-700 hours I am doing are the maximum I can get away with. Otherwise I would have to quit my job and find a new wife. No need to go any easier though.
Such small studies are not bad at all IMHO, you can go much more in depth and control many more factors than in a larger study. However, we should be very careful about not overextending conclusions and check whether the setting really is relevant. If the prescribed “sweet spot” workouts are not actual sweet spot workouts — and especially not TR-style sweet spot workouts, then the study says very little about TR-style sweet spot base plans.
I didn’t hear it but I’d have the same reservations. So all this conjecture about how conclusive research is is a bit ridiculous.
I’m 55 this year, just coming to the end of SSBLV2. Having watched the video I was considering switching the 90min weekend ride for a 2hour+ Endurance ride in Build phase. When the better weather arrives I will be doing much longer rides outside. I am doing the 300km Dragon Devil early June.
I also do a weights, Pilates and stretching session once a week.
Interested to know how you’ve found switching one interval session to Z2 ride? Reckon 2 intervals sessions and a Long ride would be ideal for me. I have seen some good improvements sticking to the TR plan but do feel a bit “over trained”
It’s funny how there are case studies showing how an athlete moving more to POL got a lot better, and also, according to Nate, other anecdotes of athletes getting better by incorporating more high sub threshold work.
It’s funny, it’s almost as if it’s really more about what’s the right choice for an athlete at a given time vs “which is better”.
I think it just relates to volume…the more volume the harder to have a higher intensity overall.
I’d never really heard the claim from TR (or I think anywhere else) that gains are linear, but that increased load is indeed beneficial for creating increased stimulus, up to a point. That point seems to be maddeningly hard to find, and also quite individual…
You probably get “diminishing returns” everywhere on the training spectrum - going from 0 to 5 hours is bigger than 5 to 10, 10 to 15, etc. Would you agree, or is there an inflection point somewhere where you start to see increased benefit from each hour?
“Wildly speculative numbers incoming” - my rough understanding is something like this: SSBLV gets you 60% of the benefit - going to MV is something like 90%, and then HV is the last 10%. From a pure efficiency standpoint sure every addition hour is lower returning than the one before - but I do think still beneficial (again, to that mysterious point where you get injured / burned out).
Seems obvious, no?
Because Seiler couldn’t grasp this simple fact, though, everyone’s spinning their wheels over TID, when it isn’t the answer.
Studies of such small numbers really cant be relied upon until there is sufficient numbers.
It is a math issue. These small sample sizes just have a very low confidence level to rely on the outcome. If we sample 9 vs sampling 1000 then it is very easy for those 9 selected to not be representative of the population. It is still possible for the 1000 not to be representative either but the chance is a lot smaller.
Either way these very small sample sizes are by themselves not worth drawing any conclusions until you have more data and a larger number of participants.
I’m reporting here my experience so far.
Or there is just more than one route to the same place.
Don’t feed the trolls
Ok, got it
No that’s not #credentials. He has nothing to do with her past successes.
DJ knows that he has no track record as coach. That’s why he states on his coaching homepage that he has 10 years of training and racing experience.