Trying to help a good friend, masters rider, improve this year and having exactly the same issue. He wants new PRs in July but also wants to go out on the chain gang with the club in January on nice weather days and take big pulls.
I’ll get notes like: “Know today was supposed to be 3 hours of Z1 + Z2, but felt great and decided to go out for an hour and do hill repeats with Joe and Bob!! It was such a sweet day and legs felt great”!!!
Sure, and come July when that big A-race comes around and the legs feel stale we will know why.
Perhaps the issue is many of us don’t get paid to perform at the A-Race and simply enjoy riding bikes or being in good shape. In contrast to really devoting oneself to a peak performance, it is a lot more fun to go kinda fast, all the time, rather than to really focus on the A-Race objective and be really fast for a couple weeks a year. I suspect a mental aspect is that people often don’t really believe or fully buy-in to their A-Race goal but think they need to specify one because it’s what “serious” riders do. So plan A is the big race but plan B is to have a “good” season. If A doesn’t happen we tell a story around B and another year goes by.
On the flip side, a different colleague actually sets 5 year macro-goals. He targets the national age groups (USA) and aims to “peak” when he hits a new age group. For example he races hard for the age 45 season, then takes several years building to the age 50 season. This guy is a total nut job but gets results.
Yep, each to their own…
I’m certain people shake their heads at my long “slow” rides.
I would bail on training if something put the “fire in my belly” as Nate says(?). I just prefer to find ways to build it in.
Yep, when the time comes to commit to trying this approach I pretty much know how my weeks will look. The key is committing. I think going polarized is only viable if you can guarantee a 4 hr ride each week, or at the least every other week. If you have weeks where you cannot make that happen it seems sweet spot training will give you more bang for buck. I don’t have the luxury of blocking off 4 hours every weekend for a ride, hence why I’ve always followed TR SSB1, 2, Build plans as they are prescribed w/a long ride every know and then.
I’ve heard Seiler talk a bunch on the VeloNews podcast and the one thing he never really addresses (nor do Trevor and Chris) is the reality that most of us can’t adhere to a guaranteed 4 hour ride every weekend. They talk about how a polarized approach can work with time-crunched cyclist, but that always presumes that we’ll be able to do a long ride every weekend. The never address the realities that some of us can only get in 1 or 2 long rides per month.
I’m confused, is the ratio for TiZ or workout sessions. I seem to recall he refers to the latter in recent interviews along with the recommendation for longer rides (hearsay, I didn’t actually listen to them). Why can’t he just pencil it down or it just doesn’t work that well scaled downed (what ever that is, for cycling).
Where does Seiler say to do a 4 hour ride? In one of the Fast Talk podcast he talks about getting the time crunched athlete to do less during the week to fit in a longer ride on the weekend. He also talks about amateurs getting their lactate curve to resemble that of pros after about 6 weeks of polarized training.
I did polarized last year and I don’t think I hit 4 hours more than a handful of times. My weekly long goto ride was 3-3.5 hours. My Saturday group ride is about 2-2.5 hours so I’d just tack on an extra hour at low intensity.
Percentage refers to Total Session Time with Goal at the intended Zone Intensity.
This is called “Session Goal based Intensity Zone Distribution”.
It is NOT specific minutes of time spent in each of the three training zones during a workout.
Look at the entire workout length, the Goal Intensity Zone for that workout, and that entire time is the “Session Time”.
I believe that means a 1-hour total workout, with 30 minutes of combined Z3 High Intensity work (like VO2Max), will be considered a 1-hour “High Intensity” or 1-hour “Zone 3” session.
Likewise, a 3-hour workout with 2.5 hours at Z1 Low Intensity, even with warm up, unavoidable stop-starts, some accidental Z2 “tempo” efforts on hills, cool down and such… will be considered a 3-hour “Low Intensity” session.
The “session” idea is looking at the goal and overall impact of the workout from start to finish. Then that time is part of the 80 / 20 math to determine distribution.
I made this chart in attempt to look at possible ways to structure a week:
Seiler has said over and over that 80/20 refers to sessions. If you only ride 4 times per week and do 2 interval sessions then you are doing 50/50 training. Remember that Seiler is often talking about elite athletes including skiiers and runners that often do two workouts a day. These guys are doing 10-12 workouts per week.
I just listened to the end of the podcast, Connor and Seiler agree that 2 sessions max is the best and a 3rd adds nothing productive. Also remember that Connor is advising athletes riding 6 days a week.
Truth is we all get to caught up in perfection. I’ve been watching how Seiler himself trains on the bike and it’s not nearly as specific as you would think. He rides 2 or 3 days in Z1 then throws in a hard effort. (often a Zwift Race). Then repeats…
Does he advocate a minimum number of hours where the 80:20 and 90:10 would work?
Thinking out loud, anyone using both TRIMP and Coggan? Is that something that the TRIMP model might help with? Tighting down k1 and k2. I stop wearing a HRM after a week of getting my first PM so never used TRIMP.
@DarthShivious I really like the idea you brought up: setting 5-year macro goals. Not only is the idea of peaking when you hit a new age group incredibly sneaky (in a good way), but the general theme of setting longer-term goals and making sure that you’re fresh and “in season” for your A-race is right on.
My interest in this topic comes from a couple articles I read that promote 80/20 idea of “going slow to go fast.” Generally agree with the idea that you keep your recovery workouts light (they say some 77% of max HR, for me <140 bpm), with two hard days per week.
When considering 80/20 I think context could be important, too. While training 8-10 hours per week I don’t think you have to be as careful in limiting the intensity. When you start putting in advanced levels of volume, say 20 hrs/wk, then it’s pretty clear the 80/20 rule would become more relevant. Also, at my pretty modest 3W/kg there’s probably room to be a little sloppy, whereas someone trying to get gains above 4 W/kg is going to need to be a lot more exacting with their plan.
No. But in one of the Velonews podcasts they do talk about the hypothetical low hour amateur athlete and Seiler believes that even they would benefit from polarizing training. Seiler talks about a 5 day a week rider and says that he’d rather see that person as a 4 day a week rider doing a long weekend ride rather than 5 shorter rides.
Seiler talks about the lactate curve of amateurs starting to resemble that of pros after 6 weeks of polarized training.
(this is from memory. It is in one of the many Velonews Fast Talk podcasts)
I proved this to myself last spring though I was riding 10-12 hours per week. I did all easy Z1/Z2 and maybe an hour of total intensity time (20 minutes of threshold and 40 minutes of SST on a group ride). Other than that 9-11 hours at 120bpm.
My endurance improved dramatically. My FTP went up 20-25 points. I also got PRs on all of my key Strava segments. I went from back of the pack on climbs in my club to solidly in the middle group. Our fastest guys are still ex-cat 1s and ex-pros and I’ll probably never catch them. I plan to get closer this year by losing more weight and increasing watts a bit more.
With Seiler there seems to be a little bit of do as I say, not as I do. He seems to love his “hour of power”. I’ve never done an hour of power nor do I plan to ever do one.
My only point is that he really seems to like doing the hour of power from his comments. That’s a lot of intensity. you’d think he’d be riding 10+ hours a week but he says that he’s more like a 5-6 hour guy - 3 to 4 rides per week.
Anyway, there is nothing to be discerned what what he does or doesn’t do personally. He’s not training for anything - just having fun.
Does the VLAMax testing done by Sebastian Weber (Inscyd.com) inform us as to whether the polarized approach (lots of LT1 volume) will help the athlete. Or, can it show whether an athlete would respond better to a Sweet Spot approach? I know that Tour contenders and triathletes often want to push their VLAmax to the lower side for fat burning efficiency. I imagine that if someone happened to have a very low VLAMax that they’d want to do a lot of HIIT. A guy like Sagan might tune his VLAMax lower for the classics and then tune it higher with some HIIT for Tour de France sprints.
I’ve been intrigued by the work of Jan Olbrecht and the related work of Weber. Mikael on That Triathlon Show characterized using Inscyd software as ‘almost cheating’. What he meant was that the athlete is no longer taking a stab in the dark as to which type of training will bring the greatest benefit.
You know, you hear stories about how someone did tons of volume and got enormous gains or that someone did sweet spot base and got enormous gains. And you also hear that someone is doing sweet spot and not improving or that the workouts are killing them.
