That’s great! Knowing a little about you, I would say it’s to be expected for a masters athlete, right? 
If the are on the right side of the bell curve I would go with the 2-3 days of intensity plus 2 days of sweetspot. If their FTP is inflated I would go with more zone two. Though that likely would still be too much.
Really not sure its just a masters athlete thing… The local twenty something cat1 and cat2 (coached) racers I know are training in a similar fashion, except they are putting down 15-20 hour weeks. But similar number of intervals, looks more like what I see looking at Keegan’s recent Jan/Feb 2021 Strava activity and what I’m doing on a lower 8-12 hour/week time budget 
Really hard to say.
As to my own data, both approaches delivered results. My suggestion is that if an athlete wants to know which approach is a better fit for themselves, they need to actually try another approach or hire a good coach to help. And it won’t be perfect comparison, you can’t clone yourself and do a simultaneous comparison of two approaches. I mean looking at my own data just doing HIIT in Tue/Thu spin classes along with some outside riding on the weekend was pretty potent at raising FTP (although my endurance was crap).
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I wouldn’t know either.
I couldn’t agree more. I guess it’s up to us to find the right balance between intensity and volume.
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This might be the wrong thread to ask this but it seems to sort of relate and I didn’t read all 700+ messages so feel free to point me somewhere if I missed it… As someone who trains in the “threshold” style per intervals.icu, at what weekly volume does it make sense to start adding Z1/Z2 only type rides if looking to increase aerobic volume without torching legs?
Per intervals, the last 50+ weeks have been “threshold” style where I typically ride between 11-19 hours a week. During winter it’s usually closer to 14-16 as being indoors 24/7 is less enjoyable. Note, I’m not talking about switching to a POL method… I do intervals usually 2-4 times a week with 2-3 Zwift races if I’m bored.
@bbarrera (and anyone else), what sort of hours and TSS are you doing? I’m around 9-10 hours per week and 600 TSS doing SSB-HV I, which seems to be about right. I was doing 700 TSS at the end of my last block and it was definitely too much. The POL plans I drafted above are 500 TSS, and that assumes I can get a 3+ hour ride in on Saturday and another 1.5 - 2 hours on Sunday. I’ve known for a while that I’m limited by my ability to recover (e.g. life stress, sleep, etc), but I’m concerned that dropping TSS so much will result in lost fitness, not gains. How did you manage the transition from threshold / pyramidal to polarized training?
Shooting for >500 TSS lately, at ~10 hours/week on 3 loading weeks and 1 deload week. Reality is different, life happens. This past weekend I did 2.5 and 4 hours on a target of 2.5 and 3.5. My coach doesn’t have me doing POL, instead it works out to being pyramidal:
Six months of that and fitness has increased nicely, definitely higher than when I was doing plans with more intensity (which seemed to put an earlier cap on my fitness and limit upside). My fitness got higher in 2017 after a long base and then 4 months of hammering intensity, so it will be interesting to see what happens after some blocks with a bit more intensity.
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How do you add intensity in a polarized plan if still sticking to, say, 2 intense days, 1 long endurance ride (3+ hours), and 2 1-2 hour endurance rides per week? Additional intervals on the intense days? Even more duration?
Thats a problem for my coach 
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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I would say I am successful with it. Though what I am doing is slightly different. I mostly follow the TR mid/high volume plans and add easy endurance hours to that. Sweetspot intervals I here and there make longer or swap in more sustained efforts like Phoenix, Gibraltar, or Polar Bear. I am aiming for 10+ hours per week. CTL is around 100. Sometimes more sometimes less. Depends a bit on how much I run and whether I can get in some extra hours. My FTP I don’t set by using the ramp test. Actually, I don’t test at all. I go by feel. Mostly by using some reference workouts.
Burning out doesn’t seem to be an issue. Bad luck is rather more my issue. Had to go on two vacations, got the flue, then got Corona, then had to spend some time in the hospital. All in the last 5 months. Though managed to hold it all around 4.5 wpkg. Building back up now since about two weeks.
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I kinda appreciate where you getting at. We usually base Z1 Z2 Z3 on %FTP. But could it be interpreted in a different view eg RPE or even HR?
Eg myself with a MTB background, VO2Max workouts never REALLY push me in terms of HR (except those 3 minute intervals) but longer sweet spots and threshold really kills me.
So would those SUFFERING threshold workouts be a Z3 for me? Those “comfortable” short short VO2max workouts now be a Z2 instead?
tss doesn’t directly illicit fitness. riding at different intensities elicit different training adaptations. ignore ctl/tss model just focus on what is going to give you the best quality stress + rest for you. this is ultimately what leads to progress.
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That’s a bit far fetched. TSS is the result of considering intensity and volume. Going from 600 and even 700 TSS down to 500 TSS is going to have an impact. Especially as @rkoswald seems to be a bit unsure about the long ride. So potentially even less TSS.
As he stated he is currently doing 9-10 hours per week worth about 600 TSS. Assuming he goes pol he will be doing 1 or 2 VO2 sessions worth about 150 TSS. The remaining 8 hours should be worth another 300 TSS. So in total about 450 TSS for the exact same volume. About 25% less stress. Stress the body was exposed to before and which triggered adaptations (if productive).
Seems reasonable to be worried about losing fitness. 
I think the point is TSS isn’t a perfect model and its not as simple as 600TSS > 500TSS. If the 500TSS weeks means you complete workouts to a higher quality workout, better recovery (adaptation) and less ground down feeling. You could end up making consistent gains for a longer period.
This is the main curiosity people have, the only way to find out is to experiment on yourself, if it doesn’t work after a good period (3-6 months), the TR plans will still be there and your fitness will come back.
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Kolie Moore has state that he ignores TSS and all derived metrics, for what it’s worth.
On the TR: AACC podcast, if I recall correctly, they obviously don’t suggest ignoring it (given how the plans are structured), but they’ve definitely reiterated that “not all TSS is created equal”. They also suggested (again, assuming I recall this correctly), that the main use of TSS is to ensure you don’t add too much load too quickly. Like, you should look at week to week increases and make sure you don’t have large jumps - but that other than, it’s not terribly useful.
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That’s exactly what I meant with productive. 
Yes, absolutely. Though with every experiment you want to formulate an assumption which you can then verify or falsify.
I guess TSS plays a bigger role for self coached athletes than it does for coached athletes. It helps a lot to balance stress and make sure you are progressing as desired.
But yes, not all TSS is created equally. Though it is still useful when comparing training loads. If an athletes can train productively on 600 TSS, a decrease in TSS will likely result in plateauing or even decreasing fitness and vice versa if the higher load is unproductive.
After all TSS only quantifies volume and intensity over the duration of a workout. This stress is what ultimately triggers adaptations (or not).
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As long as you regard TSS one metric among many, I think you are fine. I would not disregard it, though. I found TSS useful when creating my MV+ training plan, I used them to put myself roughly half-way between the TSS of MV and HV. Since these were very similar efforts, I think TSS between the plans is directly comparable.
Of course, if you follow a different training methodology, you might get different TSS for the same number of hours. Total energy expenditure is another one that is useful at times.
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Yeah agreed - but for me I’d be looking at it mostly as a sanity check, rather than planning to it.
I think this depends also the magnitude of the change - yes, a training block with 300 TSS per week average, when the athlete is used to 600 TSS training blocks, is unlikely to lead to improved fitness (maintenance could certainly possible, and who knows, maybe the extra recovery would provide a boost!).
But if we’re talking 600 down to 500 TSS? I’d be more inclined to think in terms of adaptions. I know it’s not how everyone views their training, but I’d be thinking about what specific adaptions (central? peripheral? muscle endurance?) I’d be getting out of the change in training focus.
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Guess we are all different in that. To me TSS is the central factor for holding me accountable. It ensures that I don’t miss workouts. Other than that it also helps me to nail my progression and overall stress.
I think it depends on the athlete. If one is doing 600 TSS weeks productively over extended periods, a reduction in TSS will likely have them plateau. Whether they lose fitness or not will depend on how drastic the reduction is. But as you say from 600 to 500 likely won’t be enough for that.
Other than that I guess the only way to find it out is to give it a try. Perhaps not in preparation for an A event.
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