The amount of conflicting conjecture on doing a lot of SST vs mostly avoiding it (or doing the bulk of it in base season aka Nov-Feb) is making my head spin. It’s like no one has any consensus.
TR and Frank Overton love it, then you have Seiler and many other coaches that don’t think it’s really all that great. And then you have a pro super-domestique and classics hardman Christian Knees saying he does a lot of it.
Maybe different riders do different training based on the work they do?
No doubt about it. Which is what bothers me about certain coaches or cycling folks that talk down on certain methodologies or modalities w/o telling anyone why they don’t prefer one to another.
There’s no perfect training intensity. You simply train the relevant systems at the relevant times.
A majority of your training should always be quality endurance, regardless of what philosophy you adopt.
The caveat is muscle fiber type. ‘Generally’, fast twitch athletes don’t tolerate a high volume of SS training very well. Slow twitch athletes can ‘generally’ hammer it.
The only other time this focus on quality endurance volume is not the case, is if you’re extremely time crunched. In that case, upping the intensity is really the only option. If you’re riding such low volume the exact philosophy is kinda irrelevant.
At that point you are missing the major gains, while debating marginal gains.
The most important metrics are consistency and volume. Get them sorted before you get into the weeds on exact prescriptions.
Just train pro.
Good volume.
Z2 and stuff.
It works.
I love how these world tour bros drop a little bomb on Twitter taking pot shots at Seiler and San Millan but don’t elaborate at all.
But you always have to ask what “a lot” means. Maybe “a lot” is 40 minutes a day, 4 times per week, but in the scheme of a 25 hour pro training week, that is a small amount. But it’s a lot for an amateur trying to ride on 5 hours per week.
Overton uses SS as a marketing tool but from what I can tell he doesn’t prescribe that much of it. His mid-week fatigue resistant training is SS-Tempo-Endurance-Rest. TR’s low volume sweet spot is 3 days per week so with 4 rest days, one can do pretty much whatever they want.
I’m coming to understand that training is not as hard or mysterious as it’s made out to be. The bulk of training is going to be aerobic endurance and that is 90% of the gains. The “stuff” is the other 10%. Amateurs often do too much “stuff” and are constantly over fatigued. If you are over fatigued, you don’t adapt and progress. Still, all amateurs will stall out on their selected number of hours - 3, 6, 12 whatever - it’s never going to be optimal. So, they try to make it up with tempo/SS and that works to a degree.
I think the other thing amateurs do is that they ignore parts of the power curve. They train themselves into a one trick pony. They avoid sprinting, neuromuscular, or vo2max because that stuff hurts.
I wish my LT1 was @ 90% of my LT2. That would make the local group ride a lot more fun. It’s hard for me to contextualize his comments. He’s calling 80/20 BS, but then he’s saying his athletes (BikeExchange WT team) are doing a lot of volume below LT1 and a lot above LT2. So is that not the essence of Polarized or 80/20 training? Perhaps it’s more 90/10 in reality, but he’s not really making a case that 80/20 is BS with his follow up athlete example.
I’m confused.
I actually do love this
80/20 is often confusing. Seiler has said that it refers to sessions. And he studied cross country skiiers that are probably similar to runners (2-a-days). If you do 10 sessions per week, then 2 have some intensity in them.
I often wonder if these training intensity distributions don’t include racing. Pro cyclists do 6 hour races and end up with a ton of time around sweet spot. I’d guess that xc ski races are mostly around threshold.
I get it. If you actually look at TiZ then it comes out closer to 90/10. Even at 80/20, an amateur could do an 8 hour week with 2 HIIT sessions per week with the actual TiZ looking something like:
(Selier Zones)
8hr (480min) Week
Z1: 85% (408 min)
Z2: 10% (48 min)
Z3: 5% (24 min)
But…
A lot of amateurs do this instead:
Z1: 25%
Z2: 65%
Z3: 10%
Or…
Z1: 50%
Z2: 45%
Z3: 5%
post_deleted
He is pretty transparent, you could listen to one of the two off-season resistance training for cyclists and do the program without purchasing it.
Most of the post-base 8-12 hours/week plans look pyramidal to my eyes. There is a Sweet Spot 4 plan that is called polarized and looks polarized. You can find example weeks of his plans on the webpage of each plan. For example here is week2 of climbing intervals on my calendar:
Doesn’t look polarized to me. That comes after 24 or 30 weeks of off-season & base, if you were using his off-the-shelf plans.
Road racing intervals are similar, look pyramidal. For example week 3 is 4-min vo2max (full-gas), 3x10 at FTP, endurance, 3 hour group ride on Sat, and 2.5 hour zone2 on Sunday. Looks pyramidal to me, depending on what you ride on Saturday and your definition of Wednesday’s 30-minutes of FTP intervals.
It sounds like Marco P is describing LT1 as 2mmol of lactate or 1 mmol above base line.
This is inline with the many lactate tests have have done on myself and others.
This corresponds to 90% FTP for the majority I’ve seen.
So everything upto sweetspot is included in this description of LIT.
Ohhhhhh. This is even more confusing seeing as most people would put tempo and SS into Z2 in a 3 zone model.
Hell, a lot of experts and coaches don’t really elaborate. They often generalize, which I find annoying, because this sport is anything but general. One of my favorite people to listen to with regards to training is Sebastian Weber, that guy is more than willing to get specific.
My experience is that zone 3 (coggan) corresponds to the first rise in lactate above baseline (aerobic threshold it’s often termed), all the way upto 1mm above lactate (normally close to 2mmol). So 75-90% FTP is included in the LIT.
That’s my understanding.
it’s for everyone different. PLS FORGET THIS NONSENSE COGGAN ZONES!!! and pls stop comparing everything where it is at coggan zones. why you all are so fixed to this coggan model? oh because of tpeaks and zwift and so on …
90% of your MLSS (i hope this is what you mean with “FTP”) is still LIT for you? Is there a high lack of pyruvate? how high is your LA concentration when you ride there? what metabolic system you train when you ride 90% of your MLSS? for a very high chance you are pretty glycolytic at this intensity, no LIT at all.
It’s the top of the classification of a 3 zone Sieler model ( 2mmol of lactate).
2 mmol of lactate for me is 90% FTP
So zone 1 in the 3 zone classification is upto 90% using this system.
VLAMAX 0.61
yea and who cares? its about a uniqe metabolism and not about a model which fits some maybe. and vlamax alone says nothing without vo2max and other parameters.
and btw it changes all the time
whats your vo2max?
