On Z1 rides I ride to my HR but try to make sure I don’t spike my power above my LT1 power and on Z3 intervals I ride to power but just keep an eye on my HR.
About half way through this podcast there is a brief snippet about polarized training but of course the whole podcast is worth listening to.
From my experience 78% of Ramp tested FTP is too high for steady state under LT1. The reasons for this could be many, from possible overestimation of the Ramp test, to differences in individual conditioning and aerobic efficiency. Remember, Seiler assumes FTP is from a 60 min test. Vo2max from a 6 min test, etc. Not one number from a mathematical equation based on a 1 min best power ramp test 
78% might be the “bulls eye” as per the chart but I think for the most of us this a target goal - to eventually be able to put out that power aerobically. It is perhaps the very upper limit for LT1 if the aerobic base is not that strong yet, but this will hopefully improve the more aerobic training we do.
But for now, I would suggest trying workouts in the 65-75% range of estimated FTP. Especially for longer >90 mins workouts where you will naturally have some HR drift. The average HR for the whole workout should then reflect your HR Zone 1. I think this would be hitting the session goal. If you find your HR or RPE drifting upwards, towards the end of the workout, or at higher intervals of 75-80% FPT (like Baxter), it’s not the end of the world IMO. In fact, I feel it’s very useful to be able to FEEL when your body shifts out of the aerobic zone. If it does, lower the intensity a tad, if needed.
I recommend trying “Leavitt -4” @60-80% FTP to find a good wattage for yourself. It has a range of intensities and you can analyse where you leave the aerobic zone and where you come back again. Baxter is also great to test with. Towards the latter 30 mins, the intervals hit 80% and you can see your HR and feel your breathing going up. After those 2 workouts I think you will have a good idea at which percentage of your estimated FTP you need to be to be in, for Zone 1. You can then search for workouts to match your targets. Or adjust as needed.
Having read a lot of the posts on Polarised Training there seems to be a lot of debate on how to ascertain LT1 & LT2 as well as whether to use HR or Power for LT1 in particular. I’d read that HR is closely aligned with lactate production so I took a look at my heart rate on the ramp test which I nee at the beginning of October. The trace is from Xert as it lends itself a bit better to what I wanted to do the the TR one does. As you can see there are 2 distinct points where the gradient of my HR changes markedly, at 126/7 and 142/3 bpm. My hypothesis is that these are my HR LT1 &2. Given that HR lags power I’m not so sure about the power figures though.
I read a book from Tommi Martikainen where he stated that LT1 closely correlates with average watts for a maximum 3 hour effort. According to him most of the training time should be spend 15% under the LT1.
I have personally found this to work quite well. I follow the watts and I have quite alot of cardiac drift. When I start a 4 hour ride indoors I have HR of arround 12—130 in the first hour. The last hour is usually ovet 150 and I might end up with HR of 155. However, after a recovery day I`m ready for hard sweet spot workout.
On a different note I did the 60 minute FTP test. After 50 minutes I knew I could have kept the same power for 10 more minutes, but I knew it woul be very hard physically and mentally, so I stopped. That way the test wasn`t actually that hard. I used to be more exhausted after a 20 min test immediately after the test. The 50 min caused more fatigue in longer term.
I’d have to agree with you! I did a ramp test and it gave me an FTP of 290. Comparing it with my best 1hr power that I did which was a 40k Team TT, which gave me an average of power of 255 for 1hr. I was at my max and hanging on for dear life at the end. There were a ton of variables in that effort but it was far below 290. My peak HR was 183 (last 5min). My max HR is 190 which I saw this past season on a sprint finish of a road race.
My take away:
- using 183 instead of 190 makes more sense for setting up HR zones. I think in one of the podcasts he says to use max hr of a longer interval session but not your absolute max. Most people seem to be going with just max hr which makes zones too high.
- Doing a 1hr test is brutal but it will give you best estimation for zones. I did a Vo2 and Lactate test and they both said my LT 1 was below 200w and hr of below 122. This is well below the formula where I would be riding close to 230 if used FTP.
- Riding a ton of z1 150-200 is a lot of fun. I enjoy it and I feel good when I hit the intense days.
Hey Chad,
I’ve been playing around a bit with Golden Cheetah, and loaded all my historical data. Discovered that it will chart power in polarized zones! And it does seasons! So I setup Dec 2016 thru May 2017 as a season, as it was a full base/build/A-event (unstructured, not TR) and saw my biggest jump in ftp. Then asked GC to plot power from all rides during that period:
Notes:
- Golden Cheetah GC) uses critical power (CP) to define zones
- I configured GC so that my CP is same as FTP
- it defines lower zone as 0 to 85% of CP
- mid zone is 85% ftp to 100% ftp
- upper zone is >100% ftp
- 85% is hardcoded, but easy to find and change in PowerHist.cpp. I’m going to rebuild my own version of GC, and once that is working will try changing to different values. I’m not that good of a programmer to make it a setting, but once changed I can reach out to GC developer community for help on making it a setting.
Brian
That’s pretty sweet to see so easy, even it is may be a bit different on the current splits.
Looks like a decent distribution too, for not targeting POL specifically. Very interesting.
On that chart you have a 9% decoupling for a 2:00 ride and 7.83 for a 20 minute segment. Are those within the desired range? I though the overall percentage might have been lower than 9% if you include the WU/CD
Some good info on HRDC
5% or lower DC seems to indicate good fitness.
Thanks I will review those and look at my results over time in WKO4. Not sure the numbers can be easily found in TR analytics
This is super freakin cool! 
I use WKO4, but don’t have a report that shows this. Do you know if anyone is creating a chart/report that will do that this spreadsheet does? I’m just catching up on this thread now, so my apologies if I’m being redundant.
I created 3 WKO4 charts that show the % of each polarized zone based on FTP, Max HR, and VO2max. Much of this I had help on by the WKO4 gurus. You can use these and in the Range screen, select whatever date range you want - entire season, all time, month, etc.
By Max HR
By FTP
By VO2max
Apologies for jumping in late on this thread…did anyone catch on the recent Fast Talk podcast where they clarified that sweet spot intervals could be considered Zone 3?
Yep. More confusing fuel to the fire. It’s more about where Trevor sets the LT2-VT2 than anything. So I still see it as Z3 work. What changes is where you set that point.
I’ve linked this before but worth showing again. Look at the heat maps of the climbs (the pdf). Note the lab thresholds.
And now look at the average power output on the climbs. These were all-out efforts, close to 20 min. A simple multiplication by 0.95.
And now compare lab threshold with this value. Apples/oranges comparision.
Ok, help me understand this. Which ones are the apples and which ones oranges? In other words, what should I take away from what you’re saying?
For example, Connor has Lab Threshold of 300. His effort was 319W (that’s the 20 min part, the climb itself). I get that. There’s a .95 relationship there, but not for the other two guys. Is that what you’re getting at?
Thanks
Tim
I don’t know the original point, but was a good lesson in how ftp is not always the best predictor of capability.
@Bioteknik Totally. That’s one of the key points I took away from that article/podcast as well. I was just trying to see if @sryke has something else he was pulling out of it.