What the title says. There’s some evidence that unlike warmups, cooldowns aren’t as necessary. I find myself often skipping part of the cooldown for the sake of time. This is especially the case for the polarized plan’s interval workouts. Do I really need 25+ min of recovery pace cooldown? I used to stick it out because I was afraid ending early would affect Adaptive Training. I had to dig through the Forums to learn that this wasn’t the case.
When I stop early, the UI asks me whether I want to “discard” or “save” the ride and I have almost clicked “discard” a few times. It would be great if there were a way to shorten or skip the cooldown without prompting the “discard workout” button.
For starters, “scrubbing” is already available for use here as with any other workout:
You can easily use this to move ahead to the end of the workout whenever you want.
TR’s Workouts page will not load for me now, but I suspect if you read the description in that workout the extra part of the workout is more than just an extra long cool down. It may be a lower than normal power target, but many other TR workouts include “bonus” work like this, with the aim of adding “easy” loading to your training.
It’s akin to the cool down extension they have recommended for years, when people want longer workouts than what was prescribed. You can edit the workouts to suit your needs and time, but this is probably not just an extra long cooldown like it might appear.
Selecting a Workout Alternate may be a good option for you as well, where you can pick a shorter workout that covers the same systems assigned in that workout.
I’ve looked at Workout Alternate, but it often doesn’t end up having shorter options. I’m happy with the interval section of these workouts, I just want to opt out of a silly amount of recovery pace tacked on at the end.
I’ll try that out.
Description text? There is no instruction text for the workout. Here’s what it says:
I would guess the goal is to add endurance volume for the polarized plan, but it’s at a recovery pace. It is coded as cooldown, because the “extend cooldown” option pops up immediately. I am happy with the overall programming of the interval work in the polarized plan; I don’t need any bonus endurance volume tacked onto the higher intensity days.
Oh, interesting. Seems to be a desktop-only feature.
OK, I was waiting to access it to be sure. This is far less than is present for many other TR workouts. presumably, this is the case with some (many / all?) of the workouts that are part of the experimental polarized plans in TR.
I don’t have time to search now, but there are many workouts with that extra Endurance level work at the end with the goal of adding loading and doing it in a fatigued state in mind. I suspect that is the goal here, even though it’s not stated.
Yeah, lower level work, but it’s possible they have the same goal in mind. Whenever in doubt, an email to TR support may give you a quick answer, especially in stuff like the experimental POL plans.
Not really. By “edit” I was mainly talking about using the scrub feature I linked to. That is possible on all their apps.
There is a further step that you can take, by using the Workout Creator which is Win/Mac. But that is a more comprehensive tool than your initial request to simple advance and end the cool down early. The Scrub feature should be all you need if that is your main goal.
Yes, they are all pretty bare-bones. The workouts are very simple and translate easily between indoor and outdoor work. That’s part of the reason I like them. Perhaps this thread is more a critique of the VO2 Max workouts in the polarized plan.
I would guess these aren’t at Z1 (on the 1-7 scale).
Based on the 7-Level Coggan system (which TR uses), that falls into official Level 1, Recovery.
Based on the 3-Zone Seiler system (by my research at least), it’s right on the bubble of Zone 1, Recovery.
So I do think it essentially flirts with the Endurance extension goals. It is sure up for debate though, just like so much under the POL umbrella seems to be
I’m not sure this is “more contentious” because a lot of the research actually substantiates these three zones. (Unless the Polarized 3-zones are different from the ones typically used in research.) I don’t particularly care either way. I find the seven zone system more helpful.
If it’s right at the line between endurance and recovery? I kinda doubt it’s quality work.
The blog post for the polarized plan said that they attempted to map the polarized plan to existing plans in order to get a good comparison. Perhaps this padding is a byproduct of trying to make control from some variables between the plans. Might be worth a post in the polarized thread.
LOL, I went back to remove that section. I should have left it out. But when it comes to “defining the zone” for POL in particular, there seems to be some fuzzy lines or at least ones that don’t always align between some people.
Again, I am guessing, so I suggest contacting TR for the best info.
That said, doing this level of work, even if “on the bubble” like I said, can prove beneficial considering you are in a fatigued state from the primary section of the workout. Adding on continued work, even at these low levels, seems a prescription I have seen around and not just here in TR.
Great question, but I’d email TR support to start.
I didn’t know that wasn’t the case until now, so thanks! So once you’re in the cooldown it won’t result in a “fail” survey?
@mcneese.chad does scrubbing affect AT, and any conditions (like can you scrub an interval without a fail survey)? I actually swapped days of my workout as I wasn’t happy with the 75 minute alternates I was given for tomorrow’s workout.
I don‘t know the full impact of scrubbing with respect to AT. Would be best to ask TR support to be sure.
I suspect its not a simple answer, since it may be different if you scrub over a work segment vs recovery. Not to mention that doing a combo is more complex.
It may be more akin to what happens if you end a workout early, but I really have no idea.
For a workout like this I would just ride as easy as I feel is necessary after the work. So if I’m smoked that might be 55-60% but if I still feel okay it might be more like 65-70%.
I agree that that long at 50% is a bit silly but I also wouldn’t just skip out on half an hour of volume. So if I’m not shortening because of time constraints I would finish it out at low to mid endurance.
Adaptive Training doesn’t call upon changes in warmup/cooldown when suggesting potential adaptations.
However, adaptations made for Polarized plans are not fully endorsed to consistently make adaptations that remain within Polarized framework, but comprehensively, if you find yourself frequently skipping the extended endurance portions of workouts, you’re already getting out of the Polarized framework and should probably switch out of those plans.
Dollar Law has a 22 minute at 50% (Z1) cooldown after the last interval. It was so annoying. Not hard to do but just annoying to be stuck on the trainer for 22 minutes after doing the real work. I didn’t want to confuse AT with an incomplete workout so I plugged away until done.
Polarized is defined by the ratio of Zone 1 and Zone 3 work (on their 3-zone scale) overall, while minimizing Zone 2. For example, last week’s mid-volume Polarized programming had 40 mins of Zone 3 work. Keeping the 80/20 ratio would require at least 3h20m of endurance work. My weekend endurance rides are 5-10 hours long, so the 25 mins skipped during the weekday is not going to make or break anything, ratio-wise. For my discipline, it’s important to maximize the amount of consecutive hours in the saddle. There’s limited time during the weekdays. I can get half a day’s lifting into 25 mins.
This is what I was doing until I was able to find an answer in the forums that skipping cooldown doesn’t affect AT. I’ve started skipping and still get good progressions.
