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.
I guess I don’t remember TR making that specific claim of the PC and forum losing their place. The essence of getting a proper workout assigned is rather narrow when we consider the wide range of topics covered in both places. There’s far more to this whole picture that still warrants discussion to a variety of depths and needs.
Regardless of that nit, I see a bit of a difference between organization marketing claims (particularly when whittled down to short sound bites) and forum statements actually made by individual athletes (the POL = simple is repeated in just about every related thread I have witnessed).
It only loaded 13 weeks of data, if I go back further on the calendar its blank, if I go to 2021, its blank. Not sure if because I’m not a subscriber or something messed up when it was transferring the data.
The principles of the training are simple, what’s going on with the physiology as a result is complex. Forums are where people like to make things complex else they’d be no debate. Hence it often swerves into the latter as though we are all physiologists by profession.
The Pareto principle applies, you’ll get 80% of your gains with 20% of the work. Make sure you’ve achieved that 80% first before you put a heap load of work trying to eke out another 20%.
It’s because you are not a supporter. There are limits on historic data you can import. I encourage anyone who tries and likes the platform to subscribe. It’s absolutely fantastic and it gets developed so quickly. Anyway back to the topic at hand…
Sure, I get all that. I was just pointing out a funny thing that seems more like an oxymoron to me.
Another funny one to me, and one I’ve privately giggled about WRT Pareto and the 80/20 crossover.
Your summary would seemingly indicate the majority of the performance gains (80%) come from the 20% of “hard” workouts within POL. But from my limited take is that the majority of the gains are actually from the 80% of “easy” rides. Probably just my silly take and it heads down the rabbit hole that I try to avoid for myself lately
Put a different way, if you could only do either/or of the 80/20 Easy/Hard, which would be the “best” to pick?
I think @davidtinker changed intervals so it uses Garmin Connect rather than strava to avoid the subscriber issue. You maybe just need to set up your GC/Intervals sync.
Have an intensity distribution where vast majority of sessions are easy. The rest very hard, avoid the middle ground.
Pareto is about prioritising that which gets you the majority of your return. The most bang for your buck. It’s a precept rather than a mathematical law.
It’s a case of diminishing returns, and adding in complexity on top is also a case of rapidly diminishing returns.
Easy for sure. Last year I went from 181w FTP to 316w in one year at age 55-56, doing 90% Z1-Z2 power, HR was 81% Friel Z1. My main concern wasn’t performance gains, but avoiding injury/too much stress/overtraining. To my noob mind, it just seemed safer than doing a lot of HIT, and it makes you faster anyway.
Thats amazing progress, regardless of age. Was this while following a Trainer Road plan? Is this AI FTP or tested in another way?
I can’t match you for volume, my goal is to maintain 6 hours or more per week this year but am thinking of trying to limit my intensity to 2 hours per week and doing 4 to 5 hours per week of Z2 stuff. Plus whatever I do for outside group rides and racing.
FWIW after an off season, or off the couch, my ftp is about 170-190w.
When I was about @gergercha age in 2016 I did 379 hours and ended up with
55% low intensity
35% mid intensity
10% high intensity
Based on HR my estimate of ftp was around 280w. That was self-coached using CTS/Strava time-crunched plans/principles and about the same training intensity as following TR plans in 2018 and 2019.
Last year I did 400 hours and ended up with
80% low intensity
17% mid intensity
3% high intensity
and my ftp was around 275w. Basically the same ftp but no power meter for most of 2016 so only way to compare is long endurance climbing performance which was the same.
Comparing 2016 and 2022, basically the same hours, less effort, same fitness.
Sports science long ago concluded endurance performance scales with volume. I posted a chart showing ftp vs hours from 2016 to 2022, and in my own data its pretty clear that more hours = more fitness regardless of the amount of intensity. If you have Strava premium, look at the 60 minute climbing plan which in 2016 was the basis for my build (along with some club climbing centuries).
You don’t need much of a plan at 10 hours a week. Just ride your bike and do some intervals on a couple days, or substitute with group rides that include hard efforts.
The original 181w FTP test was a TR ramp test. The most recent 316w value was from AI FTP detection on December 25. I was originally going to follow a TR plan early on, but I started reading about POL and listened to a bunch of Seiler podcasts.
Since 2022 was my first year on the bike and I started really out of shape, I just didn’t want to lose time/motivation to injury. Whereas somebody who’s been cycling a long time might view an injury as a temporary setback, I was concerned that I would just give up cycling entirely if I pushed too hard, too early, before the new habit of cycling became really established in me psychologically (this is also why I didn’t buy a bike with wheels until August).
The TR plans seem mostly geared toward “time crunched athlete” and a lot of intensity, so I just sort of did my own easy workouts, but used TR to connect to my wattbike (I probably did 95% of my hours last year on the wattbike, which is why climbing volume is low relative to hours trained). In the first half of the year, volume was pretty sporadic, but I started doing 12hr/week consistently from July onward, then ramped up to 14+hr/week in September.
Recently I started working with a coach and we have been doing some Tempo and SS, and he has been pushing me to raise my HR even on Endurance. I’m taking it a step at a time, not sure what my body can handle. In general, it seems the kind of thing where you can handle more load than you thought possible, as long as you build up carefully.
Ironically, I think this is easier for me to do now in my mid-50s, as I know recovery is important. The last time I did serious endurance training, as a runner in my 30s, I just trained hard all the time and eventually burned out. Then I slowly got out of shape for 20 yrs. Somehow, I got the motivation to start training again last year, this time on the bike instead of running. I don’t want to blow it because I feel like if I were to give up again, I just wouldn’t have another chance.
Thats wild, very similar starting point, I wasn’t off the couch at the start of this year but started cycling again (mtb) in July 2020. Got a road bike in 2021, got a trainer December 2021, first FTP was Dec 19th on Rouvy (20 min test) 168w, started Trainer Road April 17th 2022, 1st Ramp test was 175w. Am now at a AI FTP of 217 watts, I can feel the gains but its not enough even though at my weight it puts me at 3.84 w/kg a FTP of 217 doesn’t get you very far. As I am so small (56.5kg) I’m not sure if a 300 watt FTP is realistic for me but even 250 watts would put me around 4.4 w/kg, which would at least make me pretty fast uphill.
I am time crunched and while I was more consistent this year and doing structured training for the first time my hourly total was only 272 hours compared to 2021 291 hours but all unstructured.
This year I am shooting for a minimum of 6 hours per week, which should see me break 300 hours this year. I’m in the Trad Base LV plan now but will start an adaptive plan targeting my races in late February or early March. Would like to stick to low volume (generally 3 1-hour workouts per week ranging in intensity from endurance to anaerobic) and add in 3 to 5 hours of Z2 rides on top, minimum of 1 extra 3 hour endurance ride was able to do Broken Hand, with the flu, the day after Pioneer -1 this week, so feel thats realistic. Hopefully with time can work my way up to adding in something like Crows Nest, Chowchilla or Lyell while still being able to hit the intensity of the TR workouts.
I agree, I think this is where people just get so confused, and focus in the 80/20 number as it if is the target, but what was said (as you have just pointed out) did not point to this being a “golden rule”
Do as much riding as you can (at a zone 2’ish level, you know you can repeat)
Add in some high intensity work, to the level that you can recover, and go again next week
For some Norweigan skiers where this was first (really observed) doing 30 hour weeks, this worked out to a ratio of 80/20 easy/hard
And thats the important part (as I see it), it’s the number, on the volume they were doing, that worked for them, it’s the volume bit that is just as important
I am entering Block III of LV Trad Base and that means Long Tempo work instead of Endurance (Pine Mountain, Moore and Diggins) these 2.5 hour workouts range from an IF of 0.66 to 0.71 TSS. Should I swap them out for endurance work instead? Perhaps Ptarmigan, Crows Nest and Gates (3 hours, ranging from 0.63 to 0.66 IF)?
Another thought on avoiding the middle Tempo and SS, when presented with a SS workout should I choose one of similar PL but higher IF? For example I have Carson -3 (3.1) scheduled for today, 1h, 65 TSS, 0.80 IF, 573kj, would Thunder (3.1) 1h, 65 TSS, 0.81 IF, 558kj be a better choice as it pushes closer to threshold?
Perhaps that isn’t enough of an IF difference to be meaningful but at a higher level would Tallac -4 0.82 IF be worth swapping in for Looking Glass -1 0.78 IF or is that still splitting hairs and a sweet spot workout is a sweet spot workout and there isn’t any benefit in messing with them.
