Polarized Training Discussion (Fast Talk podcast & Flo Cycling podcast)

[matthew.weigel]

@trpnhntr

The thing that this most recent podcast didn’t address, that I found problematic, was the boredom of repeating the same sets over and over again.

Haha, I agree that I had that at one point listing to this podcast, but I believe they did address it: proposing basically the same thing as you see in TR, with small tweaks to the interval duration / count / rest period over the course of a given training block. Start with more / shorter intervals, and longish rest periods, then tweak the intervals over the course of a block to have more total minutes at intensity of longer individual duration with shorter rest periods between.

[T_Field]

Interesting podcast. Sort of the antithesis of Trainer Road. Lots to think about.

[mcneese.chad]

I gave it a listen today, but was not able to give full attention. I need to listen again with more focus. But it was a good one.

[Supermurph19]

Thanks for this link, not a podcast I had been aware of. First 35 minutes is excellent, really like their take on things. Interesting to see Xert and INSCYD being used.

[Bioteknik]

I think also realistically, even though there may not be a VO2 fitness gain from doing event specific styled intervals, there are lots to be learned from doing them and knowing your individual limits. The thing about elites is that they race a lot, so they find that out racing. So much of being good at racing is knowing yourself and what you can do. Chad even confirmed it when I mentioned that the specialization phase he’s set up is not so much about fitness gains any more, but getting that mental toughness and knowledge of what you can do, and possibly how to better pace some of those efforts. So of course we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water, I personally don’t mind repeating a workout a few times during a block since I have done some repeat base periods back to back to back, but it really don’t take that long to adapt to really high power intervals, and the fitness doesn’t stay that long either. The old classic teachings were that you only did the really hard intervals in the ~month prior to your event season, with the understanding that those gains are quick, but also fade quick if not maintained.

[matthew.weigel]

@redlude97

Interesting that he’s finding his athletes with even more skewed distributions from 95% to 99% Zone 1

I need to give it another listen, but I think he was actually saying that his athletes had 1-5% in Zone 3. Later in the podcast he also mentioned that some of his athletes do quite a bit of work in Seiler’s Zone 2, as tempo / sweet spot work, but I don’t remember the percentages he rattled off for that.

[tshortt]

Having looked into Steve Neal last year (he’s hard to pin down, not much on the web), I can tell you that he most definitely has his athletes work tempo. Lots of tempo, mostly during “build CTL” phases.

Go back into the podcast when he talks about that 50-59 yr old stage racer he coaches. Pretty pyramidal distribution. And as the stage race approached that particular athlete worked even less and less over-threshold intensity.

[matthew.weigel]

Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of. Not at all “80+% going easy.”

[Bioteknik]

@martinheadon

Just listened to this over 3 nights before bed (the “podcast hour” for me), so I may have missed some bits as I was starting to drop off, or might have picked up the wrong end of the stick. Corrections / additions welcome!

Main takeaways were:

• Find the right balance between intensity and duration.
• Note that 4x8min isn’t a “magic bullet” interval session, it’s just the one that worked the best out of 4x4, 4x8, and 4x16. He said specifically that other lengths and quantities of intervals could work - I can’t remember what he suggested but it sounded very similar to Elephants.
• Better to do hold back a bit and recover for the next session than go all-out and knock yourself out for a few days.
• That for racing over 6 minutes, anaerobic interval work has limited use and could even be detrimental to your aerobic power. The prescription seemed to be a maximum 3-4 week “tune-up” before starting racing.
• That training at a particular intensity doesn’t just make you better at that one intensity. A 4x8min session, even though it’s performed at +/-105% FTP, will also improve your 1 minute power, for example.

For me the most contentious point is about the anaerobic work. It seems to suggest that for a 60-90 minute rolling road race, you should still concentrate primarily on the aerobic zone and even actively avoid too much anaerobic work. Whereas the TR prescription (short/general power build, rolling road race speciality) involves a lot of short, high intensity intervals. Are they contradictory or do the two approaches have more in common than it appears?

I’m most of the way through, but so far totally agree with your summary. One thing to add, that the interval design one chooses does not need to match the 4x4, 4x8, 4x16 format, but that accumulating minutes at around 90% of max HR is the goal. There are plenty of ways to skin that cat while keeping it interesting for the athlete. Also, to add, I think the portion about how they all seemed to work isn’t so much about you should keep doing a specified format to get better, but that doing some super periodized technique doesn’t necessarily work better. Doing them, consistently, by not going too hard on most occasions and getting to a high level of frequency of training is what really gets us better.

[AujujuSauce]

He actually mentions it in that the latest podcast. Very briefly when he says he doesn’t see much of a difference between sweetspot and tempo work.

Also interesting at end of the podcast he mentions doing 75min of tempo work 3x/wk to improve FatMax when referencing his athlete with a 310 FTP but whose FatMax is 270.

[bbarrera]

Haven’t finished listening to the podcast yet, wanted to reinforce what he said around 27-28 minutes about Xert. Personally I found Xert to be most valuable for post-analysis to determine if I gave up too soon on any hard (over-threshold) efforts.

[bbarrera]

@tshortt

Go back into the podcast when he talks about that 50-59 yr old stage racer he coaches. Pretty pyramidal distribution. And as the stage race approached that particular athlete worked even less and less over-threshold intensity.

Steve talked about Seiler referencing another research digging into the data more and found “a lot more stuff above LT1 than they originally thought”

Random numbers from a guy he coached started around 49:30 into podcast

• 51 year old, CEO, 3 kids, busy, long-time cyclist
• 99% indoor training before stage race
• February it was 17% threshold and above; 27% tempo; (leaving 56% unstated but assuming zone1 in 3 zone polarized model)
• in March even more tempo, now 85% tempo and below, 5% threshold (leaving 10% above threshold) for 3 hours a day for 5 days long
• in April, more and more tempo and less intensity
• 5 seconds off the win at the race in Ontario

to paraphrase Nate “a lot of ways to get fast” and I’d claim that guy wasn’t doing polarized.

Doing a lot of long sweet spot and longer tempo has worked for me when it comes to getting faster and being able to push the pedals hard for a long time. SS and tempo was the basis for my “got fast once” season, along with a lot of vo2max work.

Tell you what, I think polarized is really good at raising your ability to ride at higher and higher power while primarily burning fat. Which is a good thing.

By the way, did anyone notice Seiler started Fast Talk episode 75 by saying he was a “put the hammer down, no pain no gain” guy and most of work on 80/20 was a corrective for everything he did wrong for years? I find that interesting and explains why he often comes across as wanting to save us from ourselves.

@redlude97

Have you used the MPA field on a garmin? I’ve tested it on a few hard short hills and I’ve failed pretty much when predicted. Whether that’s a physiological or psychological result is yet to be determined.

Tried it a couple of times and abandoned usage. When I’m doing a long over-threshold push, its “cross-eyed time” at higher speeds and the last thing I’m going to do is look at my bike computer.

[tshortt]

@bbarrera

• 51 year old, CEO, 3 kids, busy, long-time cyclist
• 99% indoor training before stage race
• February it was 17% threshold and above; 27% tempo; (leaving 56% unstated but assuming zone1 in 3 zone polarized model)
• in March even more tempo, now 85% tempo and below, 5% threshold (leaving 10% above threshold) for 3 hours a day for 5 days long
  -in April, more and more tempo and less intensity
• 5 seconds off the win at the race in Ontario

Exactly. Seems like pretty typical pyramid. Also, I googled some of Steve Neal’s old training plans and as of about 2-3 years ago he has his clients/athletes work endurance and tempo for awhile…then they slam intervals for a bit. Normal “build CTL then do race intervals” type of thing.

[bbarrera]

@redlude97

The newest FASTER podcast with an actual cycling coach who uses a polarized(pyramidal) model Gary Neal. Interesting that he’s finding his athletes with even more skewed distributions from 95% to 99% Zone 1. World class athletes on ~10 hours training/week

@redlude97 only listened to an hour (30 min left), and so far what I found interesting was that Steve Neal is practical and uses what works based on the situation. Its somewhat like listening to Sebastian Weber, there is no “one way” to get faster.

So refreshing after listening to the gospel of polarized.

[mcneese.chad]

Agreed. People and their situations are all different. Despite the common info learned from testing and research, we need to evaluate the known practices and apply them in various ways to best match each case.

There is clearly no single “best” or “right” answer. But there is often a “better for this person”, or “better for that person” which can be applied (even when there are multiple acceptable solutions at hand).

@bbarrera

By the way, did anyone notice Seiler started Fast Talk episode 75 by saying he was a “put the hammer down, no pain no gain” guy and most of work on 80/20 was a corrective for everything he did wrong for years? I find that interesting and explains why he often comes across as wanting to save us from ourselves.

I am pretty sure this was mentioned in at least one of his prior episodes. Not sure if it was the FT or FLO one, but I remember him saying that he as messed up in the same ways of overdoing the hard stuff.

[bbarrera]

Is Gary the host? Steve Neal starts by pointing out different athletes respond to different training (13 minutes into podcast). He continues… if you give a low-intensity responder a high-intensity plan, they will either plateau or over-train. And he also highlighted a 51 year old long-time cyclist that did a ton of zone2 (in the 3 zone polarized) to get fast. It is not as simple as “after 3 years you can’t get away with a healthy portion threshold work.”

There are a lot of ways to dig yourself “in a hole” and either plateau or over-train.

[bbarrera]

happens to the best of us!

[Bioteknik]

This mostly confirms my belief that middle intensity work mostly raises FTP by increasing the fractional utilization of VO2 max. The infamous study that Seiler did to discredit (threshold) or middle intensity work may have actaually increased the study participants FTP, but I think he usually likes to measure increase in VO2 max.

[Bioteknik]

We also don’t have the context of what that cyclist was doing in the few years prior to the example. Was he always doing tempo? Or did he come from a background of doing a lot of endurance work? These things matter when talking about individual responses.

[apond58]

https://www.thecyclinggym.com/

Here’s the link to Steve Neal and Andrew Randell’s training facility in Toronto.