Good post. Agree with most of that.
Disagree with this part though. For TrainerRoad to do POL well they’d need to drive the low intensity workouts by target HR range, not target power. From what they’ve said in the past they’ve got no plans to do this.
LOL to be honest that makes no sense. Seiler wants you to go into a lab and have lactate testing done, so to do POL well you need to establish LT1 and then have HR and power targets. At that point you can do either power or HR.
As it stands an off the shelf TR POL plan would give everyone power targets for their low intensity work. For some that might work fine, for others they could be working harder than LT1 at the workout FTP%. My point is it’d be better to drive the low intensity sessions by HR, to ensure they’re always under LT1 HR. Clearly lab and lactate testing would be better.
At times my HR varies enough that I could say the same about LT1 HR. The point being, discipline is discipline. You can lower power targets just as easily as lowering HR targets. And last I checked, TR app shows HR.
I have had a lot of success with Whoop. It is not intrusive, provides direct feedback, and has been useful in behavior modification. It is expensive though. It is also absolutely not perfect, but I have been very impressed at the early warning it provides when throwing too much TSS on the fire. My biggest challenge is doing too much, and after not missing a HV interval in over a year, Whoop has been extremely good for me to establish when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes. A rule I have set for myself is absolutely no cycling if my recovery is “in the red.” It is also nice when recovering from sickness to determine when it is time to start gradually getting back into the swing of things.
I do not and will not ever presume to know what is best for TrainerRoad as a whole. However, I do think that a set of polarized training plans would be an easy get. For example, a Ramp Test is a wonderful way to establish a maximum heartrate. Going a step further, a 20 min power test would be a fairly good (not perfect) approximation for FTP. From my general observations, cyclists looking for a polarized plan tend to be high-volume or at least moderately experienced, for whom a good 20 min test is a real possibility. So now a max HR has been established along with a good approximation of FTP. With these two things, polarized training plans are easy to formulate.
In general I push back on the idea that a company can only sell one product or risk invalidating that product, something like “If we give an inch on sweet spot not being perfect then no one will use it and we will flounder.” I have listened to all 280+ podcasts, and never once has there been any hint of recalcitrance toward a new idea or suggestions from others. It has been stated over and over and over, and then found to be true through experience over and over and over that no one training plan works perfectly for everyone…so why not embrace it?
I’d appreciate a computer programmer’s input, but I find it hard to believe that, given the sophistication of TR software and all of our training tools, a workout could not be designed to have power “float” with HR over a given period of time. For instance, have average HR calculated every X minutes, then have power adjusted up or down 1% based on the target HR. Clearly I am neither a business person nor a computer programmer, but the complexity of these products makes something simple like this seem do-able.
Yes. But the majority of TR users would blindly follow the power targets. Once you know what intensity you should be working at as an individual you don’t need an off the shelf TR POL plan anyway.
yep, the same for me. Tracked it religiously for over 2 years. All I learned from it was that I shouldn’t travel (especially biz trips) and that I shouldn’t race. Nothing as motivating as your smartphone app telling you that you feel sh** and should take a rest day. Great motivation for a race morning 
Adding to that, in my age staying in bed right after waking up is “difficult” 
I’ve said this before but I still don’t understand what POL needs a plan for. Do 4x8min twice a week. The remaining time ride very, very, very easy. That’s it. Does one really need a target for very, very, very easy? With a fixed time budget one can progess with intensity in the 8min intervals only anyway. Elites following POL progress with volume and intensity.
I had the exact same problem 
Well I’m guilty of overdoing really easy, but have since been reformed and target 70-90 watts (FTP of ~250). Just pick an easy gear and start spinning. Double check that power and HR are low, and then keep spinning.
2 digits territory ?!? This is dedication to the process
My natural average power over a long road ride would roughly be around 140w. This is the pace I make when I’m not thinking about anything apart from just riding along, enjoying the view. My ftp is around 290w.
Does 140w look about right to you guys as a sensible effort level for polarized training?
Active recovery rides, for ~30 minutes. However I’d probably do something like that if I had a cycling desk and was targeting 2-4 hours/day during Monday-Friday.
Like all things training it can really vary. Back in the 70s I learned to do the talk test to estimate low running pace, that might be a better estimate, or when your breathing takes its first uptick in rate.
Personally I haven’t felt an issue doing Coggan zone 2 power, and then going hard on my hard workouts. Right now I’ve been training z2 consistently and its risen up to the higher end of z2, around 170-190W on roughly 260W ftp. Some days I’m not feeling it, or HR is running a little high from ‘life’ and will dial power down to 120-140W (Coggan zone 1) to make a 2+ hour ride on the weekend really easy.
Yeah I always use the talk test to calibrate my effort. Thing I find is that if I ride to Coggan Z2 of 160-220w then that’s a really hard pace to maintain over a few hours. If I use a heart rate monitor and keep it between 110-120bpm (max 192), then that’s also a hard pace to maintain and takes focus to do.
If I just ride which I can do for any number of hours as I’ve ridden my whole life, then I’ll tend to produce about 140w average at 100-110ish bpm.
I would regard a 4hr ride at 200w a very hard workout for me and definitely not a marked release from interval training done at other points in the week.
The basic principle of polarized is to make easy rides really easy, so they don’t impact the really hard rides. So I think you know what to do!
yep, the low intensity is more or less the consequence of the high intensity. This is clear when looking at the xc skiiers. Their HIT is hard, really hard. Lying on the ground hard. And this is probably where non-elites struggle with this concept. Pushing yourself that far.
Elites have to prepare for this, that’s why POL has evolved in this discipline:
Love that photo!
I’ve had quite a few cyclocross races where I’ve gone and lain on the ground with the guy I’ve been battling with for last 45mins. It’s quite touching actually. Made a few friendships this way.
I would disagree with this. I see plenty of recreational cyclists pushing themselves WAY beyond their capabilities until puking, crashing, generally being spent for weeks, etc. Which is one of the reasons a polarized training approach for more people is appropriate I think. I am certainly a “non-elite,” but completing Corcoran +1 indoors after several weeks of HV build had me feeling very much like the guys in the picture, sprawled out on the ground
But when to start Polarized? I’m in the middle of my base phase atm. Riding about 16-18hrs a week now but with exclusively Z2 and low cadence tempo work. My first A race will hopefully be in the beginning of April, so purely doing base seemed the best bet for me.
Should I throw HITT workouts in already?
