This is exactly what has happened to me and how I have adapted to lower Zone 2 and 2 x SS/threshold sessions per week
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Would guess the improvements you’ve already seen are more a result of improved freshness rather than fitness but that’s kind of the point - the Z1 workouts are less taxing than the Z2 ones, so you’re fresher and able to do higher quality hard sessions. Think the thing to be wary of or figure out is not being so fresh that you’re not actually getting enough training stimulus to improve! Have fallen into this a little bit in the past - made my easy days easier, then the hard days feel great for a few weeks and I smash some PRs, then performance starts to tail off because I’m not doing enough. In my case it’s normally ~10 hours/week, I guess either that’s not enough volume for a fully polarised distribution to be optimal for me, and/or when I’ve gone fully polarised my hard days haven’t been hard enough. Hence per above I’ve tended to fall into a pyramidal distribution.
On the 2 a days I’ve had the same problem as you of struggling to get in longer rides especially during the week. I think it’s a case of being better not perfect. I.e. 2 x 90 minute Z1 rides isn’t quite as beneficial as a 3 hour Z1 ride, but it’s certainly better than doing 1 x 90 minute Z1 ride! Taking it to the macro level, total volume (in hours) is the single best predictor of performance for me, so as long as it’s not impacting my ability to do key workouts I’ve generally taken the view that any riding is better than no riding.
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I’m sure freshness is part of it, and as you say, thats kind of the point. I get what you say about volume and my thoughts are really to max out available riding time and do it in z1.
Usually I dont have a problem with volume/time - my circumstances allow me more time and flexibility than most and I enjoy riding outside year round and getting the miles in. I’m fairly confident that after the next few weeks I’ll get the required volume in again. Right now the compromise of 2-a-days will have to suffice for a little while. 2 solid interval sessions will be plenty of intensity for me at this stage I think.
So are you now fitter, or just fresher?
ETA. @cartsman beat me to it.
Yeah, ~10 hours isn’t exactly a hard limit for me, I do bigger weeks when the opportunity arises (good weather and a quiet week at work!), but it seems to be the optimal balance for me of enjoyment, consistency and bang for my buck. Trying to do more consistently on a weekly basis always has me running into issues in terms of motivation, or cycling just taking up too much of my time and causing issues with work/family/life stuff.
So then it turns into “how do I get the most out of 10 hours every week?”. To which the answer for me seems to be something along the lines of 65% Z1, 30% Z2, 5% Z3 over the year. When the opportunity for a big week comes along I end up dropping some of the Z2 and going for some long Z1 rides. When I’m time crunched and can’t manage the usual 10 hours then some of those Z1 workouts become Tempo or SS.
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Just curious: Z1 would be anywhere below 120Watts and below 120bpm for me. This is really not much, how do you guys stay so low for so long? Neither on the rollers nor outside I am able to really stay in Z1 for a long time, more so in Z2.
I think they are referencing a 3 zone model where Z1 is the equivalent of your typical Z1 and 2.
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As above, Z1 in this context is basically Z1+Z2 on the Coggan/Trainerroad zones. Seems to be endless discussion above about how to determine/estimate Z1 using power, biological markers, HR Max, HR Threshold, HR Reserve, RPE, etc, but honestly gets to the point where I’d rather keep it simple and go ride the bike!
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Yes, that is how I see it. I cant really comprehend how discussions about zones, targets, values, beats etc get so detailed… i feel like most dont see the forest because of all the trees: i dont believe my TickrX or my Powermeter give me such precise data that some numbers more or less would kill the training effect.
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There are plenty of 75 minute workouts that will benefit you far more than reading this thread watching people try to measure who’s book is bigger and who can copy and paste more jargon. Ride your bike, and have fun.
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British cyclying used the term “aggregation of marginal gains” as a philosophy to improve, very successfully.
I suspect for 95% of us focussing on “disaggregation of marginal losses would be more appropriate”
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Too general. What’s your goal?
The other side of the coin, and to go against my own statements, for a person in their first year of riding/training, I probably would recommend a full TR LV plan — SSB, General Build, Climbing RR Spec — with an additional long Endurance.
Once the plateau hits, time to rethink.
I like Munger’s philosophy: figure out what you want, then figure out all the things which will keep you from achieving that goal and avoid as many of them as you can. “Doing nothing” will get you very close to your goal and it’s much easier.
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Answering my own question: Seems to be the case that nobody knows how to optimise Fatmax training. FatMax itself also varies greatly between athletes (33-60% VO2Max).
Interesting stuff on all 3 presentations included on fasted training influence on mitochondria, fat oxidation and keto diets.
I’d argue that those individual don’t even have an LT1, but that may be because the graded test starts too high. Alan Couzens has been discussing that graph on twitter a bit and there’s no baseline.
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@Bioteknik Ok could be (starts to high), but I think the reason I latched on to that being LT1 is that in the Pro riders table in the same paper a) it is ~275W, b) that is roughly what ISM coached athletes train at (with variability of course), and c) ISM has stated he uses LT1. It’s also possible I have not triangulated all the info from verbal snippets and figures to come to a valid conclusion.
The reason I pointed that one out was that I thought the power numbers would be closer to @Skeggis numbers, and I’m trying to make the point that you don’t have to stay away from tempo (medio in the INSCYD world) to “train FatMax”, and that if he strictly stays at that fairly low intensity I don’t see the FatMax needle moving without significant volume and time. Of course others made the point that any intensity leads to better FATox but I’m not convinced. I favor endurance and low-mid tempo near AeT.
Whether or not you buy in to the INSCYD model (and I know there are shortcomings), it is an attempt to provide a more accessible way to get at information we see in that paper (or any sports lab testing). Because you really only get power from INSCYD and the expression “max” is used, it’s easy to get fooled into thinking that fat oxidation at an INSCYD-derived FatMax of 190W (for example) is significantly different than fat oxidation would be at mid-Medio of 235W (.79-.82 IF). After all, they are 45W apart and a different “zone”.
But, it is not. It’s practically identical. The way to demonstrate that is to look at those ISM paper tables. The values 0.38 - 0.31 could be the end of the baseline. 
Even if it isn’t you’re not going to get the message from INSCYD. You’re gonna think: “riding at 190W isn’t the same as riding at 235W…so I should ride at the FatMax zone wattage to improve FatMax”.
I argue that this is good for @Skeggis because he doesn’t have to soft pedal around at low Zone 2 (Coggan) and not get fast and wonder what happened. If you believe (enough of) their model, what’s nice is that you could see FatMax value move independently of “base” and “medio” zones on subsequent tests, so it’s potentially useful. But it comes across as a “train here to reduce fat ox” message and that’s simply not the case.
Is this the tweet you’re talking about?
I don’t think that what you’re referring to, but I’m old and the internet is hard 
JK, guys!
This is where alan rt that conversation with the figure that shows the lactate curves for the three populations.
I’ll try to write up a longer post tomorrow, but i can’t really compose good posts on mobile, and that is even with swipe. Dang thing spells so many words wrong… but remember weber suggests avoiding certain intensities is a great way to reduce vlamax. Old school training said to avoid anaerobic intervals in the winter, but maybe we should think of glycolytic intervals as the ones to avoid until general prep.
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Hi, wondering what was/is your distribution of training impact scores? How many of each are you shooting for each week?
Cheers for the reply.
I’m un-sure of exact goal currently. Be stronger than last year… I’m basically building the biggest base possible, then getting specific once I’ve decided on events. I’ve got a potential road race on Feb 13th. I live in New Zealand, we’re basically back to full normal here, apart from international travel. Racing is back to full operation.
My issue is, that is right in the middle of this supposed ‘base’ period. I think I’ll do the race with a micro sharpen and taper, then get back to mega base building.
I had dramatic improvements last year from switching to a different training philosophy. In fact, it very much mirrors the results you had. I’ve since pondered a slightly different take on it, I call it Hybrid Polarized.
Basically, it’s the same huge percentage of Zone 2 (Coggan) training with one or two high intensity days, based on how I feel. I simply do Zone 2 everyday, sometimes I throw in a sprint (I’m a sprinter) then on my high intensity day or days, I join or lead a fast group ride and do every damn zone in the universe.
So it’s ‘polarized’ by session, but the high intensity ride could be a big sweetspot, threshold ride, a group ride, a fast XC lap. Basically, just a hard day. This method improved my riding a huge amount last year. All without doing virtually any prescribed intervals. The big takeaway, the volume increase and polarized training distribution crushed my previous, hard most of the time, sweet spot approach. It wasn’t even close.
This year I’m thinking of very carefully upping the power of my Z2 rides to more of what we seem to be calling this ‘San Milan’ VT1 zone. This seems to be a tad harder for me. More like the very edge of tempo or even tempo. I’m thinking of doing one day normal Z2, one day San Milan. Obviously, being damn careful not to over train, which is very easy to do on 20hrs a week.
That’s my current outlook.
Oh, and I stake ownership of ‘Hybrid Polarized’. I’ll have a book out soon 
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The 2-week average was 8.6 aerobic and 1.6 anaerobic; mostly 9s, a few 10s…a few “bad day” 7s…
When I chop the long Z2s down to 2/week (Sat/Sun), I’ll shoot for 9s.
I’m in a ‘rest & test’ week right now that’s shaping up to be very interesting…for me at least.
Having those two hard sessions and the in between stuff that was previously mid coggan zone 2 / base inscyd is what I previously did before upping that to more like ISM zone 2 (which we propose is low / mid tempo).
It was ok for a week or two but then it started to cook me.
My thoughts / questions are
- ISM zone 2 is fine if you do that predominately and only a little bit of higher zone work
- if you are doing 2/ 3 hard days (60-90 mins sweetspot for example) then you are better off doing coggan mid zone 2 for the other training
- dot mix the hard 2/3 days with ISM zone 2 between
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