Not sure what you mean by ignoring rest, rest isn’t a session, it’s the absence of one.
All depends on your definition of good what the others you ride with are doing and their history. Let’s say you do an hour at your FTP on your intensity day, the rest Z2 volume. Could you be a good time triallist for your age against the competition? It’s possible.
I just think rest days, off the bike, should be part of the equation for non-pro cyclists who don’t have the time to train full time. For those with careers limiting their time (“the time crunched athlete”), often a rest day is supplemented for a recovery ride following a hard workout, which for pros is part of the “80%.” I think it’s important to not ignore that. Recovery is part of training as much as sleep, nutrition and the training itself.
For the record, I think the 80-20ish (over a season) is pretty standard for endurance sports who train full time. I just think the equation needs to be tweaked for those on the bike part time.
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Fortunately during my career, my contracts were around 36 hours a week. Thus I was never time crunched. Cycle commuting got me 10 hours a week before you even consider training and the weekend. Plus my career started before the World Wide Web and I didn’t waste hours a week online back then, hours that could be spent on bike instead.
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This is a cool breakout where did you get this? What app provides this info?
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Intervals.icu, in the “Totals” section:
It’s a free site and you can also contribute to help him with his work.
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It’s a great site, I’m on it as well. Highly customisable to suit preferences.
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For some reason Intervals Icu only took in 13 weeks of data from my strava so the tail end of my CX season and Trad Base.
Does the fact that pyramidal is highlighted at the bottom indicate that I am training in a pyramidal style for the past 13 weeks?
If I switch to a 42 day range (which eliminates the workouts and racing of CX season, no power meter anyway) It looks like Trainer Road is doing a good job of the percentages.
I’ve never thought of it that way but you are totally correct; rest days should be included, good point.
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I almost hesitate to open this can of worms, but how exactly would you consider or adjust based on those rest days in the count?
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If one is organising training by TiZ is, I would suggest measuring your whole life, 24hrs a day. Someone who is prone all day long except for their workouts would be considered differently to someone waiting tables all day long.
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It’s another polarised training thread, which can exactly hasn’t been opened? 
I will go away now.
Seiler observed pro athletes and developed a message to advise average joes not to go out and run really hard every time. It was a good message.
I will go away really now.
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I thought @crosshair (see his previous posting in this thread) made it clear why TIZ isn’t the best way to tackle polarized training already?
The way I see it is, within a 3-zone model, anything below LT1 is Z1? Then rest fits nicely into Z1. The important part is being fresh for your hard workouts. Most people could recover from 2 hard workouts a week, that leaves 5 days for easy training or couch surfing. Training is about fatigue management regardless of training philosophy. Pyramidal, polarized, sweetspot (the concept Coggan advocats, not the TR sweetspot zone) are just different ways to manage strain from training.
I think it is inaproriate to think of percentage and instead think time in pol z3 and just add as much easy training as you can recover from. Kirk Willet claimed in an old article, that I can’t find right now, that a weekly 50 minutes at or above threshold was his target time.
Edit: Giving it some thought it was probably Kraig Willet, not Kirk. The articles I’m thinking of are “raise the left” and “fill the right”. I couldn’t find the at the moment; they seem to have disappeared from the internet. I didn’t know that was even possible?! I think they where published in 2009 so 
This is how Alistair and Johnny Brownlee have described their training in every podcast I’ve listened to them on for the last several years. Basically, be fresh to nail the Tuesday chain gang, be fresh to nail the track workout later in the week, then be fresh to nail one more hard ride or run. The rest was as hard or easy as necessary to allow freshness for those designated hard days.
Now, 5 days of couch surfing repeatedly doesn’t fall into anything other than weekend warrior training, which always leads to burnout. But I don’t believe that’s what you’re implying
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Below LT1 is optimal for certain adaptions. Miss out the low intensity and you’ll be missing out. It’s not just filler between high intensity workouts.
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I’ve steered clear of much of this Z2, POL, blah… blah lately, but this is the first I remember seeing people mention trying to add in what’s NOT being done. Sure, recovery has it’s own considerations and all, but never heard it mixed into the percentages (80/20 and such) that are more about what you do for your actual “training time”.
I just giggle a bit every time one of these threads pops up and heads down the rabbit hole. Then we inevitably see comments along the lines of “It’s really simple…” as the basic claim of POL and Z2 focus. But the hair splitting and deep dives we see here seem to tell a different story 
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That is not what I was advocating either, rather add as much volume as you can recover from.
Started the zone 2 thing 6 months ago for both training and health (?) purposes after listening to Inigo. Have enjoyed a few other podcasts etc and am absolutely loving the training but the various threads on here all quickly disappear down the same argument hole and become very boring. Total turn off.
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Getting on the bike is simple. It’s what we love to do and get great enjoyment from it.
Life isn’t simple. Fitting in what is (getting on the bike) to a life of full time jobs, relationships, parenting…. Not to mention the headaches of every day living… can get pretty complicated.
As for diving down the rabbit hole, I am a coach so I tend to over think stuff like this. Rest is part of the formula for success. When I plan out the season I start with the championship race and plan backwards. The first thing I put in is scheduled rest. It’s just as important as the training.
For me, the heart of polarized training is, “intensity all the time is probably not the best way to train.” That is absolutely true. The fine print of this however is that this is for full time endurance athletes. So the question as coaches and athletes we need to ask is… does this apply to MY situation. And like most things the answer is, “it depends.”
For the “time crunched” how do we fit into such a formula? It’s something to think about.
Are hair splitting and cross hair the same thing?
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