If he clearly said it was forbidden he was forgetting the case study included in his review article from 2010.
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Another example of where polarized is in the eye of the beholder. (See last sentence of first paragraph.)
zone2 in 3 zone model / grey zone / “forbidden” / whatever
Yes I mentioned that interesting forgetfulness in another thread… can’t quickly find it. Believe there was an older polarized article from Seiler and it included some speculation on why the Spanish U23 train pyramidal.
In any case, I did summarize some of slippery slope from pure polarized to pyramidal in cycling:
- VeloNews FastTalk episode 51 “pros train polarized” and at around 57 minutes the question of pyramidal distribution is answered by Seiler deferring to the Stoggl/Sperlich paper I provided above. At 59 minutes Seiler asks “at some point we are going to have ask if there is something special about cycling.” Stoggl is brought up again, and then Seiler digresses to rowers and goes back to speculating about cyclists.
- That Triathlon Show episode 177 we hear Seiler admit cycling pros train pyramidal
- FastTalk episode 72 we hear Seiler say (paraphrased) recreational cyclists have no intensity control, they need green/yellow/red. Once they get that control, it is ok to get more nuanced
I’m with Dylan Johnson on his conclusion. There isn’t enough data on pyramidal to say anything definitive, however its safe to say a large portion of your training should be endurance / zone1-of-3zones. And further, I’d say coaches are ahead of published data and more importantly the experienced coaches and coaching companies (CTS, FasCat, etc) have longitudinal data on what works.
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“I wouldn’t say that 80/20 principle works in absolutely all cases, but it works in most cases.” “The 80/20 principle depends on the experience and fitness of an athlete”.
"
- New athletes should always start by doing the 80/20 training, no matter what volume they do;
- for athletes that train less than 7 hours a week, following the 80/20 principle might have diminishing returns;
- once you get beyond 7 hours a week, following this principle becomes paramount, as you can get to overtraining doing too much intensity;
- for athletes training 15 hours a week and above (eg. endurance athletes), it becomes paramount that they follow the 80/20 principle."
32 mins roughly
80/20 Triathlon: Get Faster By Training Slower with David Warden | EP#121 - YouTube
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Agreed. Trad Base is best done as outside workouts IMHO
Thanks for the video. Having watched it, it’s pretty clear that Seiler just puts the “polarized-stamp” on anything he has analysed that’s fits the 80/20 criteria 
-
Kenyan marathon runners: 80-20 based on distance run in km
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International rowing medalists: 80-20 based on training hours / month
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The book “80/20 Running”: Do 80% of running at low intensity, and the remaining 20% at moderate to high intensity
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Basic periodization of a champion XC skier:
80-20 based on sessions
And then he goes even further by slamming that “polarized-stamp” on high intensity training distribution. And here it’s based on h/week
So yeah, what on earth is he saying? 
(Get your popcorns ready)
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Both Seiler and Warden also suggested that athletes do and need to spend quite some time in their race intensity zone, which, of course, varies from discipline to discipline. For Ironman athletes, this might even be Zone 1 (in the 3 zone model), for some athletes, it will be Zone 2 (“Sweet spot”) and for some, it might even be Zone 3. In that case, doing Zone 2 work is implemented and the distribution becomes more like 80:10:10.
Also, the 80:20 might not really be 80:20 in all cases; Warden makes a statement that the distribution is more like 75:25 for swimming, but they “kind of rounded” the volume, cause it’s more catchy and sells better.
Either way, the general principle is doing a lot (roughly 80%) of volume in Zone 1 in the 3 Zone model or Zones 1 and 2 in the 5 Zone model. This is measured by:
- time, eg. hours/month: Seiler stated in one of his talks that he prefers month over week, since 1 week is usually too short and depends too much on which part of the training block an athlete is in;
- sessions, not just “Time in Zone”, because he argues that recovery time between 2 hard intervals in a HIT workout can’t really be deemed as Zone 2 work.
At least that’s how I understand things now. I’m planning to listen to more podcasts in the future and might chance my findings.
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Too bad this paper was retracted (IIRC, the authors didn’t have permission to share the training data of one of the rowers). It puts such a nice point on discussions like the present one.
I don’t understand all the Seiler hate. Read his papers. Listen to him on podcasts. He’s pretty reasonable, flexible, and not very dogmatic at all. He’s an exercise physiologist that studied skiiers, rowers, and a few cyclists. He’s not a coach other than to his daughter.
He has some good ideas. I took his advice two years ago, did a 10 week Seiler Z1 base miles block (average 10 hours per week), and got the biggest single block gain I’ve had. FTP went up 20 points and I was breaking all my Strava PRs by week 7.
And once you study endurance training, it’s not rocket science that long/slow really works. Mostly Seiler and Johnson in the video are saying that busting out 2x20 SST four or five times a week may not be the best training plan. It may work fabulously until it doesn’t.
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Ditto. Did 8 weeks POL (by hours) this summer and came out red hot. Smashed PR, FTP, and TTE records all over the place!
Very simple to plan & follow and a great tool if you’re burned/maxed out on SS — and have a few extra hours.
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and that can happen with every plan, including polarized plan.
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So like in the 10 other threads before: Did 2 winters of POL. Strict POL. Brought we nowhere because I never built that diesel that is required for my racing. Poorest race prep ever. Now if I was into crits, cyclocross or similar, then this would be a different story.
I read almost all of Seiler’s papers. Not just the abstracts And these made me really question the entire concept.
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One of the items that is never mentioned on the “does it work” vs. “does it not work” debate is the age and experience of the athlete.
What at 46 year old (like me) can handle is very different if you’ve been doing this for 30 years, like Chad… or 5 years, again, like me.
Furthermore, as a 25 year old my recovery needs were far less than they are now - when I used to train for triathlons at that age, every session I did for every discipline was a smash fest. Never felt burned out in the least.
If you’re trying to figure out what’s best for you, I’d consider your age and experience. I like polarized. But I get lazy with it when I start to waver on spending 2+ hours on the trainer in the winter. For me it’s all about the discipline to go low/long. I start drifting up into zone 2 when I make compromises in my head about how long I want to be on the trainer. 3x20 @ SS is probably my favorite workout… so I just need to keep focus.
Also, one of the things Covid has given me an appreciation for is the difference between riding bikes/exercising/training… 1) I never get tired of riding bikes, 2) I always want to be exercising in some capacity, and 3) I do tire of training with no event in sight.
In the above case, I would submit that doing a SS session 2-3 times per week is a great way to “exercise” with the goal of staying fit vs. getting faster. It’s a great bang for the buck in terms of Kjs … and I’ve found myself happy to tread water for the time being until a focus returns to my calendar.
I recognize I may have drifted off topic …
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And as others have already said in the thread, what’s more in common between the elite athletes used in his studies is not that they train polarized, but that they do large percentages of their training below LT1 and use control when they do intensity. More/harder intensity isn’t necessarily better once you get to a certain amount. Some quotes directly from his research is that the difference between the national level athletes and world level athletes was the amount of LIT they do, as they did almost the same number of hours of HIIT.
That’s the holistic lessons I hear in his lectures and written in his articles.
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yes, on the other side of the argument too is that while one style might be better in a controlled setting, the other methods typically still produce a response and sometimes the responses are not statistically different. When my daughter was very young, I only had about 8 hours total (for triathlon training, so max 4-5 hours on bike) and SSBII worked wonders. Now that I’ve got more time to train, doing it easier means I can still do my dad duties on the weekends as it really only takes 1-2 hours until I feel pretty much normal again.
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@batwood14 No more long tempo ala Steve Neal?
I’m still seeing improvements doing long tempo (right at or just above LT1) and endurance. Every few months I do a block of straight threshold or jump in on some hard group rides.
Other than the group rides, there is no Zone 3 (Seiler) in my training.
I’ll still do it … but, like I alluded to in my post, my focus has shifted off and on between “exercise” and “training” - I’m starting to wind my way back to a structured training schedule, but have more or less just been treading water (ie exercising) for the past 2-3 months.
I’m a big believer in long tempo (ie 90-120 mins) when you’re over 12 weeks out from an event, but I’d go more to straight polarized the closer you get to an event.
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One more thing … Steve found a way to mix in tempo intervals into a long Z1 ride. Just make sure you stay on the low end of what you’d call tempo.
For example, here’s the workout I did yesterday … I forced myself to do it because I need to mentally wrap my head around staying on the trainer for 2+ hours again, which is something I’ve kind of drifted away from, but I know it’s something I can do if I set my mind on it and stop looking for shortcuts.
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Not particularly good at it, however I try and raise this point during a discussion. I’d add training load along with age and experience. In my first two seasons (2016 and 2017) I accumulated a high training load and a LOT of high intensity sessions. Coming into TR in December 2017 that allowed me to do SSB 1 high volume, despite being in my mid fifties and having only 2 years of experience. Right now SSB 1 HV would likely crush me, despite having put in ~8 hours/week over the last 3-4 months.
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Mixing the best of worlds. This is the way!
My upcoming 12 week base period will be a lot of endurance and sweetspot rides (with TiZ progression), with one Z3 threshold workout. Hence a pyramidal structure.
Then I will switch over to an 8 week block periodization program (build), focus on work above threshold and VO2max. Add easy Z1 rides. Hence a polarized structure.
Finishing of with a couple of weeks of race specific training before my A race.
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