Does anyone else get plans built that don’t add up for the weekly TSS goal? All Base level plans for me build at a much higher TSS than the weekly goal should be. For instance PBLV should be at 153 TSS/Week and my weekly is at ~250/week.
I’m not sure where they got the 153 from, but just as a guess, it’s because they’re averaging in week 6, which is very low.
The plan looks different for everyone though, based on your PL’s, so whatever they used for the 153 probably wouldn’t apply to you or me.
For example - here’s what I see for week 1. Notice it’s different than yours.
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Hey there @mikedef,
@Pbase got it right.
What you’re seeing when you look at phases like this is the “adapted” version which is considering your own personal Progression Levels. As your levels increase, the plan will adapt to higher-level workouts, thus increasing the weekly TSS.
For instance, I pulled up Polarized Base Low Volume on my work account where all of my Progression Levels are 1.0 and my average TSS/week was 138. On my personal account, the TSS/week averaged 144.
We do this to show you what this phase would actually look like if plugged into your calendar at the same moment you’re viewing it.
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Understood. I was reviewing the plans with a friend and his weekly long rides were much different, i.e. 1 hr less than my prescribed long ride. Makes sense if it’s based on current progression levels. I have no experience in polarized training and just trying to make sense of it all.
Thanks for the quick reply @Pbase and @eddiegrinwald.
Cheers
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Sorry I’m just discussing this with other people and am noticing a discrepancy with how plans are being built. I understand that tss will go up slightly as progression levels increase, but that is only slightly. Your example is 138 untrained to 144 trained. That’s negligible over two or three workouts in a week.
What I see as a problem with how my plan is build verses another person’s is that on week two of a mid volume plan my long endurance workout is 4 hours. I don’t see that as a doable workout for someone trying polarized training for the first time. Regardless of the difficulty I’ve seen other plans from people with higher progression levels with nothing over a 1.5 hour workout.
As an example I’m loading my polarized mid volume week 2 verses another person’s week 2 polarized mid volume. Does this still make sense?
Bueller, Bueller…
In all seriousness does anyone have any experience with polarized plan builder other than selecting pressing the button? I’m selecting low volume polarized base and it’s building a plan with 7hrs per week rather than the 3.9 in the description.
Yeah, that description is definitely wrong. Even with weekly averaging, it’s more like 6 than 4.
3.9 hours for 3 workouts wouldn’t make any sense in a polarized plan anyway.
Our Polarized plans, by nature, have the potential to include more volume than others for the given volume selected. They’re similar to a Traditional Base phase in this sense because they rely heavily on lower intensity Endurance workouts as a good percentage of the prescribed work.
As your fitness and Endurance PLs increase throughout these plans, more volume is the main way to keep pushing things forward in that zone.
If some of the workouts prescribed are too long, I’d recommend using Workout Alternates to find one that’s more fitting for you.
Hi Eddie - he was pointing out that the plan description says 3.9 hours per week, but that’s not what was in the plan. It’s more like 6-7.
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@eddiegrinwald, The issue that I think the people are getting at is that this is all presented on the SAME EXACT page as clearly conflicting data.
Default data (locked and not “smart” because it is a fixed value regardless of user or PL status)
As compared to the dynamic data weekly plan data (updated to match current user PL status)
Ref picture with header and initial weeks to show the source of confusion and discrepancy.
It is potentially confusing and misleading to have these mismatched bits of data on the same exact page.
- I believe it would be REALLY helpful if the top header data was actually dynamic and representative of the actual weekly data shown right below the header.
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Thanks for following up @mcneese.chad @Pbase
As I mentioned earlier, what you’re seeing is the “unadapted” template of the Polarized plan. This is a unique type of training that typically increases in volume rather than intensity as athletes’ PLs increase due to the nature of Endurance riding (increasing intensity will only bump you into Tempo).
The issue here is that many trained athletes’ PLs will cause their applied plan to have more volume than the template.
I totally get where the confusion comes from here, and we’re actually working on a better way to communicate this right now.
I’ll post something here when I have an update to share!
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