Yes you extend the number of intervals and / or you make the intervals longer. If you’ve retested then the intensity may also go up. Intervals can go anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 mins or so and stay above FTP / in that Z3.
As you progress high intensity in polarized you increase the time accumulated at high percentages of VO2. You don’t need to increase the number of sessions to achieve that.
Similarly with the low intensity. If you’ve been doing 2 hr low intensity rides and want to progress that. Then you’ll look to extend to a 3 hr ride. If you’ve got a limited number of sessions you can do. Then you might combine a 1hr and 2hr session into one.
Having said the above about sessions. I have heard Stephen say that if you want to progress the amount of intensity you can add another session to a day you already do high intensity. So say a morning and evening sessions. What you don’t want to be doing is extending the number of days you stress your body that way.
I’ll add that my experience is that one high intensity session a week plus rest low intensity is enough to maintain Vo2 max / FTP etc. Two high intensity a week is enough to progress.
I’ll see if I can reference something that backs these thoughts up.
Edit: Source Highnorth.co.uk
"Ratings of perceived exertion can also be used fairly reliably to estimate the lactate threshold turn-points (Dantas et al., 2015), so it’s also worth also checking your perceived exertion during training sessions to ensure these zone boundaries feel right for you. The low zone should be around a 1-4 out of 10 in terms of effort, the medium zone will feel like a 5 or 6, and the high zone will feel like 7+’
"
I linked the article in this thread above I think.
if you look at hours per week you dont need to worry about tss so much.
15hrs of low intensity riding with 2 good intervals sessions may give you less tss than 8hrs training with 5 zwift races. which do you think is better quality training stimulus? you can do rides/races which generate a ton of tss but don’t stimulate a particular training adaption very well.
fwiw low intensity/z2/polarised riding should actually generate fairly low tss if done right.
I am not saying never look at TSS, but you can apply progressive overload within individual sessions week on week and by tracking total hours/time in zone metrics.
chasing tss is a sure way to burn out imo. you should also check out the concept of minimum effective dose. which is basically about doing the least amount of work to elicit training adaptations. if anything you should be trying to maximise improvements with as little tss as possible!
You asked for feedback on how these plans are working. I’ve been giving it a shot, but have mostly been dropping one of the heavy workouts. I really like the plan, but I’m not used to the hourly volume, so I’ve been doing mostly just the one hard workout and then adding hours in Z1. It’s been a hit to the ego because my CTL isn’t really improving much, but at the same time, I’ve increased from 6-7 hours a week to being able to regularly do 8.5 or 9 without being overwhelmed from the workload. My plan is to get used to doing the 9 hours regularly and then add in the additional heavy workout more frequently.
I’ll be retiring this summer, so more time to train and following this guide has been a great way to inch up the hours!
I’ve increased hours to around 15-16 a week and initially I went with just 1 intensity session per week to avoid completely overdoing it. It was also partly because we had week of severe winter weather when outdoor riding was totally off the table, so I tried a 4 day block of back to back indoor vo2 sessions and then followed the suggested ‘block’ approach of just 1 per week for the next 3-4 weeks.
I’ve now found I’ve quite comfortably adapted to that workload and am back on 2 intervals a week (5x6m 103% & 3x9(40/20)). I just went VERY easy and didnt even worry too much about doing easy rides in z2 (Coggan) levels initially and my current focus is to gradually bring that up and be doing 3-5hr rides at 70% consistently.
Test will be how to manage the increase in fatigue, but I pretty much retired end of last year so hope that it will be quite manageable this summer
Considering a country with the talent pool equal to the state of Virginia produced two world champs in triathlon two weeks apart in 2019 (itu, then 70.3), they are doing a fantastic job with who they have. We can say something about niche with African runners as they are doing the same, but many coaches like to get ideas from what they are doing.
This is why I also have some problems with the Seiler s approach: the studies he’s been talking about was done /observed on athletes doing cross-country for example, how it can be transfered to cycling other than “in physiological terms?” in cycling we need specific drills to beat short hills or long-ish medium elevation that would not fit into the the Seiler s model… What could mean that, if as a cyclist we’d follow Seiler s approach we would end up with a flat curve at the most.
Interesting. Just wanted to repass my own experience with the z2/z1 or LT1 and below training, even when done in heaps, this fatigue we get (person to person of course) isn’t a thing to compare to the fatigue one gets out of SS or supra threshold intervals. Managing this low intensity fatigue was a game changer for my 46 years young body frame. Like Chad said in a podcast “not all the TSS are created equal”.
…and not just ‘different’ fatigue from the sessions themselves, but also the ability to handle the cumulative fatigue from other and harder rides.
Last Sunday I did a hilly 75 miles with a couple of mates to end a solid 12hr week, then this week I did a cold and very windy 50 mile tempo ride, day off, 106 mile ‘hard & hilly’ route with 2 mountain goats with probably a +1-1.5 w/kg advantage over me (a hard day out chasing them), then an easy 50 miler and today a steady 95 miles with a few long climbs, to finish on 18hrs this week. Barely any rest and still able to take these in my stride and get out again tomorrow for another 3hr ride with the boys.
Absolutely convinced this form of training builds a ‘resilience’ that just doesn’t come from intensity alone. 6-8 years ago I was fit and only mid 40’s, yet a couple of days weekday intervals and a pacey club A ride at the weekend would mean a rest day and easy day before thinking about more hard rides. These days I can do 350-400 mile weeks without much difficulty and still be a productive human being during my hours after the rides!
How long (hours) is your longest ride each week? I can train about 10 hours per week but can’t do more than about 2-3 hours for my longest ride on any given day. Not sure Polarized would work with that time constraint but I’m very interested in it.
Looking back my longest week in recent months is about 18hrs, but most are about 12-15 max and a few less than that. Just checked and my YTD hours are 258 after 21 weeks, so there’s your average - with quite a few weeks at the start of the year being indoors only and below average in terms of hours for that reason.
I ride with a good friend that trains more like 8hr a week and occasionally slightly more, and takes a similar approach. We try and get a 3hr ride together at the weekend, and I’ll often do a little extra on top to get 4+, but he’s more time limited than me. He throws in some 1hr rides during the week either outside or on the turbo. He has definitely seen gains taking a more ‘polarised’ approach. He used to ride everything tempo and SST style but changing to more z2 and just 1 or 2 harder sessions and he has seen big improvements in performance as well as recovery.
I think 10hrs is plenty to see gains from this kind of approach, especially if its pretty consistent week to week.
I think if you can fit in 2x 2-3hour endurance rides (lean towards 3 if you can), you’ll see great progress from the 2 harder sessions each week. Maybe not strictly a polarized ratio, but those long rides really do something unique. The long endurance sessions are materially different than doing multiple pettits per week.
Ironic that this is shown while Seiler gives his short introduction on how he observed (or should I say branded) polarised training. And I’ve never really understood how the Zapico paper made it into the seminal “polarized” training paper which gets cited all the time … but probably only few have really read it.
Plus many of his anecdotal examples were most likely training <CS or CP. Its much easier to “log minutes” as he would describe, at around 90% max hr if you are not in the severe domain. Just look at the Norwegians now doing 6x10’s. That was popularized by Olaf tufte and mentioned by seiler as polarized but most likely at threshold.
