I know what you mean… Another group of long term cycling buddies is similar to what you describe. They just ride as a well drilled group with regular rotations on the front almost forcing people to ride 5 mins fairly hard for their turn and then rotating off again until they come back to do another turn. The only time they ease up is 2 mins after the first person blows up and then they all ride home in ‘limp mode’ 
This group will never listen or change and will only ride if the route guarantees a cake stop at 11am on the dot. It’s the way they do it and I just join them when I’m happy with that… It does mean less social weekday rides but I’m OK with that for a while.
Has any tried setting up / doing the LV plans as a T-W-TH structure and then freelancing the weekend?
Are you seeing gains at all? The benefit of a plan are not whether it feels hard or easy but whether it improves your real world cycling.
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, stand by and watch your fitness plummet on that. Late to the thread so may have been said already.
I’ve experimented with polarised in the past, probably never really gave it long enough tbh to fully gauge the effects but the thing which killed me was the boredom of the low level sessions.
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And I just don’t understand why the plans contain anything other than 4 x 8s when the Seiler study concluded that 4 x 8 was the most effective (out of them, 4 x 4 and 4 x 16 at the other intensity levels)
Personally I think if you’ve gone to the effort of researching and listening to what Seiler says about polarised you can so easily create your own plan.
No, I didn’t stick it for long enough to see any gains/losses. Looking back on my year with TR the biggest gains were made after SS1 and 2 MV followed by general build M V, tho’in retrospect, I should have done LV for build, as I needed a bit more recovery.
I really just used the Polarised as a filler between SS1LV and start of mtb marathon speciality plan, LV which I know is going to be mega hard!!
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Nail on the head. You’re not going to improve fitness by doing 3 x 1 hour easy rides a week, the fitness increase from low level training comes from the extended duration of them. Ride at 50% FTP for 4 or 5 hours and you will know about it, that’s where the fitness from polarised comes from and most people just don’t have the time to do it properly.
If you follow a PMC and just do short easy easy rides your numbers are going to plummet.
Yes, so for that reason I think it would be great for getting started after a break (literally!) or an illness, before jumping into a SS plan
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Don’t even know why TR has these plans. From experience, i only ever get benefit of POL when i’m doing 15-20hrs per week. Actually, i do know why, its popular at the moment, and seen as good marketing.
Or basically it does not matter that much in terms of mixing things up. Just go hard for hard days - 4x8 it good, 4x16 is good, 4x4 is good. 5x4 is good, 5x5 is good. 3x 6x5 every week is even better for vo2 max 
(Linear increase in aerobic power induced by a strenuous program of endurance exercise - PubMed)
https://ntnuopen.ntnu.no/ntnu-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2444540/The+Effect+of+Different+High-Intensity.pdf?sequence=2
The 4x16 in seiler’s study where done avg 97% of 40tt power - so they were threshold workouts so no wonder they increased vo2 max less than 4x8 od 4x4. Not to mention that if you listen and research Seiler you will end up in pyramidal training distribution like all the cyclist do (along with Seiler himself and his daughter).
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Yep! Same here for me. LV and always on the trainer for structured stuff. Rest is z1/z2/3 with some pr/kom attempts if I feel like it on the day.
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Yeah, there are several reasons all at several ratios at play, I guess. Time constraints, just wanting to escape the work and life stress, no incline to inform oneself on training concepts, machismo, half-wheeling etc. I don’t have these sorts of problems since I mostly ride alone and also prefer it that way. Plenty opportunity to have it my way and smell the roses along the way, too. 
But fret not, all you happy hard pace folk (whether you end up there because of your friends or because you want just ride) - turn’s out, if you adhere a few additional conditions (keep constant pedal pressure, don’t surge up hills and don’t coast) you are doing the perfect Iñigo San Millán Training
See: Z2/Z3 Border, the perfect training all happy-hard casual riders do all the time anyways
And I say that with equal part jest and equal part seriousness. You just have to mind the additional conditions (and consistency) and that is where those weekend warriors or stomping away just for the sake of it bunches mostly fail. But apart from that - don’t fret the Happy-Hard.
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There’s a lot of other replies here but didn’t see anyone bring up this point- the idea of polarized training is that it’s SUPPOSED to feel and be easy on non-workout days- this then leaves you fresher mentally and physically to go harder on the hard days. Now if you’re doing high volume (e.g. 15+ hours per week), it’s not easy on the body even at 90%+ in Z2, but it’s more residual fatigue rather than the “burn” of threshold intervals. But this allows you to build a bigger base by spending more time in Z2, and max fitness gains from intensity by being fresh for the intensity sessions.
One other point too is that polarized isn’t always 80-20 or 90-10 or some arbitrary % (to my understanding). For example, in the base season, you have shorter/less taxing intensity, so you might be 90-10 or even more in Z2. Then as you approach your race (particularly for longer events), you’ll start spending more time at intensity (maybe 70-30 for example). That’s going to feel a lot harder than 90-10 with the same volume.
Yes sorry, Z1 in 3 zone or Z2 in 5/7 zone. Or “endurance zone” as I call it for avoiding confusion with the different labeling schemes. Point being that we’re masochists who’ve been conditioned to suffer to improve, but most of the time we actually don’t need to suffer to make improvements.
We can all agree on the boundaries you’ve set out here - but I think what these plans may uncover is where that line is
I definitely agree that the low volume one isn’t likely to do much - but who knows, maybe someone will follow it to great success.
Regardless - is it 8 hours/week? 12? 20? What’s the minimum time commitment for a polarized model to succeed?
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The one that works for you or him or her! If you’re used to training 10 hours a week, but want to give polarized training a try you certainly wouldn’t follow the low volume plan–but you might follow the mid-volume and get fitter/faster.
I see a lot of people failing to comply with a full mesocycle (example 6-8 weeks) of polarized training and can’t actually speak to its efficacy. Or they trash talk it w/o actually sharing any meaningful way of quantifying things.
I also question how they handle the high-intensity rides in a given week. I think a lot of people might fall off the train with the hard VO2 work. That lack of compliance certainly won’t help you get fast.
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Yeah, there seems to be a fair bit of knocking the LV plan. It may not work for some or many, but I have to imagine that there are people coming from off the couch, or other situations with limited past training, where the LV POL may be a fine place to start.
It’s unlikely to be the be all / end all, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for some people.
Edit to add: But for many of the people with more training history here, I would guess the other TR Base (SSB) and regular Build plans might be the better ones for Low Volume users.
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I follow a generally polarized training schedule, but personally I wouldn’t do any ride in ERG mode. If the purpose of indoor training is to make you faster outdoors on the bike, then why wouldn’t you want to make it as close to outdoor riding as you can?
Clearly
Unfortunately, what people want to know is whether or not a plan will work for them before they start on it - most people don’t want to be part of the experiment group that determines these things, the ‘risk’ is too high for them
I think what people want is something like, on average you’ll see X from N hours a week, Y from M hours a week, etc.
All that said - I love self experimentation - built my own polarized (well, more pyramidal) progressions and have pretty well dialed in what I respond well too. Even with that knowledge in hand, I’m still currently running through the TR HV polarized plans just to see how they compare. There’s always a possibility they’re better than what I already know, and even if they aren’t I’ll hopefully learn something new from them
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