I have though that, trying to convince myself to get through the session. When I can see my bike corroding underneath me and a pool of sweat approaching 1.5 to 2 litres I struggle with convincing myself it is doing me good, plus power drops off and I become way off the power targets and RPE is through the roof. 
I only end up with a soaking wet shirt and towel, and the bike is fine. But the local Kona age grouper has pools of sweat when she is forced to do an indoor workout.
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I’m always struggling with combining that z1 80% border with “make easy really easy”. But don’t want to drift into the ISM thread so will stop right here 
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ok so re-reading Seiler’s guidelines from FastTalk episode 54 I see him saying 60-80% of one-hour power. So for me right now that is 150W-200W, a pretty healthy range, and yes my endurance rides fall into that range and I’m able to recover. But that is back-fitting his loose recommendations to what I’m doing. I didn’t start with those recommendations by design.
My personal opinion is to go out and ride 65-80% FTP based on feel and recovery, thru some trial&error. Don’t overthink it. Just push the pedals for 2-4 hours and don’t stop unless necessary. Just do the work. If you consistently (week after week) have trouble recovering at 65% FTP then lower it, or pay more attention to the non-endurance work you are doing.
You missed the rest of what he said, go look at my transcription again.
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Yep, I tend to not see it for low-intensity long rides, but on the number of hours I’m doing (10hrs), it’s likely just that I’m not able to go long enough now to trigger a big HR response toward the end.
A point I brought up w/ @bbarrera is I think different coaches have different ways of using the concept of decoupling. Perhaps because of Friel covering it in one of his books, and also perhaps due to guys like Seiler using it to explore his low-intensity durability concept, we tend to focus on decoupling as it relates to long-steady low intensity riding. Moreover, when we do observe it (even when controlling for all the shortcomings @Bbt67 alludes to), figuring out what it means or more importantly, what can I do with this information to improve my training is not definitive. Coaches and thought leaders are taking educated guesses, but it’s not set in stone. Do I cut the ride when it happens? How much is too much? Do I let it go a bit to “do some overload”? Am I chasing windmills? But those question just apply to using it in that context.
There are other ways that you could use decoupling that seem to provide actionable intelligence that have nothing to do with long slow riding. For example, I’ve seen a coach use it more during tempo work and is absolutely dismissive of looking at it for LSD, and he’s definitely not a “power for all the things, HR is redundant” kind of guy.
Like I said above I’ve used 65 - 70% of FTP but I think you can know where this is without FTP. Remember there are a lot of people without outdoor power, not need to tie it to FTP IMO. You can train POL with out power very easily. I could go out on a ride on a bike without a power meter and know I was Z1. Z3 is just as hard as you can and complete the session.
Agree, I use it for Tempo and even long SST intervals. I don’t really us it for LSD at all, well maybe coming back from a bad illness or long break, they are the exceptions.
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Maybe decoupling is not the best term for all use cases. At least some will look at HR response both near the end of a power prescribed interval, and during the recovery interval.
Sure my all day pace is upper 130s bpm. I’ve loosely used that for pacing long days on century rides. And looking back those resulted in (roughly) a range of .65-.80 IF.
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Yeah, like @bbarrera was saying. Yeah, definitely those situations.
Sure, HR response. In those cases that may be a better term for it. However, I have not seen a use for HR alone that isn’t redundant or useless (useless now that we have power). IOW, when it’s useful, it is useful as it relates to power. It’s coupled with it, or not, to varying degrees. In your example (and it’s a good one), we’re still not looking at it in a vacuum or isolated.
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This may be or may not be a useful contribution.
I’ve just got a roughly POL plan from a coach. He had me do a 45-60 min all out effort after 3 (4?) easy days for a baseline FTP (Zwift route I chose ended up lasting just over 50 min, and came out at 5% lower than the ramp test).
There’s one interval session (at/above FTP) a week in the plan.
The remainder is endurance rides. They are pegged at c.70% FTP, with no sustained time above 75%, though in one ride a week I should be looking for 2x20 SS pushes or 5 or 6 8/10 RPE hill efforts. We’re monitoring HR but are using it as a way of measuring stress/fatigue rather than anything else.
Only into week 2 so far, but enjoying it ATM. The initial plan is to run this until progress stagnates and then probably look at a reduced volume SS block.
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The idea was to get away from the relentless interval diet, as I’m getting a bit beaten up, and 3-10 minute power is disproportionately high/60m power is disproportionately low (delete as appropriate).
Broad outline:
Mon: 90m-2hr endurance ride (with body position/pedalling drills)
Tuesday: intervals (c.75 min session)
Wednesday: as Monday, but with cadence work
Thurs: off
Friday: 2hr endurance ride with SS pushes/hill efforts
Sat: 4hr endurance ride (aiming for av, 65% FTP here, rather than 70%)
Sun: off
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On the trainer, I tend to default to 88-90 rpm in Z2. Outside, it tends to creep up to 95-98; I can be a bit of a twiddler and we’re looking at applying a bit more torque. So the cadence work looks like 3 mins self-selected, 3 mins @70 rpm, alternate for 30 mins or until muscular fatigue becomes excessive/knee starts to niggle.
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What’s your take on this?
No real opinion on the validity of the idea. I question the real need for such a tool, however. Your legs will tell you when you’re going too hard during your endurance rides, as you will pay the price on your hard days.
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If I interpret you correctly you are doubting the concept of „thresholds“. But that article indicates that there seems to be some form of barrier/threshold.
I don’t think that there is anything magical about training at any particular intensity, if that’s what you mean. That idea went out of vogue when the Berlin wall fell.
I’m with you and @old_but_not_dead_yet said similar.
But besides the practical application I just find it interesting nonetheless. Like @ambermalika always in the podcast says that the human body is so mind blowing. Electron transport chain FTW 
!!
It’s early days but would be nice @ambermalika to hear your take on the need of “threshold” concepts for training and if so on some early research using HRV data as (live on the fly) a marker for an aerobic threshold (From laboratory to roadside: Real-time assessment and monitoring of the aerobic threshold in endurance-typed sports - BJSM blog - social media's leading SEM voice)
Yes - Pretty sure the s1 < 3.01 * s2 part of the PYRAMIDAL check is wrong.
With the current code the higher S1 (Z1+Z2) is the less chance it has of being classified as Pyramidal - leading to incorrect Threshold classification:
Discussion here:
I hadn’t seen that discussion. Cheers.
Mike