I love how charts like this with someone working out 211 hours in 4 months (~12.5 hours a week) is supposed to be useful to look at for those of us who do much less
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The principles change surprisingly little when scaling from 15+ hours down to <7 hours. You may have less time to do a lot of big Z2 hours but you would also presumably have less aerobic capability that is required to recover from high amounts of intensity. So the basic structure should be relatively similar
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But his seminal paper on polarised training was written 15 years before his appearance on the fast talk podcast. Not a single word is written on this “slight” discrepancy in his seminal paper. This “cyclists train differently” talk came after others (Stöggl, Sperlich and so) actually looked at the data and noted this discrepancy. He simply fit the data to the model/story and not the other way round. Paid off for him, now he’s a guru who has discovered the holy grail of ex physiology.
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The proselytization of polarized training was mostly done by the 80/20 book by Matt Fitzgerald. What is Selier’s association with him?..
One thing that’s interesting is that in the realm of exercise for health and longevity. A fully polarized model seems to be the current optimal framework, according to P.Attia et al.
Another interesting point is that, in running where top people have LT1 right next to their threshold, a polarized method is by definition optimal.
its funny how Seiler opened the conversation by clarifying that the polarized model observed is really just 2 zones. where you spend most of your time at or under lt1. Then Dylan on 2 occasions afterwards is asking questions based on the 3 zone definition… “So which is better? Polarized or Pyrimidal”
Both fit Seiler’s definition of polarized and largely it depends on what your performance needs
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Didn’t Lydiardd really come up with “Polarised” if we’re trying to give credit to one person?
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The lv plan is 3.5 hours a week, mid volume is 6
In the video Seiler said that at ultra low volume just hammer it and hope for the best.
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I moved this post, and all the subsequent replies to a more appropriate forum topic. This is now in the topic about Dylan’s original Polarized video, which matches better than the TR critique video.
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My problem is more the use of relative terms. What is low, medium and high? Just the example used earlier of a “normal” training load of ~12.5 hours a week which is still ~50% over the high volume TR plan which makes the HV plan low volume?
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Purely from the context in that video, Seiler listed 3 times per week, 4 hours total per week or less as the “low volume” where high intensity focus may be better.
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He listed 5-7 hours per week (later says 5-10 hours) as a range where he feels that POL may be appropriate and beneficial.
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LOL. We’ve been talking about this for almost four years now. Someone would have graduated from university by now. Imagine how much more they know than those first few weeks of freshman year.
The ideas and the way we exchange them evolve. Good thing Seiler isn’t just regurgitating the same old thing he said 10 years ago. Then he would be Coggan.
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In my opinion the sad thing is that a lot of people are criticizing polarized approach without ever trying it themselves.
I think that at the end of the day it comes to the fact that people are different and what fits for one might not fit for another.
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who is criticizing it? I’m not even sure I would called “polarized” an approach. As Sieler says, it’s just n observation and a sustainable way to train. Hard days and easy days. It’s intuitive and I think naturally folks will lean towards it. Some will overdo it, but I think for most of us, “polarized” is a fairly natural thing and not all that controversial. “Polarized” is a different story and I don’t hear any reference to “Polarized” in this interview. If that is what you are referring to when you say folks are “criticizing it,” then that’s a whole other can of worms.
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Really grinds my gears when someone claims to be bringing science to the table and then shows graphs without clear axis labels.
I see two issues with “polarized”:
First is folks often can’t get past the notion that it is just noodling around 4 days a week and smashing a 4 x 8 at 105% for days 5 and 6.
Second is there was too much made of the idea that Tempo or grey zone is bad. Heck, those terms aren’t even well defined in most discussions.
But if you simply take polarized to mean two hard days for every six-eight easy, and recognize that riding “happy-hard” all the time won’t net you much improvement, then you’ll do pretty well as long as you follow other basic principles of increasing load gradually, taking rest, etc.
There really is some good stuff in these discussions once we move to practicality from hyperbole (and I suppose mouse clicks for would be social media influencers)!!
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Agree. And I can definitely understand this misconception in, say, late 2018, early 2019. I have my little personal scapegoat that I like to blame for this (it’s a podcast host, not Seiler himself), but by now, even a casual observer should be well past this.
Also agree, and I’m really surprised (in retrospect) that the above podcast host fell into this type of thinking. To be fair, lots of coaches over the years have little “don’t go” zones (ironically, except for my high school cross country coach LOL), but those are coaching concepts, not science.
Almost every time I listen to a Seiler interview these days I think (besides “ok, this again”): “would have been great to just go straight to this level from the start [3 yrs ago]”. Fitzgerald did a decent job with nuance in his book, but no one can be bothered to read books anymore… 
…I guess that is the nature of this “science guy does the socials”. Still better than Real Housewives, right? I mean, let’s just agree on that one.
I listen anyway (and participate) because I think there are still some good nuggets in these discussions.
“Training polarized/pyramidal/high-low” (quotes very much needed) has been the biggest shift in my training and I couldn’t be happier with how the last few years have gone for me. Six hours, then up to eight, now up to 10-12 hrs / week. Just rode a century (hard) on Monday in the heat and totally blew it up…felt amazing…killed it <— no casual flex humble brag here kids, when I brag, I just straight up brag 
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Z1 isn’t “noodling” around in a three zone model. Z1 is up to 75% of Threshold. If you were to ride for 2-3 or 4 hours at 75% I think it’s a pretty good workout. Noodling around is <60%.
And I don’t think he’s saying Tempo or Sweetspot is bad, it just falls into the “hard” category so you’d want to schedule as much as is appropriate.
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There are many old discussions, training plans, spreadsheets, and hours of podcast blabbering where a bunch of perfectly reasonable cyclists walked away thinking: “ok, .65 IF four days a week, then make my eyes bleed with sprint intervals for one day”.
Sure, Z1 isn’t “noodling” around. But .65 IF four days a week is textbook noodling.
My point is simply: we know this now.
Not necessarily. Could be higher, could be lower.
Me too. I have done it often.
Depending on how you define those terms (and therein lies the rub), that is precisely what the message was. And if one thinks Sweetspot is threshold and you are doing it as “base training” often enough in your week, that is what the message still is.
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where does this notion come from?. I thought the zones where based on some physiological markers, LT1 being the limit for Z1. And in lit review of thresholds, LT1 seems to be the only one with some sort of good evidence of real existence.
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It comes from trying to reconcile FTP based zones with the discussions around polarized training. At some point someone along the way pointed out that Coggan ball-parked .75 IF (between Zone 2 / Zone 3) as roughly LT1 or AeT (this was before he yelled at everyone about LT1 and AeT not really being a thing). So now it’s common to see it pointed out without the caveats (because the caveats are longer than the guideline itself). I have no idea whether he ball-parked it or not (and don’t care), but it has become a commonly expressed opinion.