and just to further muddle things, when my HR distribution in intervals.icu has a pyramidal distribution, the power has a threshold distribution.
I suspect other riders with an upward-sloping power profile may be in a similar boat.
I know that people wish to pursue “optimal,” but perhaps “practical” is the better, simpler route. two days a week, go hard (FTP or higher). two days a week, go short, and really easy. three days a week, go long – or as long as you have time for – and easy.
Yup. I’m guessing these were long intervals at SS/high tempo?
Polarized training does not seem to accommodate these kinds of sessions.
It’s not polarized is the point, it’s pyramidal, which is not the same thing.
no, these were more low tempo I’d say. Nov/Dec was basically only base riding. In January we would include these muscular endurance sessions. HOwever, only for the older juniors. The younger ones would just do tempo. I remember this quite well because my (older) brother’s plan was so much more “pro” like, I envied him for that. I had the “baby” plan.
Thx. Maybe these fit in Seiler’s zone 1 after all. Which is quite large for pros.
Polarized has too many benefits to be ignored.
And retrospectively I discovered my spring build has a lot of polarized rides. Here is a common distribution for Wed night group ride when I’m racing it:
This discussion has helped me realize one mistake I’ve made in the past is not going easy enough on Tuesday and Thursday, during this part of my season. I’m definitely planning to approach this spring’s build in a more polarized fashion.
In my own n=1 experience, polarized does not work (for me) during base season.
I thought polarized training only referred to how you distribute your effort across sessions, not within them?
I don’t know:
for me this was clearly tempo/happy-hard/no-man’s-land at that time
and somehow this is just odd for me, his zone 3 goes down to SST, zone 1 up to tempo. Hence, a 2 zone model which is polarized by definition. An all encompassing theory which offers everyone a home.
Yes. But I didn’t have a handy polarized week screenshot already posted on the forum. That is a key hard session that I build my week around, a polarized week would look vaguely similar to that 
but more lopsided to the left.
I get that there are contradictions. Seiler studies what athletes do. He coined the term polarized which doesn’t quit fit cycling. It does fit other sports like rowing perfectly.
And now the work of guys like Weber have highlighted that doing some middle zone work can have positive adaptations (for certain athletes) like driving down VLAmax and pushing up FATmax wattage.
All I’m saying is that constantly harping on the semantics of the term “polarized” doesn’t help anyone learn anything here.
Seiler has been contradictory on this as well. Yes, he talks sessions because that is what the case studies show but he also talks about accumulating time in zone.
Joel Filiol’s highly successful, polarized by distribution, triathletes do many sessions per week with a little intensity. The end result though is a polarized distribution of time in zone. I highly recommend the Filiol podcast on That Triathlon Show.
Well, actually it does. Words mean things. It’s important to be accurate. You can take away plenty of good knowledge from Seiler’s work and still use the terminology correctly.
I interpret it as the exact opposite. To me it is defined as the bulk of the work being in zone1 with a little interval work in Z3. It is only the recreational age grouper that do every ride as a ‘feel good’ ride, hammering the whole hour or two in Z2, that need to be told to slow down.
I have a new theory where I think all of this training distribution stuff will end up. This is probably even obvious to the coaches that are 15 years ahead. In the future, I think it’s going to come down to managing central nervous system stress responses. Z1 training basically allows one to do a ton of training without too much CNS stress. You can mix in a little Z3 which you recover from in a day or two. You can even ride the next day in Z1 and still recover.
Personally, I notice that a hard Z3 session leaves me with sore legs (peripheral nervous system fatigue) but I don’t feel central fatigue. If I string together a few days of SST or tempo my legs aren’t hurting but I start feeling centrally exhausted (CNS).
Seiler talks about this case study a lot:
The key take-away from this case study was that while still polarized, what did her in was too much higher Z3. By higher, I mean the really hard zone5 stuff. Interestingly, what they call middle intensity in the stuff is Seiler’s bread and butter intervals: “The most common MIT session was an interval session consisting of 5 × 7–8 min working periods, with 1–2 min rest in between.”
Also if you listen to some of the nuanced stuff Seiler says about interval work, he likes the athlete to leave “a little in the tank”. Doing some intervals where you hit 90% of HRmax seems to be better than hitting 95% because 95% is so much harder to recover from.
In the “Intensify or Extend” lecture, the major point seems to be extend rather than intensify. He talks about the athlete in the study above. He also talks about how his daughter’s training got derailed by too much intensity.
Here is the lecture again:
https://lecturecapture.brookes.ac.uk/Mediasite/Play/8c0f98ec83c44ec6aa98ca199d2defb51d
I still believe this is highly personal, here is my recent 4-week block of training:
and polarized % vo2max estimates from WKO5 (ballpark estimates:
| week | TSS | <65% | 65-85% | >85% VO2max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/2/20 | 185 | 65 | 21 | 14 |
| 2/24/20 | 579 | 65 | 30 | 5 |
| 2/17/20 | 573 | 47 | 43 | 10 |
| 2/10/20 | 513 | 50 | 43 | 7 |
In the past I’ve seen good supercompensation results from blocks like that, with dramatically reduced or no riding in the adaptation/regeneration week. This week I’m definitely feeling the need to continue rest/adapt/regenerate after that 3 week loading, good thing I’m traveling and not riding until Tuesday of next week 
One reason for the long aerobic endurance rides on weekends is to build an aerobic base capable of supporting long 6-12 hours rides in the mountains. Met a guy on last weekend’s 7 hour ride that did 10 double centuries last year, he got me thinking of targeting 3 or 5 next year and finally getting my California Triple Crown jersey. These type of target events has me thinking more like a triathlete preparing for the bike portion of a full Ironman. I used TrainerRoad’s traditional base mid-volume as my early base, loved it, would be awesome if Coach Chad would remix the TR Full Distance Triathlon Base as a Gran Fondo Base 
After finishing up this late base I’m going to do build in a more polarized fashion.
What about the retracted study of the two Olympic rowers? Polarized didn’t “fit one of them perfectly”.
You may think of it that way, but that is why you consider polarized and pyramidal to be the same, when by definition they aren’t.
Have you seen the TR low volume plans? 
or TR Sweet Spot Base High Volume, here are a couple example weeks and it sure looks like a Threshold TID to my eyes:
A few years ago I did SSB-1 HV (at 55+ yrs old) and it delivered… a personal best on an 2.5 hour HC climb. But I couldn’t handle it right now, would need to get back to where I was in 2017 before attempting that much intensity packed into 5 weeks.
Polarized can’t be taken as literally as some people here are trying to. 80-20 isn’t some patented set formula that solves everything and Seiler is definitely not presenting it as such if you listen to him going more into detail. His “80-20” and “3 zones” are just simplicification to better describe a model and he will admit as much. One of his most used phrases is how athletes need to “solve an equation” because there is no set formula for success. Main points of polarized are basically
So it’s basically couple of principles and not a set formula. Everyone needs to figure out how much time and what intensity brings them most benefits and also what specificity in their training are they looking for so they can adjust their time in zones.
This is why you can hear Seiler talking about some percentages and zones but never 1 set prescription, because there is none, there are some core principles of polarized model and after all, it is just 1 model, not a rule.
