This is like textbook great leadership.
There is one link that might serve as a foundation for adding the new ones mentioned here and elsewhere:
Back on the topic of “how many intense sessions a week”, I get that the Seiler study suggesting a maximum of 3 was referring to athletes doing 10-14 sessions a week, so not relevant to most TR athletes.
BUT is there any study/evidence that could confirm whether 4 autonomic-stress-inducing sessions (which Seiler shows is anything over LT1) is actually OK or still potentially counter-productive even at lower total volume? And if not, could Trainer Road attempt such a study?
A simple one might be to have 2 sets of people do a Build program, one with SS/Tempo on Sunday, another with Z2 on Sunday. Then compare both recovery metrics and FTP results.
I noticed the same, but just skimmed so could be wrong. Fast forwarded through it during lunch (watched a bit and seemed the same), and didn’t see any charts.
I look at it as well as the the text for the workout.
This is what I really want to know! The guy that really kicked this off even states that SS works and he prescribes it in base training, the main point that stuck out to me was how many (or little) days of intensity (ss included).
@ambermalika - you are a huge asset to the team with the combo of professional racing experience and research experience! As an MD, I’m shocked at how little colleagues understand about methods. Brains just shut off when they see the word multivariable logistic regression and look at p - values in tables and trust if it’s published in a high impact journal then it must be legitimate.
With your combined experience, I am curious to know your thoughts on riding easy. Right now, a lot of plans at mid to high volume call for intervals above 80% FTP on 4 days per week, so only the Wednesday +/- Friday rides stay under 75% FTP. I suspect TT specialists might look at 60 mins at 85% FTP as chill (Spruce Knob, Round Bald), but for someone like myself, these are still rigorous workouts. I would love to know the basis for this design. The 4 days/week with intervals >80% FTP can be found in nearly every mid volume plan I see. I can assume this allows for maximizing TSS under time constraints, but I don’t know if there is more to it than that. As you know, publication bias exists so we don’t always see both sides of the coin of what works and what doesn’t work.
This is a great idea that I’m going to share with the team! @mcneese.chad has a great resource linked, too. I agree re: defining the acronyms for use. It’s a pet peeve of mine when editing research papers, especially since all of the acronyms change from field to field!
Great minds! 
Quick follow-up: I shared this with the team, and they’re already on it! Thanks for being more direct.
@ambermalika Awesome job on the podcast. Your toolbox reference was spot on for what our overarching goals should be. A.T. is going to help us build some big ol hammers… and wrenches… and…
Keep up the great work team!
First, I am incredibly impressed as to how @ambermalika @Nate_Pearson and the team are handling this.
Now I was able to watch the podcast yesterday before it was taken down, so here are my main take-aways from the podcast:
-You need to go beyond a journal abstract and title to truly understand the conclusions it reaches. You need to dive into the methods and understand the fundamental research questions. This requires education and training.
-Different researchers use different definitions, so that complicates the discussion.
-There are lots of different training strategies.
-It’s difficult to make any generalizable conclusions from exercise science literature because of low sample size and difficult to control variables.
-Polarized training shows a lot of promise for benefit, but there is insufficient evidence to conclude it is the optimal training strategy.
-Given the demand among its users, TR is releasing polarized plans so users have the option.
I read through the first 100 postings and didn’t see an answer to the questions of whether Polarised plans will be offered by Trainerroad. Can someone answer that?
Is the date of publication of these plans known?
Yes, POL is coming, hopefully week of March 15:
Thank you so much for the kind words! I love that you appreciate the methods sections, too. 
The plans are built to eliciting specific adaptations within specific workout durations, and to be flexible enough to accommodate a lot of different people in a lot of different contexts (e.g. to offer a full toolbox). The plans were built to accommodate folks who need to fit in their training before/after work and/or in balance with family time, especially on weekdays. Those weekday sessions are designed to keep the duration within a reasonable range for folks with limited time, while targeting adaptations specific to the block goals, which are also part of the longer-term season goals. We offer the choice to swap out one of the weekend rides for a longer endurance ride, which brings down the intensity while bringing up volume, if the athlete has time or feels it would be more beneficial. Doing a shorter ride that is still aerobic but higher intensity can elicit similar (but not the same) adaptations as a long endurance ride if the athlete doesn’t have time for a longer ride at endurance pace. So, the plans target desired adaptations (depending on where you are in the plan) within time constraints for workout duration (currently based on weekdays/weekends, but that will change with AT).
One of the things we’ve realized in looking at our data is a) we can do a better job of communicating and empowering athletes to use the flexible features of the plans (e.g. swapping out workouts as needed whether on weekdays or weekends), and b) changing a training plan can be stressful. We built AT to help with both of these things. I know first-hand that making changes to a plan can be stressful, even if you know it’s the right decision. It’s easy to second-guess yourself. With AT, we can update training plans based on how you’re progressing, and on any given day, AT offers alternatives (harder/easier/longer/shorter) that all aim for the specific adaptation being targeted. That way you can adjust difficulty and/or time but still target the desired adaptation. We want to adapt to athletes on an individual basis and automate the flexibility of plans, so we handle even more of the details.
I personally love a good long ride, but if I’m in training, these rides are surprisingly stressful, even at low intensity. It requires a great deal of focus to “stay on the pedals” (not coast) and maintain an even endurance pace even for 3-4h. The word “easy” is probably too general, as folks can use it to mean low intensity (endurance pace) or active recovery. A long day of endurance pace (esp if low cadence work is involved e.g. on long climbs) can be more stressful than a quick sweet spot session, but then again, there is a lot of individual variability even in that!
I thought this too, just ask him to participate, he’s done stacks of podcasts, I’ve heard most of them.
@Nate_Pearson can you better clarify what you want people with garmin’s to do at -1:12 in the podcast (25 mins in) when you’re taking about vt1 and vt2? Thanks
I believe he’s talking about something like this, I have my respiration rate which Garmin collects overlaid with power, so I think they want to connect the respiration to power for the vt1 thing
Hey all,
Following up on the podcast, as Nate mentioned we messed up the math and feel really bad about that. 
The podcast has now been republished across YouTube and podcast channels with all parts where we referenced the PI index removed as the bad data made the few portions where that was mentioned irrelevant to the larger conversation on Polarized Training. As Amber and Nate mentioned, we feel bad for not running this through more stringent checks, but we will do better moving forward!
We’ve recalculated the data using ratios and wanted to share it with you:
As you can see, using the PI shows none of our plans above 2.0 based on this criteria, which is to be expected. Our upcoming Polarized Plans will be very different though (working on those now 
).
Please let me know if y’all have any questions on this, and thank you for understanding. Y’all are awesome!