ME TOO
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Snap - been thinking about what this looks like recently. Pol is feeling good now outdoors is opening up, but I’ve been wondering how Dec-Feb is going to look when winter really hits…
I was also thinking that if I get a good endurance base built through summer and autumn, with the regular 4-6hr rides, then occasional ‘maintenance’ longer rides will be all thats required over winter and the focus can switch to extensive and intensive threshold work again.
Ultimately I decided I simply need to move to somewhere with warm winter riding weather though 
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I think it’s the group of people you know. I do at least 1 full cycle every year, and usually a 2nd shortened cycle. For example: full SSB, Gen Build, Rolling RR, then shortened Base (maybe 3-4wks), shortened Short Power Build, Cyclocross. So I’d say I get 1.5 cycles in every year. And speaking to your point about just repeating base, the group/scene I’m in that use TR, I don’t think there’s anybody that just repeats Base or Base/Build. It would be interesting to see the data TR has, but to say that everybody just repeats Base over and over I don’t think is correct.
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And are more focused on completing those plan cycles rather than spend needless time on a forum.
Edit: just to clarify, this is mostly a joke.
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Amber, I’ve always been impressed with your combination of technical knowledge and personabillty, and now that listened to the podcast and hear more about the incredible depth of your experience we’re indeed incredibly fortunate to have you sharing your expertise here with us. And doing so in a way that helps us mere mortals understand important ideas.
Particularly appreciate the educational aspect of this podcast regarding how to read research. Kudos!
And another set of kudos for action on the glossary.
Time to go ride my bike!
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It’s been discussed multiple times but feels like there is a lack of interest in finding this number. The higher zones seem to be easy to set the ability level in tr by rpe and the pass/fail of workouts but I don’t see any plan to figure out the right number for endurance. Well, at least any way of making sure it’s not set too easy
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Only the new version. But based on their comments they seem to only claim that the existing plans are more polarized (little p, as in more in that direction on the TID spectrum) than just sweet spot (opposite end of polarized spectrum), which some people are saying is what TR is.
Truth is TR offers plans and phases that cover a lot of the spectrum. They don’t currently have fully Polarized plans, but said they are trying to launch that next week as an option for those that want it.
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I listened to both. They say it is polarized in the sense that there are work intervals and recovery valleys (one definition of polarized) and that their plans fall most often into a pyramidal distribution, which is small p polarized but not big P Polarized in the Seiler definition (and even that definition is shaky because the studies did TiD rather than days of intensity as Seiler references).
Search this thread for @ambermalika’s comments and you’ll find her repeating the TR plans would be considered a pyramidal distribution in most cases.
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Thanks @BCrossen. Let me see if I can help clarify, @redlude97. Our plans are Pyramidal (PYR) as far as Training Intensity Distribution (TID), with varying degrees of small “p” polarization, which is to say, with a broad range of z2/z3 ratios. (The more z3 relative to z2, the more small “p” polarized.) We made an honest but very painful mistake in our first-pass calculation of where our plans land per the Polarization Index (an equation posited by Treff et al in an attempt to establish a more standardized definition of POL TIDs in the literature). We immediately took steps to own, correct, and address the mistake. The corrected version of the calculation (which Jonathan posted here) shows the range of small “p” polarization (in terms of varying z2/z3 ratios) while maintaining a PYR TID across most plans. Sweet Spot Base High Volume I and II have a PI of zero, as those do not include z3. None of our current plans are big “P” POL, but we’ll be releasing Polarized plans shortly for those athletes that would like to experiment with the POL TID.
The chart is really just a thought experiment, because the Polarization Index is not the end-all definition of POL. The equation uses relative Time in Zone, not a session-goal approach or binary binning of days, per Seiler. What you can see on the correct version of the chart is that most of our plans are PYR (include z2 and z3) and range in the relative ratios of time-in-zone for both.
At some point, the field will need to come to a consensus on how to define POL TIDs, because at present, Seiler uses session goal approach, while the vast majority of interventional studies on POL TID (esp in cycling) use time in zone to determine the TID. Even one of the studies we looked at in the podcast (Munoz et al 2014 on recreational runners) used time in zone and defined the “most” POL group with a z1/2/3/ ratio of 78% / 11% / 11%, which puts z2 = z3. Seiler was an author on this paper. It’s no wonder discussions on this topic get confusing!
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kind of tough when the answer lies in lactate levels which requires kit and knowledge to utilise. Outside of these forums there has been lots of studies and efforts that try and suggest an answer, but they all seem to come up with different answers…
The simple answer is that the low intensity days should be done at a level that allows you to hit the hard days at 100%. After riding a lot of 15-20hr weeks doing this I now know how hard to go/not go if I want to complete a hard session later in the week… The answer is also likely to be different if you’re riding 5 hrs or 15 hrs of z1 (Pol) per week as well.
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To get the best numbers, sure, but there are ways of using hrv which are way much accurate than assuming a percent
I’m not so sure I agree with that. That seems to assume that the endurance days are just rest. From what I’ve read a ride below LT1 can be good at increasing mitochondria so should be at the higher end to get the best adaptation there. This may impact your recovery to do hard efforts but would still give important gains.
Thank you! Appreciate the kind words. If of interest, there is a decent review paper by Kenneally et al that looks at a range of Training Intensity Distributions (TIDs) and finds both POL and PYR to be the two most effective TIDs. Of course this paper is specific to running, and an open question in the research is how well we can realistically translate results from one discipline to another, especially between disciplines with such different mechanics (e.g. ventilatory posture, high-force impact, eccentric forces, propensity for muscle damage). From what I’ve read (and please take this with a grain of salt, because I haven’t read everything), POL and PYR both tend to outperform TIDs with single-zone focus (e.g. THR, HIIT, LSD). A mechanistic explanation for this remains unknown, and I’m sure there is much more to be learned in comparing POL v. PYR, especially with consideration for order effects in context of periodization. It’s a great question, and I’m excited to see where the research leads on this!
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Thanks to you and the team @ambermalika, I’ve just finished the second half of the podcast as I was struggling to pay attention during threshold* intervals in the first half this morning 
I wasn’t really the target for this ‘cast as I already have familiarity with many different plans, and found no major conflict with Seiler’s research although as a triathlete I’ll have a different basis of opinion to a cyclist.
What I wanted to say was just that given you have all our pre-Ironman training and presumably the race day performance data too, any time TR wants to re-run the Iron and Half Iron studies themselves with a much greater population than the nine or so in the linked research - just give us a wave on the IM thread 
*OMG Threshold, I know
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It’d be great if you were able to post the underlying stats for this chart i.e. TIZ for each plan, week by week. It might help people choose the right plan for them. Possible?
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Amber. I’ve said this in a few other threads but can we sum up TR philosophy in a simple sentence?
“We believe if you can’t ride longer you should ride harder for a given training session”
Would you say this is accurate?
It is obvious to me by your response here and the current training plans that this is the TR philosophy put very simply.
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Has there been much effort into figuring out what training in each zone does to the human body and then try to figure out training distribution based on that? To me it seems like each zone has its own bottleneck in the the body to the optimal TID would train the system that is the primary bottleneck at the time.
Sometimes it feels like the studies just focus on how to best improve performance but ignore what is changing in the body. If your assume each body had different bottlenecks the optimal TID would be very different than just assuming one is better than another
Mmm but perhaps too simply if I might say so. TR tends to distribute work around the zones over time, and it would be misinterpreted as “ride hard every time if you can’t ever ride long”.
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Yep - that’s pretty much my year too
Honestly, no. Our philosophy really comes down to providing the right tool for the job. It’s not about riding harder or easier; the goal is to apply the correct magnitude and type of training stress with enough recovery to elicit desired adaptations. It’s been demonstrated pretty clearly that just riding harder in less time is not an effective strategy (or else we’d all just do short all-out rides all of the time). Different intensities elicit different physiological adaptations. The case of a long endurance ride vs. a shorter sweet-spot session is one example where there is some reasonable overlap in the specific adaptations elicited by the two different types of training stress. But this doesn’t hold across all intensities or across all time durations.
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This is such a great point! Not all TSS is equal. This is something our ML models have detected, and is something Adaptive Training addresses really well.
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