Thanks for putting all the work into the new plans & getting feedback from the community. I’m not really part of any camp on what is the best training philosophy (Pol vs Sweet Spot), but i appreciate the variety and possibility to try sth new!
First, let me comment on the 80/20 WO distribution. If we take time of the WO (so a 1 hour Zone 3 WO counts half of a 2 hour Zone 1 WO – in a 3 Zone model) we would still only end up with about 1-1.2 Zone 3 WO/week in a MV-Plan. Assuming the total weekly time is 5-6 hours). If we strictly look at the number of WOs (assuming 4-5 WO/week in MV), this even goes down to .8-1 Zone 3 WOs.
So, technically, I believe both LV & HV should only have one Zone 3 WO. Correct me, if my thought process is off.
I like the idea of doing 5:1 for LV and 2:1 for MV/HV. I think long term it is a good idea to be able to adjust the work to rest week ratio individually (or AT does it). I know you said this is planned, but not immanent. Although it’s really not so hard to do so yourself right now.
With regard to the discussion of the form of intervals, I’ve gone through the videos mentioned before that Seiler put out on short intervals (Part I, Part II, Part III). The key take aways are:
Seiler generally looks at accumulated ‘Time in Zone’, as the deciding ‘quality characteristic’ of intervals. Measured not by by ‘number of watts x time’, but the bodies response (O2 output, heart rate, lactate).
He doesn’t fix intensity percentages for intervals, but generally goes with self selected intensity of ‘as hard as you can’ for x time.
When he looks at 1’/2’/4’/6’ min intervals (W:R = 1:1, total work time 24’) he notes, that the TiZ is strongly reduced for the 1’:1’ intervals but basically the same for the others. (Part I, 7:00)
So the recovery-time between intervals is much more important for short intervals. E.g. 15’‘:15’‘s become basically a steady state/threshold workout. While 30’‘:15’‘s get you well towards Vo2max, (Part I, 13:45) as do 10’‘:5’‘s and 15’‘:10’'s. (Part I, 11:20)
When he gives some ‘practical guidelines (Part II, 15:45) he mentions that 30’‘:15’‘s and 40’‘:20’'s work well, when stacked up properly.
As a progression he recommends starting with 2 blocks with 8-10’W:3-4’R, and build up to 4 blocks. Then collapse those 4 blocks into 2 longer ones, then upping the wattage.
When Athletes get to select a minimum recovery time between work intervals (4’) the average of selected time is 118’‘, so basically 2’. (Part I, 9:30) Therefore his general recommendation of 2’ recovery. It is important to note though, that TiZ is not really affected by longer breaks, RPE neither. (Also I think it is important that this is an average, so for some individuals this might very much differ and longer recoveries might be beneficial, especially, as they don’t seem to be detrimental to TiZ anyways.)
In Part III he looks more closely at studies of Ronnestad Intervals (3x13x30’‘:15’‘) and seems to come to the conclusion in the end (19:30), that it doesn’t really matter for lab results or RPE if you do those or longer continuous ones (4x8’) – but he specifically says, that i might matter in regards to race specificity not captured in the lab (22:30).
To sum up: Long or short intervals both work (although it might be relevant to the discipline). With short ones it’s important to keep the W:R ration high enough. The rest periods between interval blocks & long intervals are not generally that essential for TiZ.
Totally agree Dave. ESPECIALLY for regular Joe’s. Reality is life often gets in the way. Vacation, house project, kids birthday party, you get sick, wife get’s sick, flooded basement, etc.
As a general rule I never schedule a rest week and I don’t have kids because there is always something that comes up within 4-5 weeks that causes me to either miss a workout, or have to ride shorter, etc.
If you purposefully schedule a rest week you end up with lower volume overall because if it’s on the calendar you’ll take it even when not needed.
The other part of this is you are not doing High Intensity every time you get on the bike, i.e. Tempo and above, therefore you’re more fresh and don’t need recovery weeks. If you’re riding 15 hours plus and most of that is on the weekend you may need to take Monday off, and do an easier ride on Tuesday but you don’t need an entire week at lower volume.
Thanks for sharing these 3 videos. Great stuff. On lesson 3, at 11:45, do I understand correctly that he is saying the 13x30:15 Ronnestad workouts were actually better than the 4x5 workouts? Or is the caveat that this is true for a 20 minute workout, but may not be true if you extended those out to, say, a 60 minute workout? Or am I missing the point?
I am far from an expert but also believe there was a good discussion here that kind of disputed that Ronnestad study and proposed that the micro intervals were being compared to longer intervals that were essentially being done at threshold, or even just below IIRC. It was pretty compelling case against taking too much from that particular study, but doesn’t mean the micro intervals should be discounted as a strategy.
I think he just summarizes the Ronnestad study there, not really giving his opinion too much. But comments more on the comparison of Ronnestad to long intervals at a later point in the video, when discussing the study done by Wale / Pedersen (19:30 forward).
What I hear is him saying 30:15s produce a better result when comparing equivalent workout times, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s confirmation bias because I would WAY rather do Ronnestad than 8 mins at VO2!
It’s interesting that he says reported RPE ist the same for long vs short intervals if done at self selected max. Would be very interesting to see the distribution of those. Could very well be that most people fall into one or the other camp.
100% this. We are chasing a fad diet of training right now. So little repeated evidence. As a clinician, I see this all time. Someone has this great new idea that revolutionizes things and then it disappears a year later.
I’m bother by how overly vocal this training plan has become without a lot of verification from outside researchers.
(and this coming from me who has been on multiple years of polarized training)
I do have to wonder what TR is trying to achieve here.
If it’s to “please the haters”, then this is a road to nowhere.
If it’s to offer an alternative way of training that may suit a subset of TR-users better than the current plan, then TR should think about the needs and the practicalities of that. TR has very capable coaching staff, they should use this to review the current literature and dig through the thoughts and experiences of a variety of researchers/coaches to form a plan that fits the intended audience, rather than trying to stick to the descriptions of one researcher in the space. Especially considering the different target audiences and their training framework.
you’re misunderstanding my intent. Look through 174 posts in the this small thread alone. No one can even agree on what polarized is, what defines polarized even within what Dr Seiler has said himself.
This all comes of a few internet posts and threads that have grown like wildfire as the great new training methodology yet the core definitions of these plans lack concensus.
(I know there are more researchers out there, as I said, I have been polarized fully for about four years now and pick and choose TR workouts to fill my polarize schedule)
(That said, my FTP and race performance was much better on SS training than pol and I am going back to more SS training for the bike but keeping mostly polarized running due to injury when I run harder too much)
Reading and listening to Seiler I feel like a lot of people (and trainers) are overcomplicating things what Polarized means – sometimes also to sell their plans as ‘the only good ones’.
I think the core principles are basically:
train a lot in Z1 to be able to train a lot & recover well.
Do a few sessions where you try to accumulate as much time as possible as close to VO2max as possible.
Yet, there’s nothing that concrete that back it up except for his words and that has changed a bit since he cannot describe what it is clearly. FWIW, the same crap was around in 80s when I first got into cycling with emulating Eddy Merckx. I never had that much time or the genetics for it. We can all agree that hard days can be hamper if there’s too much fatigue.
Start at 59:00 minutes. He goes through a really good explanation that describes that the people doing 30:15 were training anerobic capacity and the other group were training LT because the longer interval group were not riding hard enough to elicit vo2 max. I’m sure I’m butchering what he said so listen to it but it makes a ton of sense when he digs into it.
