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.
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.
Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of. Not at all “80+% going easy.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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).
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.
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.
happens to the best of us!
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.
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.
https://www.thecyclinggym.com/
Here’s the link to Steve Neal and Andrew Randell’s training facility in Toronto.
I have experienced the same thing. I went through a block (late fall) of quite a bit of tempo (83-88% FTP…so not really sweet spot). My FTP basically stayed the same, which is pretty much what I expected (my goal was: “build aerobic, don’t let FTP fall…target FTP later”). It worked. (it was also a really easy/fun way to train)
What I still struggle with is how do I track/measure that. For me, I was building CTL but of course you can have a higher CTL and not have the “correct” fitness (based on goals). CTL is a way to track and plan, but it is not a way to measure improvement.
So how do you do it? I looked into Stamina metric (WKO4), but that wasn’t quite it. Xert LTP seemed promising but the software confuses me (topic for a different thread, happy to learn what I’m doing “wrong”). And INSCYD gave me a baseline/starting point but I no longer have access to it. Example, another TR user and I have very similar FTP. Yet, our INSCYD FatMax numbers are 15-20W apart. It’s almost like “iLevels for sub-threshold part of the power curve”.
Steve Neal talks about athletes who don’t improve FTP but see performance improvements because he trains sub-threshold power improvement. I’ve seen the same phenomenon in myself with lots of tempo and a regular long ride, but my experience is subjective and anecdotal. I’d love to get at a better way to measure it as I’m doing it.
Me too. Generally results in 2w or so bump in TL.
That was a good podcast - thanks for the link gang.
Think Steve’s use case of “Busy Dude” who wants to get better and crack a plateau represents a good number of the collective forum “us”. This group is a key business opportunity for TR.
Suspect the folks following the current plans verbatim are those new to structured training people. TR will work very well for them.
But S. Neal is right - eventually these folks plateau and want more. These folks may stick to TR if they like the interface (I do) and are modifying their own training. The question is how to modify training and that is the genesis of many of these discussions. I think TR needs to get ahead of this and provide more input.
Perhaps think of it this way:
I’m new to structured training and do SSB 1, 2 then a build then a specialty. I crush all my prior PRs and love TR!!! I do it again for another cycle and still see improvement but less FTP gains. Because that is how it works. I do a third cycle and gain very little FTP. So I go for more and move from mid-vol to high-vol. Now I go backwards because more is not better and I’m over-trained. Now 3-4 years on instead of loving TR it stinks! - I need something new!!
The normal answer is to get a coach. Because what else can you do? But I have to wonder since so many athletes have exactly the same journey, and since those first 3 years work so well (intro to structure and progression), that there must be a way to guide years 4, 5 and 6 with new plans. ML, AI, insight from coaches who have seen a lot of athletes?
Also, the master’s athlete thing is key. Current TR plans are simply too much volume and not enough rest for most people in the 55+ crowd. I’ve seen that for myself (50+) and a friend who is 60+ Its great that Chad has clearly stated its OK to do 2:1 or other mods. But being prescriptive is better.
TL;DR
Love this discussion
TR should be finding great opportunity in this to add to the offering. Particularly for folks who already made the commitment and have gathered the easy gains from structured training.
–Mark
I’m a numbers geek, but don’t want to pay for lactate testing or calorimeter (fat/carb mix) testing. For me it comes down to a) feel (can do 2-hour sweet spot without mid workout fueling), and b) power at which I can ride 90+ minutes with aerobic decoupling in 3-4% range.
I agree about the adding volume (carefully and at right intensity). Also that coaches can add insight.
What I’m hoping TR can do is apply data analysis to enable more personalized plans and that could allow folks using TR to progress from that first three years (*) through say the next 3-4. I think it’s doable or at least worth a shot. There are only so many progression types and if they are able to analyze a riders progression, compliance with the plans, maybe add some other data for high motivation types it could be interesting. We’ll see, Nate has alluded to this type of thing before so I’m just adding encouragement!
What field is your doctorate in? Mine is in molecular biology / genetics. Should be a different thread but always interesting to see the types of people that get hooked on this sort of training thing. Its fun, we learn, we experiment on ourselves and sometimes others 
On topic, I;m glad the podcasts with Seiler came out. It has sparked a whole series of other podcasts and some very interesting training discussions with others. If nothing else it should encourage people who are serious to think hard and seriously consider alternative approaches to find what works for them. Again, lots of fun.
–Mark
(*) Three years just for discussion. Its not a valid number just for the conversation.