Classic whoopsiedaisy right there. 
I for one prefer a company that always works on improving over one that pretends to be perfect.
Lol I could cry with happiness reading your post, because this is exactly what we hoped to get across! Thank you. 
let’s be real, it was taken out less than 7-8 hours after it was up, and fixed less than 24 hours later. Pretty decent turnaround
Ah. Looks like it’s automatically recorded so easy for them to use. Shame they didn’t backport that to the 1030 (what I have)
Though there could be a connect iq app to do it from the hrv data. And tr could do it in their app if they recorded the r-r data
You bring up a great point, and one that is a serious point of confusion. Seiler defines a Polarized (POL) Training Intensity Distribution (TID) on the basis of days or session goal. But in the literature most of the studies examining effectiveness of POL vs other TIDs are based on time in zone. We dig into this on the podcast, as it’s so important when comparing studies and interpreting results to note which approach is being used to define POL.
For me, discussion of POL v PYR v TID is fun, enjoy the papers and the pods, but sort of misses the mark to how I think about training and long term build of my own engine.
When I am programming, along with time available and TSS/CTL builds, I pay close attention to the number of intensity days each week, how many weeks in a row, when to push an extra day or so for a microcycle and how it all adds up.
While not every TR plan is the same, the plans I have done, or stared at, typically fall into the pattern of:
TR LV - 3 intensity days a week (new acronym potential “IDW”)
TR MV - 4
TR HV - 5
Often with work to rest structures of 5:1 or 3:1 (weeks)
Having done several of the Mid-Volume plans, they can be very effective. SSB2MV is a go to plan when I need to kick myself in the butt. However, if I tried to do back to back to back MV plans (Base 1 - Base 2 - Build - Speciality), each with 4 +/- IDW, can’t do it because too many hard (intensity) days per week and per block.
I think when people are asking for “masters plans” or" polarized plans", what they might actually want are plans with well thought out progressions that have 2-3 IDW and which can be used repeatedly. Call it Base 1,2,3,4 or some other nomenclature that works well for marketing. 24 weeks worth of progression of this type would be fantastic for folks who want to train, but for whom the current 3,4,5 IDW plans are too much to do repeatedly.
$0.02 as usual. Look forward to the next wave of stuff and very much enjoying this ongoing dialog. I think the TR team is interacting very strongly with the engaged community here and thinking hard on how to improve. It’s going to pay off for customers and the company. Chapeau!
@ambermalika thank you for the thoughtful response =)
I look forward to AT and the tweaks it will be bring. I’ve followed this TR training intensity debate closely as this was the first time I’ve fully committed to following the plans due my need to social distance and wawawaweewa! I was surprised to experience the training load. The strain of my 378 weekly TSS on TR plan through fall/winter >>> 490 weekly TSS with vaguely structured outdoor riding in summer.
Absolutely THIS…
2 interval days per week of good progressions, periodised with different focuses eg vo2, Suprathreshold etc, and endurance rides that are actually z2 (Coggan) and not tempo being called endurance.
Does this updated chart include recovery weeks in the calculation?
Yep. It includes all workouts prescribed within the plan.
Is including them not just a way of making TR plans more polarised than they are? From what I understand the biggest gripe is having more than 2 or occasionally 3 hard workouts a week which could be causing burnout in some users.
Am I the only one that gets lost at Ambers replies? 
It seems like many here feel like Seiler owns polarized and that his definition is THE definition. It may be an additional bridge to cross to address Seiler Polarized not just Polarized or polarized. Terminology may be simpler if we give his definition a name. It still seems like we’re beating around the bush a bit by not directly identifying his predominant version.
I know he does, but you still have a bunch of name droppers in here correcting any other version of polarized. Not saying you have to appease those fanboys but still feels like beating around the bush.
I think including rest weeks will make any plan ‘more polarized’ than it otherwise would be. As long as the same methodology (ie including rest/recovery weeks or not) is done for all plans, then the numbers are comparable. Once you start comparing more than individual blocks/phases, it seems quite artificial to just not include some weeks of training in the calculations.
The formula is a bit weird, in that if you were to do PI by week, the rest week would be a 0, since no zone 3. But including the rest week in the calculations for the whole plan will make the PI higher, as it adds zone 1 time. This number isn’t perfect, and has limitations just like TSS not knowing the difference between 4x10 and 1x40 intervals.
This graph isn’t intended to show our plans as polarized. Its intent is to show our plans for what they are with the polarized index applied.
Additionally, one of the main takeaways from the research we reviewed in this podcast is that greater polarization isn’t necessarily better, it’s just another tool to have in all of our toolboxes (ripping off Amber’s analogies 
) for when our context fits with it best.
We have polarized plans coming very soon and while I think they are great, I’m excited to see them improve and grow as more people use them and as Adaptive Training gives us more data! 
Thank you all so much for fearlessly diving into this head first. Here are some of my thoughts:
- Thank you for going deep on scientific literature analysis. Not every cyclist is going to be able to parse a complicated methods section, but many can, and its important to mention that we shouldn’t just go with the headline or abstract.
- I love the tool bag analogy. That said, you’ve admitted that none of the plans currently have a PI over 2.0, and are willing to offer these. Awesome.
- I think this discussion, as fun and robust as it is, is actually arguing over the tippiest tippy point of training. Consistency is far more important that what training plan one chooses. If one enjoys sweet spot work, and finds that low endurance rides are grueling, one should favor that type of training.
- The time-crunched athlete is a real thing, and probably represents a lot of riders on this forum. What we are able to get done in an hour matters.
- I am excited to see what your data shows on Polarized plans, and if the recommendation from the TR team will be for most athletes to do those plans.
I just finished watching the podcast on YouTube. I’m very impressed. @Nate_Pearson and @ambermalika did an outstanding job reviewing the different Training Intensity Distribution models out there.
My biggest takeaway is that the existing research does not show that a Polarized Model is better than a Pyramidal model.
The second takeaway is that in one study that compared the Threshold to Polarized model the athletes who spent more time in Zone 2, i.e. sweet spot and/or tempo, finished the TT test in the same time as the Polarized group even though the FTP of the polarized group had increased. This suggests that the high zone 2 training volume had enabled them to perform at a higher percentage of their FTP. Very interesting.
I wish there was a study that compared the polarized model to the pyramidal.
Nate also reinforced my natural inclination to never sign up for an intense sweet spot base block-LOL.
I appreciate TR. Kudos to everyone!
I think consideration of recovery weeks is a critical distinction though. A consistent POL/PYR structure is very different from THR padded with Zone 1 weeks.
I’ll also think we should be careful not to overuse PI. While it’s useful for showing whether a plan is polarised or not, it is much less useful in showing degrees of polarisation. As the authors themselves point out “Even though the PI provides an objective cut-off to distinguish polarized from non-polarized distributions, it does not allow the differentiation of sub-types of the non-polarized TID structures (for example, lactate-threshold vs. high-intensity TID) and values between 0 and 2.00 must not be interpreted in terms of more or less polarized distributions”
Great podcast, very well presented.
My non technical take away is that no one has definitively identified a single training protocol to optimize return on available training time. I’m reassured that TR are so keen to get into the weeds so that I don’t have to!
I’m delighted that a Polarized plan is being added to the training options at TR as I’m sure this can only help improve the usefulness of the product to more people and hopefully support even better AT and ML in the future.
It was the fantastic free podcasts that brought me here in the first place but it is the desire for constant improvements to the product like outdoor workouts, workout calendar, group workouts, training plans, TrainNow and AT that will keep me here forever.