I have a similar reaction as @Bbt67 , given the lack of published data, sweet spot is closer to a flavor of the month than polarized training. Maybe Frank Overton or someone else started making sweet spot popular but TR really pushed it as their answer to time crunched training. It’s very popular but it’s not grounded in peer-reviewed research. After watching Seiler’s talks on his YouTube channel, I think his statements are straightforward. I don’t see any attempt on his part to create plans, but his concept of polarized training - getting athletes to accumulate time at high %HR Max and %6 min power to trigger performance gains seems pretty clear. His content on low intensity training is also pretty straightforward.
IMO, this has only blown up to the point that TR is addressing it head on is because of Covid’s call for social distancing. A larger proportion of users tried following TR plans rigidly with no races to attend. The experience Dylan Johnson says his clients report about “too much intensity” has been encountered by sufficient users. The criticism gained momentum. When asked for the basis behind asking users to ride >80% FTP 4-5 days per week, TR says they have data showing sustainability and success. We can’t see it though. Until we can, the doubts will linger.
TR has far and away the best app/interface, people won’t be hyper focused about the plans when we can all go back to racing or smashing each other in group rides every week.
No disagreement there. Regular diet of my collegiate training was easy weekday endurance spins and fast tempo weekend (with more and more race like effort as it approach the season). Guys I know at Cat 1 & 2s just trained longer and harder than I was willing to. The only secret sauce I know of was putting in the work.
Lots of debate, but I want to throw out that I am, and I’m sure many others are too, still really excited about new plans coming down the pipe! Looking forward to trying something new and seeing how it evolves with the data. I’m still checking for the Early Access update multiple times a day.
I was able to find the (current experimental version of the) plans by searching for one of the workout names at the top of this thread - e.g. “South Tent”. And on South Tent’s workout page there is a link to the full experimental polarized plan. I’m guessing they’re using the feedback here and elsewhere to continue to change them, but in case you wanted to see what they look like or add them to your calendar now they are there
He also says in here that he has a 60 second cut off period and has done research saying 2+ min intervals provide the best adaptation based on his research compared to 1 min intervals.
And he does talk about short shorts here, but not in the context of Polarized as far as I can tell.
I think that’s an excellent start. I’ve been doing Polarised since all my events got cancelled last year.
I’m n=1 and a masters athlete at 54 so bear that in mind in my comments.
If the longest Z1 ride is Sunday I’d suggest the Z3 days as Tuesday and Friday. I find to get the best out of my Z3 days I don’t want to do them after my long Z1 ride day. Nor do I want my long Z1 day after a Z3 day. 72 hours between my hard Z3 efforts also worked well for me as an older athlete.
I find a longer warm up helps me do better at the Z3 efforts. So maybe in your progressions you can have longer warmups or masters versions?
I tend to sit somewhere between low and mid 8 week plans in my off season. Right now I’d be on your high volume plan as my events are returning end of this month… Here’s my Z1 ride times for last two weeks, not much stopped time but I do seem to have hit all the roadworks and traffic lights these past couple of weeks.
I found that one Z3 (a week) was enough to progress VO2 max power and FTP a little more for about 6 weeks. This was after a period of twice a week. After 6 weeks it levelled off. After that once a week was enough to hold those power numbers steady over many months. I kept up the Z1 rides throughout the year. Two Z3 workouts a week with the Z1 was where I saw the solid progression.
Work / rest week ratios seems fine and pretty much what I was doing with a FTP retest at end of rest week.
I was using 30/15 intervals for the Z3 which I found work well as well. The short recoveries doesn’t really allow the HR to drop much during a set. But good start with 4/8/16 intervals.
Ideally it’d be good if you could nominate which day is your long Z1 ride day. For instance I can get out mid week for that but not at the weekend. The long ride day tends to be where the greatest constraint is. Then shuffle the other workouts round that as required.
I think you need to include the 3.5h plan with the 2 intensity workouts over 3 weeks.
the point of an “experiment” is to test what works. If you leave out conditions by assuming they don’t work, you don’t allow yourself to be shown the opposite.
My guess is also that few will choose these plans or even improve upon it (besides maybe a small group of injury recoverers/coming back after long break). But then at least we can put this discussion behind us, using data.
I am interested in polarized training because, even though it takes more hours, the endurance level training doesn’t seem to disrupt my busy life that much. I get reading done while in Z1 and I sacrifice one day for Z3 training. Even though the Z2 is less hours, they cost me more during the day than more hours at Z1. But your AI will be measuring that as well from what I heard.
@Nate_Pearson - I have just seen an evolution of the plans and notice they now include a shorter interval progression through the weeks. I think this is an excellent addition and look forward to the pain of trying to get through those…
Just an FYI though - I noticed on the 8 week HV Build on week 2 there is a session Hualapai 2x16 @102%. On all the other plans that session is Chiricahua 2x16 @100%, which seems the logical step in the progression, especially considering the next one is 3x16 @100% and most of the other 16m intervals are 100% until much later in the plan. Just wondering if that is a ‘typo’ in that particular plan?
Really looking forward to these and AT now and coincidentally its almost the perfect timing for my first A event…
Can I also ask what the rationale is for the intervals being at a generally higher % on the Base HV plan vs MV? On the Build its the other way around and intensity is about 2% lower on many/most of the sessions on HV.
Several of the early workouts are 2-4% higher for the same duration as the MV, so the plan has 2 extra sessions and higher intensity pretty much every week. I guess maybe AT will eventually address this but wondered if there was a specific reason?
Signed up to early access, starting after my “recovery” week next week! Wish me luck.
Don’t know how good my data will be since i’m also running pretty much every day ish kinda deal
I’m gonna skip the rest of trad base and just go into this, LV style.
So from the looks of it, it’ll give me
2 slow medium runs (1.5 to 2h per week),
2 slow rides, might increase the duration of the first ride,
1 day of intensity on the bike,
and 1 day of intensity on foot where i’ll be alternating threshold and sprints on foot (depending on the week)
Sprinkle some strength on there 2-3 times a week and run very very short and easy bricks after each ride. lets hope for the best
