Polarized Training vs. Sweet Spot (Dylan Johnson video)

Thats a problem for my coach :joy:

Back when I was self-coached this appears to be the overload week that pushed my fitness to all-time heights:

and another view of the weeks preceding and following:

Knocked down 3 centuries by Feb 18th (two in Jan). Check out the ramp in weekly IF (baby blue bar) and crazy high IF. And then I broke down for 9 days, which allowed my body to recover, and then all-time bump in fitness on a 10 mile TT and a couple weeks later verified with 1+ hour at FTP. By then I think CTL was in lower 80s. At the time I was only using TrainingPeaks and loosely following some cherry-picked principles in Carmichael’s Time-Crunched Cyclist book (ignored the long z2 rides). WKO modeled FTP matches my field tests. I’m calling it a 4 month build, ahead of a double century in late May (not on the chart). Theme song for that time period was Outshined by Soundgarten.

Crazy sauce for sure. Wasn’t polarized but it delivered results.

edit:
@rkoswald sorry got busy with day job. In case you missed it, the point of posting those chart was to show manipulation of time/TSS vs intensity during a build. With apologies to professional coaches, you can see my self-coaching decision to increase intensity (IF in light blue) over two separate 5 week periods, which required reducing time (purple) and TSS (red) in the first 5 week build. And then I blew up, recovered for 9 days, and came back like a mad cow bull in a crystal shop for another 5 week IF build while ratcheting up time/TSS over previous build.

FWIW, something to consider as either a bad idea or a nugget to use while considering adding intensity to your polarized blocks.

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