Potential Polarized Plan

I have one day off a week. I go for a long walk on those days.

I think that is what I was saying?

Agree. I do my high intensity days Mon and Thu normally. Also if you don’t feel fresh for a high intensity day then don’t be afraid to delay it from morning to evening or even the next day.

You want your high intensity sessions to be quality.

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I saw that and it backed up my beliefs. Its dependent on the althele but I always had 90 minutes in my head as a minimum. Especially if you regularly ride 2 hours plus. I ride 4 hrs plus most weekends (with some short SST or longer Tempo) in spring and summer so that is where my beliefs are formed, others might want to scale vs their long rides.

My Events tend to be 4 to 8 hours.

Wow, thinking about it, by coincidence that is starting to sound like I have fell on a similar formula to ISM.

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Vo2 max workouts stresses the body. If you do it too many times you end up with the body permanently stressed. This blunts the adaptions and long term can lead to systemic inflammation and ultimately breakdown.

From what I’ve read increasing the high intensity to more days doesn’t improve upon two days a week. However it does say that doing two sessions of high intensity on same day can be effective. So if you are going to add more intensity , keep the number of high intensity days the same, but potentially do two sessions same day.

That would certainly make the top 10 :rofl:

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Personally, I do 2hr at 65% of FTP

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That is exactly what my coach had me do and asked me to stretch it to 2 - 2.5 hrs if possible during the week @ 65% and 4 -5 hours at the steady weekend session

That’s likely though you will still be far away from POL. At least how it was formulated by Seiler. Too much Z2 and Z3. Based on the workout count in your screenshot you would have to do 1 session in zone 3 and 4 sessions in zone 1…

As per your screenshot it looks like 33% in zone 3, 50% in zone 1 and 17% in zone 2 (group ride)…

Is it really still pol? It looks like way too much Z2 for that.

Not sure of the context of your reply, but that sounds like 80/20 training you are quoting.

80/20 does not Equal Pol

These different concepts, 80/20 and POL and can be similar / the same. The popular POL distribution does happen to be 80/20 but the 80/20 split for example in running is not polarised unless you count Z2 as intensity. i.e with Z3

Seiler uses a 3 zone model not a five zone model like trainer road. Trainer roads zone 2 fits into zone 1. By my count, in week 2, he has about 40 minutes of z3 and over seven hours of zone 1, which would be 86/14.

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I know about the different zones. However, it’s not calculated by time in zone but rather by workouts.

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Forgive me I could have made myself more clear. I was referring to that part of your previous comment.

I went through SweetSpot Base 1 in HV and then Base 2 & Build 1 in MV and I think my base is decent so I started my Polarized training to better pair with outdoor riding, when it starts for me.
I use intervals.icu to help track.
4 weeks on, then 1 week rest (Z1 & Z2), then Ramp. Planned for 12 weeks (3x blocks). Each week will have a progressively higher TSS and increased number of minutes in VO2+ to stay in the 80/20 to 85/15 ratio.
Depending on fitness, I will space out the workouts or have 2x workouts on back to back days for added intensity.
Each week I will have 1 x anaerobic with many high peaks but short duration and 2x VO2s with varying intensities to match the time periods of the peaks which are between 5 & 8 minutes.
I try to keep the Zones 1 & 2 days between 40 to 65% load.
The longer the block, the lower the intensity and the longer the rest period. The total peaks together should drain you for the workout.
It is good to have a 3+ hour rides each week but I will only do that once I start riding outdoors. I cannot imagine 3 hours on my Kickr.
The last day before rest week I will do Lamarck & during the rest week, I will do Angora, both to help me prepare for the Ramp.
I will repeat this until next indoor season and then it will be back to SweetSpot Base.

I guess that depends on whether you subscribe to seilers workouts or time in zone. I did a vo2 max workout this morning for my first ride of the week and intervals.icu has classified my week as polarized based on time in zone. perhaps this is just another nuance for everyone to argue over.

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@russell.r.sage I don’t want to argue about nuances. Though as far as I remember Seiler it was about sessions.
Guess that would make a significant difference. 20% in zone 3 could be one out of five workouts. 20% of a 10 hours week would be two hours in zone 3. Assuming 30 min per workout it would result in 4 workouts per week. So pretty much a zone 3 session every other day.

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Is it not time in zone TiZ. It is but by session.

If for example you do 5x 5 minutes VO2max in a 3 hour ride, it is Z3, your body has experienced high end stress and therefore responses with Z3 fatigue, you can’t categorise it as Z1 even if most of the time was spent there. Also you can’t split it up, your body and its response’s don’t work like that.

Hopefully, that makes sense, it is my take on researching the top over the last 3 - 4 years, although, I am often wrong and happy to have my view points challenged.

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I did read about this once where for example you do an anaerobic session that is 1 hour long with 20 minutes in high intensity, you cannot really count the rest periods as Z1 or Z2 because your body is not really shifting so easily from one zone to another… or something like that…
I am not sure whether to count TiZ or by session so I do 3x high intensity and pretty much just simple rides on the rest of the days… I figure as long as my TSS is increasing for the 4 week period, I guess I’ll be ok.

Yes it is, at least in the examples I posted. Not sure at which point you replied

I might have put forward my reasoning in later posts. POL is NOT 80/20 training although POL commonly follows that format i.e 80% Green Z1, 20% Red (greater than Threshold and typically VO2max).