Exactly
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In my opinion this is a marketing strategy to get customers by stirring up controversy with an established and respected company. No company can please every customer, and he appears (to my eye) to be hoping for “crumbs falling off the TR table” to drive customers to his coaching business. Its a sad marketing strategy IMHO and unfortunately these threads are supporting that strategy (getting people talking about fast fitness tips and Alex). It is also unfortunate he is associated with intervals.icu as @davidtinker has established an excellent reputation, but his involvement has me ready to ask intervals.icu to remove all my data.
Agreed, although I’ve not done a full analysis. Here is a partial analysis using the 2014 Stöggl and Sperlich classic study on 9-week polarized intervention: Polarized Training Workouts & Experiences (80/20) - #64 by bbarrera
Polarized: Two loading weeks of 11.5 hours, and a rest week of 6.5 hours.
TR SSB HV: 9-11 hours per week during loading weeks
Those end up with almost identical 6 week daily TSS average (TR’s proxy for CTL / training load). Sorry I didn’t take the time to plug those into TrainingPeaks to get actual CTL comparisons.
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They can’t.
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Agreed. I dislike the association as well (noticed it a while ago via the link at the top of the page), because David’s site is quite impressive and a great companion to TR use. Alex and his approach don’t sit well with me at all.
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I’ll be the first to give the guy a break and say that a lot of his pre-TR rant videos about equipment and best practices are fairly decent and informative. As I’ve already stated, seems he’s let his ego get in the way of producing quality content.
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and then in my mind he crossed an ethical border, and started pitching an index to TR podcast as one benefit for signing up to his coaching package. I’m out of intervals, not going to read the privacy policy and this association with Alex doesn’t sit right with me.
When you resort to bashing a person to try to prove a point, use blanket statements on periodization, and write in a condescending manner you lose your credibility.
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How did that end up working out for you? I’m looking to try something similar.
I only speak for myself, but when it comes to making choices of where I spend my money or allow connections to my data, I will chose however I please. This is a very large difference compared to the forum guidelines (which I assume you are referencing) about attacking the idea and not the person. I made comments about Alex’s first video in the related thread and tried to focus on his incorrect statements about TR.
In this instance, I have seen Alex’s first video that largely misrepresented what I know about TR. His replies in that and the follow up video did nothing more than reinforce what I see as his misunderstanding of TR and the situation overall. His reaction in the related video comments, and the thread here were messy to say the least. This latest post seems like sour grapes with attacks to TR and Nate (not to mention users and forum members), and what I see as his continued misunderstanding and misstatement of related situations.
My distaste with the connection to Intervals is more about not wanting to support Alex (directly or indirectly). It’s like choosing where to shop with an eye towards the people behind the business. In this case, Intervals is free and I really like what David has assembled. I have no idea how much or where Alex has contributed to David’s efforts, and to a point I don’t care.
Crazy as it may be, that is where I stand.
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Interesting. At age 65, I don’t know if it’s my lack of fitness or age. I’m able to do McAdie with the 1 min “over” surges and the 2 min “under surges”. I was unable to complete McAdie + 1 with 2 min “over surges” and one min “under” recoveries. Lots of backpedalling and some standing in the 4th set. This would indicate to me that I’m anerobic at 105% of FTP and have a very limited anerobic capacity.
Well said.
At this point, I am still connected to and supporting Intervals & David. Like you, I continue to use it and just avoid the FFT connection. I noticed the connection a while ago (after the fire, but before this most recent post), and am continuing to support David. His work and the overall package of Intervals is beyond impressive to me. The fact that he has done this for free is just as impressive. I’m no coder, but know enough to respect the time, effort and research required to get where it is now. Great stuff.
I had never mentioned my issue about this until seeing Brian’s comment, and just shared my similar comment. Not meant as an action item for me or others, just stating an opinion. I also appreciate the counterpoint as I do much the same in other areas here. All good stuff too. This type of discussion is so worthwhile and one reason I spend so much time in this group.
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Just to add to all that’s been said…all you have to do is take a cursory look through this forum to realize there are a whole lot of TR users who cross-contaminate by also using Zwift, TrainingPeaks, Golden Cheetah, Intervals, Xert, Strava, and whatever other cycling platforms/apps are available (not to mention scientific studies/pro coach plans plugged into Workout Creator!). So many of us are using TR as the application piece to our training puzzles and not an all-inclusive vehicle (although there definitely are those who do, and that’s fine). So to say that 99% of TR users are simply doing only SS training is ridiculous (a simple think through should have eliminated that concept way before the ‘publish’ button was clicked!).
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Maybe he’s trying to be the next Hambini?
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I feel like people make all this too complicated. I’d bet that most TR riders would do really well on a LV plan filled in with some outdoor (longer if possible) endurance rides. Doing that you’d hit some SS, some threshold, and get a lot of endurance riding in. Do that 3 hour ride on the weekend if you have the time.
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In theory it was a promising experiment, lessons learned start with I need a stronger “base” to support the two days of intensity. And for base I mean using CTL as a proxy - I’ve found that ramping CTL up to 70 or 80 is a good practical measure of having enough “miles in the legs” to support a switch to intensity. You would think two failed attempts at TR build would have gotten the message into my thick skull. But no, LOL, once again it was the school of hard knocks come a calling to remind me that next time around be sure and build up a large enough training load over 3-4 months before attempting to do either build or a 9-week polarized intervention.
Keep in mind my specifics have something to do with that, you might have enough current fitness and/or a physiology that would make giving the 9-week intervention a try. For myself I see it as an alternate to TR build, or in my case I’d likely do 4 weeks of TR build and then the 9-week intervention.
Yes, I’m a bit particular about where my data lives in the cloud. And I use WKO5/TP for deeper analysis and so intervals.icu wasn’t part of my daily/weekly analysis workflow. That said I believe @davidtinker does outstanding work and intervals.icu has some nice features!
Light blue touch paper and stand back LOL
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Or you have your FTP set too high.
Ahaha! 
I love TrainerRoad, I love the podcast, I really like the guys and I’m sure the SS focused training works for some but I don’t think it works for me. I’m getting better results on old fashioned polarized model. I’m very much like the example 2 the guy mentioned. LT1 is at about 75% of FTP for me. SS just takes me to my black hole zone. Everything got better since switching to polarized.
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