Continuous exercise seems more effective at increasing mitochondrial enzyme activities.
I was thinking about this on an easy ride today: For a mortal like me, there is no such thing as an easy run. Maybe I’m just a genetically terrible runner, but even when I run regularly I never get to the point where I can do easy zone runs. All runs are sweet spot for me…
I say this because most of the research and proponents I see advocating polarized or 80/20 are coming from the running world. Even if I tried to do a “polarized” running plan, it would still end up being SSB and HIIT.
I don’t know if the easy rides and easy runs are comparable. I know for me they aren’t.
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Im with you. I did Polarized last year as I was going to do Ragbrai and the 500 mile week spooked me. Dont have a great FTP and my group rides are really hard on me. I do get great benefits from intensity but the long recovery time and not knowing if it helped my endurance pushed me to polarized. I averaged 8-12 hours a week and really stuck to low intensity except for Sat group rides which while there is intensity, it is by no means structured. July came and Ragbrai happened. In short polarized worked well. I was holding power at 10 to 15 bpm lower avg on group rides. I did not have the Top end but I didnt infuse the structured intensity as the event got closer. I was worried about multiple long days but I just flew. Not racing or anything but was faster than 99% on course. So far on the left that I was in the gutter most of the time. They grow corn on hillsides. Iowa is not flat and there were multiple 3k elevation days which is hard to do where we live. TSS was over 1000 for the week and I felt better each day. Wish I would of put a couple of weeks of structured intensity prior. It is hard to ride exclusively under that first ventiltory threshold and best done solo. I was stressing because to keep it at 115bpm and seeing power so low made me question what I was doing until I notices the groupride lower hr averages.
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Jumping in to a conversation I haven’t fully read, so forgive me. But I’ll point out a bit more contemporary nuance to the question of effectiveness of intensity vs volume on mitochondrial enzyme activity & biogenesis… Which, it’s worth pointing out, is not itself synonymous with changes in performance.
And a recent meta analysis on POL vs THR/SST/Pyramidal (disclaimer The lead author is a colleague, so I’m biased)
Either way, the 80:20 is more important than being polarized. That 20% should be tailored to your specific event or goals of the block. Even in seiler’s early paper he lists a Spanish u23 cycling team following a pyramidal approach with the majority of their work in the middle zone. This is why i dont think there’s really something magical about polarized, but intensity control and the minimal effective dose of hiit is best for consistency.
We had a good conversation about middle zone and Seiler’s studies on twitter last week.
FWIW, people shouldn’t be doing 4x8 at 105% if it isn’t highly repeatable. if going to failure or near failure, it’s probably too hard.
Think we are in the weeds here. If someone was to stick with any plan the majority of results will come from consistency, nutrition/recovery and sleep. With that said I think do whatever you’re more likely to enjoy and thus stick with but just make sure you don’t doubt what you’re doing to the point you either start jumping back and forth or just stop sticking to the plan. Consistency and hard work, the rest is minor details for the pros to worry about.
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I don’t think 80:20 is important in the least.
What is important is that you do as much, but not too much, of the right kind of intensity, that it is intense enough to provide an overload, that you don’t go too hard the rest of the time, and that you train as much as you can.
Since “too much”, “the right kind”, “intense enough”, “too hard”, and “as much as you can” are highly variable from one person to the next, I don’t think you can really say any more than that.
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I did a lot of zone 2 (Seiler zone 1) after my first run through of SSB. 3 2 hr rides and one 3 hr ride/week on the trainer, with a nice bump in FTP at the end. Video, music, books on tape, etc. I’m planning a cross country bike trip next summer, and will be doing a lot of low intensity, plan to incorporate one VO2 day/ week. Be interesting to see where I am at the end of it all.
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The rest TR intervals aren’t zone 1 as per the video. Different models as has been mentioned
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I guess it really depends on the goals.
A 800m runner trains of course different than a marathon runner.
So training should be different if you go for 45min Crits or 10h marathon in the alps.
They target different energy systems, so a POL approach with lots of Z1 favors performance in longer events.
But: POL is not as fun if only done on a trainer. And POL needs after lots of VO2max some sweetspot for lowering the lactate formation rate.
So the only real conclusion can be: it depends.
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A point that Dr. Seiler and coach Chad have made many times is that these races (criteriums and marathon events), in reality, do use the same energy systems. Without a doubt, these efforts are both intensely aerobic. Even efforts in the 4-6 min range are more than 50% aerobic.
so… no LIT? 
Yup. But also ‘there is a time & place for training of every intensity’. Maybe it gets weird when you start kitchen sinking it.
It’s as little as 1 min. As coach Kolie has said, many people (myself included) set new 1min PRs after doing a lot of Z2 stuff because their aerobic system is that much better. And long Z2 rides seem to work the aerobic system better than SS intervals.
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Both these training methodologies, maybe SS more than POL, have gained their popularity more through marketing et al than actual real-world implementation. SST is kind of taylor made for indoor training and the rise of related apps. It might not be the best or most optimal way to train overall, but it is the best if most of your training is indoor and/or virtual, cuz you’re riding your bike instead of your couch.
And, like most things, there is always something lost/twisted in the translation of the pros utilise these different methods and how amateurs interpret and implement the methods. Remember the Tabata craze? How housewives were laughing and chatting through “Tabata” bootcamps when Olympic-level athletes couldn’t even finish the original Tabata protocol because it was so hard.
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Well, if there is no difference: Try to ride the bike part of your next Ironman at aerobic 88% of FTP and try to run your marathon after that.
The difference is not “aerobic” or not, but how long do your glycogen stores last and how much power are you able to produce with your fat oxidation.
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Funny because my 4th grader’s PE teacher has made the kids do Tabatas!
Well the whole point of the video is that many people are training hard, too often. While there’s nothing really magical about 80% low intensity, it’s supposed to be a ball park number that is met over a long period of time. Keeping intensity to 2 or 3 days a week allows your CNS to also get a break, which may be the key to keeping those easy days < LT1, as it was shown that exercise < LT1 elicits minimal CNS stress.
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Aside: on the doctor point, there’s an old saying that one should have a young doctor, but an old lawyer
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Not sure how to interpret this statement. Aerobic contributions to energy output are not a fixed percentage. Elite champions have IF in the 0.8 range. They obviously spend unbelievably large amounts of time developing their aerobic engines so that they can achieve high IF with high power and high aerobic (read “sustainable for hours on end”) contributions to that power.
How long your glycogen stores last and how much power you are able to produce from fat is actually the entire goal of “aerobic” training.
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What is the evidence of that?
why don’t you watch the video and see for yourself.
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