Technically speaking, doing intensity plus nothing is more polarized than doing intensity plus Z1. Just imagine if TR has added 3 days to this plan of 1.5 hours at 30% FTP. All of a sudden it would seem polarized. I think this is what a lot of people miss about how @chad @Nate_Pearson @ambermalika and the team build the plans. If you’re limited to a certain amount of time or TSS, you’re probably better off doing three days of intensity and with no easy days rather than one day of intensity and two days of endurance just to hit some arbitrary ratio. If you’ve got the time and energy, sure add the endurance to the above, but keeping some arbitrary ratio on as you go down in volume isn’t the best use of limited training time.
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This is a good looking program related to the amount of intensity. So much more manageable in the long term and you hit the exact wording you’re going for. When you do a hard day you are fresh and feel good vs having fatigued legs or neuromuscular system.
This is what put me off POL initially - I didn’t expect the ‘easy days’ to be as high as this. I thought it was like recovery pace, and couldn’t see myself doing that.
But it’s actually fairly high and a good pace especially if you’re doing longer days so it doesn’t feel boring in practise. Actually been quite an eye-opener so far, really enjoying making my weeks more small p polarised.
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Not at all! A 325 watt Vo2 Max at 50% is ~163 watts. This is perfect for a base ride of 2 hours and up for someone at that level. The other thing is that wattage is a safe bet to ensure you’re not going over your lactate balance point and you’re actually riding in base vs creeping up on tempo and going over your ability to clear the lactate without inducing muscular fatigue.
If I’m going for a straight up base ride I’m riding around 165 watts.
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Agreed! It is not Polarized. Most (but not all!) of our plans would be considered Pyramidal as far as TID, which varying degrees of small ‘p’ polarization, which is to say, with varying ratios of z2/z3. We have a couple of plans (e.g. SSB HV I & II) which have Threshold (THR) TID, and some with HIIT TID (e.g. high-intensity maintenance and time-crunched plans). As a thought-exercise we ran our data (based on time in zone) through the polarization index equation, but the initial run had a spreadsheet error. We immediately took steps to own and correct the mistake. Even in running the numbers through the P.I. equation, we noted that our plans mostly fall into a Pyramidal TID, not a capital “P” Polarized TID. Nonetheless, it was a painful mistake, for which we feel terrible, and which we corrected as fast as possible. (See Nate’s post and Jonathan’s post above in the thread.)
The discussions around Polarized TIDs get confusing, because Dr. Seiler, for example, uses the session-goal approach, while other researchers quantify TID based on time in zone for their studies. To further confuse matters, Seiler is a co-author on papers that quantify the TID approaches based on time in zone (for example this study on Ironman athletes and this study on runners). As more research emerges, we’ll likely see more standardization of metrics to allow more accurate comparisons of studies and TIDs. Another example is that researchers have yet to determine which metrics best assess physiological and performance outcomes of different TIDs; currently, studies employ a range of metrics, which again complicates comparisons. For what it’s worth, I don’t take any specific position on any of this, in that I don’t advocate for any particular metric, approach, or methodology as better than any other. I’m only observing inconsistencies in the literature itself, and trying to make sense of it fairly in light of differing methods and limitations inherent in this type of research.
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I trained polarized for a year and a half and I based my highish polarized Z1 rides off of heart rate. Initially I used a HR zone calculator based off of max HR to get my 5zone model Z2 HR range, then set the top of that range as my ceiling for a my 3 zone model Z1. So, for me I found through trial and error that I can ride 185-190w for 2 hours on the trainer with little HR rise (with adequate cooling, hydration, and fueling — very important!), staying 120-135 bpm. But if I were to ride >200w my HR would rise pretty steadily and I’d be around 145bpm after 70 min. When I do these endurance rides outside I just set a HR ceiling of 135bpm. On one hand it’s pretty simple but on the other it does take some experimentation. For the trainer I have a custom workout that is completely constant at 185w and I adjust it up or down based on what my HR is doing.
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Well I would still say that while it is more of a symmetrical pyramid TID in the TR plans, most of the literature when describing pyramidal is still heavily skewed to riding at and below LT1, like 70-80%. There’s nuances to cycling and other longer distance sports since they are doing longer sessions and thus the session approach loses its applicability. Most of the studies where session specific TID works was on athletes doing 2 a days, but still, we shouldn’t be including the recovery valleys in estimates for the training distribution (whether or not wu and cd should is a a valid argument). So a 4x8 with 3 5 minute recoveries is more like 47 minutes of intensity than 32 min of intensity and 15 minutes of z1 work.
So as I said, a plan that is close to 75% hard work and up to 25% easy work is still hardly pyramidal either. There’s not one hard and fast way to quantify, but an aggregate of data is the best one can use and my aggregate data from 2018, when following the TR plan was 55% Z1+Z2 45% Z3+Z4 and 5% Z5 (generalized here). Technically a pyramid, but not like a pyramidal training model described in the literature.
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I just thought that the endurance rides on TR were not endurance enough to work for a POL plan since some of them creep into 70-75% FTP, but seems not. 70-75% isn’t hard but also not “easy” as my HR starts to get to 75% of max.
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I’d suggest learning what works for you rather than seek a magic % FTP. You might choose to start conservative or aggressive, in the end there will be some trial and error.
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Pet peeve - new review articles that cite old review articles and not the primary work.
I shall now go search for additional windmills to tilt at.
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Will DM… meant mostly as humor and don’t want to derail further on POL thread. It would be too polarizing!!!
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I may be tired of polarized discussions, but I still haven’t tired of polarized jokes. The cornier the better! I have a high threshold.
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External validity is probably limited when you have a small group, but this is not necessarily fixed by having larger sample size. For example, if you study 10 U23 white males or 1000 U23 white males, you will still be left wondering if the findings would apply to other ages, races, women
IMO this is a huge point which is glossed over in the discussion of research, which Amber and Nate alluded to but could’ve gone further on. Even if you see a constant affect in a similar population for a study (e.g. the “well trained male cyclists” or “untrained college-age males”), that doesn’t mean the same effect will be present on women, or master athletes, or even athletes of a similar demographic due to physiological differences. The impact is also going to change based on measures of performance- i.e. are you looking at 10 second sprint power, VO2 max, some type of time trial/FTP, TTE at a submaximial effort, repeatability, etc.
Research is great for setting a benchmark and coming away with actionable takeaways that athletes can try- but that doesn’t mean that something will be best or even good for an athlete just because it was observed in a study. IMO, if you care about performance, it’s incumbent upon you to be flexible and try different approaches, and make notes/take feedback about what worked and what didn’t work for your outcome.
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Sorry, but absolutely true. 50% of VO2max is too low of an intensity to provide a significant stimulus for adaptation in a well-trained individuals, unless perhaps carried out for hours and hours.
As for power, don’t assume that just because you can get to 325 watts during a ramp test that 163 watts represents 50% of your VO2max. In reality, if you can get to 325 watts, then your VO2max is probably only about 3.8 L/min, whereas 163 W would require about 2.4 L/min, or roughly 60-65% of VO2max.
For the pro-POL group please take it easy on my noob simplicity when it comes to all this. What do you see as a POL week?
Would either of these weeks qualify?
This is 9 hours of work. Which IMO would have to be compared against a TR HV plan to be fair for time constrained cyclist. Would this out perform a TR LV plan of 3-4 hours?
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Yeah, wasn’t referring to the TR ramp test. I see your numbers and appreciate your opinion but I can tell you from personal experience, experience from others I coach, and other evidence from coaches I’ve worked with, there are absolutely adaptations from doing an appropriately paced base rides in those wattage ranges. Okay to disagree.
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I think you’re underestimating the intensity of your “easy” rides.
ETA: AMPK is hardly the be-all and end-all as a marker of training adaptation, but even 2 h at 65% of VO2max won’t budge it in trained cyclists.
or you are underestimating the need for recovery from hard rides 
Well stated. My personal “issue” with the TR plans is not the Z2 and Z3 mix as many of their plans clearly have both. It’s the relatively small amount of Z1 vs Z2/Z3 - making the pyramid more of a rectangle or rocket shape. I think this was a bit glossed over in the podcast. I’m old so I need more recovery/Z1. I’m interested to see what the Polarized plan look like.
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No. I’m talking about the adaptation resulting from the lower intensity training per se. How it fits into an overall training plan is a different question entirely.