My Polarized Training Experience (Chad McNeese & others)

[bbarrera]

Entering my 4th season, year-over-year I’m seeing a 5-10bpm drop in HR at same power:

Quality over Quantity vs. 80/20 (or Chad vs. Matt ;))

Starting late August I did an early base consisting of SSB1-MV and a bunch of longer outside rides. Then did 4 weeks of Traditional Base 1 on the trainer, to reinforce the power and feeling of riding at low intensity. My butt can’t handle those 2+ hours workouts on the Kickr, so I switched back to SSB1-HV last week. I did SSB1-HV last December, a year ago my ftp was 236 and now it’s 240. So basically the same power year over year at the beginning of sweet spot base. Comparing workouts to a ye…

My current hypothesis is that aerobic endurance gains are from my somewhat unstructured ‘early base’ that ended with Traditional Base 1, just prior to starting SSB1-HV for my 2019 season.