Sure, with enough resources and on average. Analogously, with respect to exercise training we have well-established, big-picture principles such as specificity, overload, reversibility, etc.
In both fields, though, the crux of the matter is dealing with an individual, where even in medicine, with its almost infinitely greater knowledge and resources is still as much a matter of art as it is science.
Do they just coast down cols? If I ride close to any of their descent times on the alpine cols near me I’m in Z3 so I figure they descend pretty hard, at least when racing. That is, freewheel round the a hair pin then sprint hell for leather to the next bend. It feels more like short intervals than coasting.
For anyone who is interested I did a review of all the studies I could find last year in relation to training for cross country
Which Training Intensity Distribution is better? (xcskool.com)
Some key points:-
I believe Seiler points out which is confirmed in Dylan Johnsons videos that it’s not clear that Polarized versus Pyramidal is better. I also know a few pro cycling coaches and they don’t know anyone doing truely polarized training.
I think Seiler’s main point has later been clarified that elites and pros do a lot of easy and even people doing as little as 6 hours a week can benefit from doing more easy. This would have over lap with what San Milan is suggestion with “zone 2.” My pro coach friends feel that as you get closer to peak season that TiZ distribution changes to higher amounts of hard work. This seems to just be standard linear periodization from back in the day when Joe Friel’s work was accepted as the “Cycling Bible.” So I agree the craziness around following perfect polarization does not make that much sense from one 9-week study. But we should accept that easy has benefits more than many of us want to accept.
I have no idea what they’re doing for effort when training, but I can guarantee that 99.9% of people posting on this forum cannot sniff a professional rider’s bike handling/descending skills, descending position (aero), and to a small extent, gear. Honestly, comparing oneself to a pro on an ascent is more reasonable.
IMO most amateurs who debate this would benefit from doing some experimentation on themselves. November and December are great months for this because you can really settle on an approach in January. I unknowingly trained polarized for several years, did high volumes (15-20 hour weeks), and was super fast. I then took a break from the high volume and racing for a couple of years and then later decided to try structured training. I started doing a sweet spot plan but after a lot of learning and reflection, realized polarized was worth a go and have not looked back since. All people have to do is try one for a few weeks and then try another. Settle on some consistency and then maybe evolve more later in the year as you get closer to an event. For me, 80/20 is great. My hard days are so hard that my easy days have to be easy and my long rides are slow but challenging towards the end. I am nearly as fast as I was when I was doing 15-20 hours of unstructured polarized riding and at certain types of things I am much faster that I was even then (on about 10 hours a week of training).
(By unstructured polarized, I mean that at the time I wasn’t following a schedule but retrospectively when I looked at my data for those few years I was doing tons of endurance miles with occasional hard rides sprinkled in.)
99.9% does not align with my (limited) experience. Not all pros handle a bike like Sagan or Pidcock, especially when you are talking about descending. The guys with cyclocross and MTB backgrounds tend to be the standouts. While I don’t have experience riding with world tour guys (expect in brief non-competitive situations), I’ve ridden a bit with lower level (domestic) pros and my experience is that their bike handling is hit or miss. They are certainly better than the average amateur on the saturday group ride, but there are some pretty experienced amateurs on this forum and some of them obsess over the details and ride just as much as pros. From my experience, the 2 places I see pros standing out is pack positioning (which is certainly related to handling) and body position on the bike (talking about putting out big watts for hours in a very aero position, not just being aero on a descent). But there are some really good amateurs that are strong there as well, some spend time in the wind tunnel, etc. Not arguing with the general sentiment, just the 99% estimate. There are pros that are crappy bike handlers and amateurs that are better than the average pro (and the TR forum has some pretty serious amateurs lurking in the shadows).
But are they crappy?
I know there are pros in the world tour that are obviously not at the level of Sagan, Nibali, or MVDP but we are comparing them to the 1% of the 1%. I assume that they are as good or better than most amateurs.
Could there be an amateur that is an exceptional descender? Sure! But how many amateur races are ever decided on the decent? None? Very few world tour races are decided that way.
I guess it depends on your definition of crappy. Also, remember that there are a lot of levels of pro cycling before anyone makes it to the world tour (where you’d expect the highest bar). But even if you want to focus on the highest level pros, there have been plenty of examples where bike handling isn’t great (debatably crappy). Richie Porte is an easy target. He wasn’t just a world tour rider, but was top 1% of the world tour at one time so he got a lot of bad press about his bike handling. Remember the pic of Porte rolling across the line with team sky on the final TDF stage (the only guy that needed a hand on his bars). And he was a notably poor descender, crashed frequently, and was bad on the cobbles. I’m not saying Porte is a worse bike handler than your average amateur racer, but to think every pro is better than 99+ % of amateur racers is just wrong in my opinion.
This seems to be an unanswerable question. I have a hard time believing that a guy like Porte is that bad. Granted, he is no Sagan and granted there is a wide range of abilities.
The press, tv cameras and our eyes focus on the top guys and we hardly pay attention to the bottom 75% of the pro peloton. There could be tons of crappy descenders who are riding in with the caboose every day after their job is done and we wouldn’t even know about it.
Does he descend Polarised though?
The problem with looking at the Pros TiZ distribution is that optimizing training at 30+ or 25+ hr/wk is a very different problem than optimizing for 6-8 hr/wk or 8 - 10, or 4 - 6. So looking at what Pros do and applying it to us regular people is very helpful, as the problem and solution spaces are orthogonal
I mean, he was a triathlete…