What about the long 16 minute intervals? Doesn’t Seiler suggest they are just under ftp at around 97%?
Yes, my remarks are referring to base phase, and when I refer to the “sweet spot approach” I mean sweet spot centered base training, not sweet spot in general.
Exactly, in my view, SSB is a short-cut to base training. In episode 6 of the TRAACC podcast they refer to to the “width” of the base you build, how traditional base builds a “wider” base than sweet spot but at the cost of more time. They also recommend traditional base for riders who may have plateaued in fitness, again using the analogy that a wider base allows for a higher peak.
This is what I mean about the year over year improvements, aerobic base is built over the course of seasons. It’s sometimes referred to as “deep fitness” because it doesn’t go away as fast as fitness built on high intensity work. There is a place for sweet spot work in the base phase but to have SSB be the blanket recommendation for everyone, especially people who have the time for TB HV seems a bit strange.
Not sure they are recommending SSB for those who have the time for trad base.
As far as I know, plan builder always prescribes SSB
Best for what?
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The suggestion from other work was that 4x8 gave the best gains when comparing 4,8,16 min intervals. So polarized got boiled down to two sessions a week of 4x8 and the rest under LT1. Preferably with a long ride of >4 hours at some point.
So if you tried make a Simple POL plan you’d get some thing like 4x8 at 105-110% Tues and Friday, 4-5 hour long Sunday and all other time would be “easy”. That would be tough to do as those 4x8 sessions are tough to repeat and frankly I do not think a very good plan overall.
But happy to be proven wrong!!!
I think people are putting too much emphasis on the 4 x 8min intervals. Wasn’t the outcome of the study that the improvement was marginally better in that group compared with the 4 x4 and 4 x 16? I don’t think Seiler would then prescribe just 4 x 8 intervals throughout the year.
I found a link to a video where he talks about polarised training. In the study he discusses that a traditional method of z3 > z4 > z5 gave slightly better results, but was inconclusive compared to reverse and a hybrid model of training.
There isn’t a comparison with doing 12 weeks of 4 x 8. However, I’m fairly sure any athlete would stagnate quickly doing the same workouts for any length of time. This is only my opinion of course.
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which was pretty much my program last winter. However, I did more <LT1 rides. 3-4 times per week 4-5h each.
totally agree, but you always just know once you’ve tried for yourself
On the intensity of these <LT1 rides: before starting this programm I had asked Seiler via Twitter. He’s actually quite responsive. “Well below” was his phrase. This is also consistent with one of the FastTalk podcasts with him where they say riding always at LT1/AeT is a mistake many non-pros do. Their suggestion is to do only one or two AeT rides a week.
But of course such a blanket statement is completely useless without context to the overall training volume.
For me it’s Coggan again: accumulate as much Zone 1/2/3 (his model) as you can absorb.
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Absolutely agree with gotta try it yourself. Only way to find the best for you is the good old N=1 experiments. Its hard to find folks willing to do those experiments well though. I think a lot of guys try something for 4 weeks, no magic gains, look for something else. Or they just end up riding because riding is fun and what they really want to do anyhow. Which is absolutely fine. I only train so that when I go for rides I can keep up with buddies better and get over hills and stuff 
And sometimes race, but honestly caring about race results is more or less behind me for now.
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Yep, totally agree.
N=1, I decided to ditch the SSB plans at the end of December as I was on my knees after 5 weeks of SSB1. I haven’t set myself any races or goals this season so thought there’s no harm in trying something different.
My approach isn’t quite polarised. I do two hard workouts a week and four zone 1/2 rides. The weekend rides get longer each week. The hard workouts are random: 30/15s, short V02, longer V02, under/overs, long threshold intervals, anaerobic intervals, 40min+ sweet spot intervals. No short sweet spot or threshold intervals, and no tempo. After 3 weeks I take a recovery week where I take stock of my training and choose the hard workouts for the next 3 weeks.
I didn’t see much of an improvement after the first 4 weeks. I increased my estimated ftp by 3 watts. However, I’m enjoying the workouts and don’t have the constantly tired feeling I used to get.
I’m on my recovery week this week, and will see if I’ve made any gains next week when I test.
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It was @bbarrera who posted the link to the Arthur Lydiard LSD article (here or in a different thread):
Your aerobic development is a gradual thing. It takes years and years of marathon-type training to develop your aerobic capacity to the fullest.
I also maintain my agreed position on this. If you are going to undertake a POL training approach, it’s best to think about your 10-year cycling goals because the power of POL isn’t going to show up until much further down the road. SST will give you that more immediate boost to carry you through the season.
Perhaps this is one reason pro riders don’t do true POL training (as revealed by @sryke), because they’ve already developed those adaptations from their teen years.
If you’re 25, POL might be a long-term route which could serve you well. If you’re 50…POL could serve you well in other ways such as lower occurrence of injury and/or fatigue but not necessarily superior fitness gains. The less time you have, both seasonal and longitudinal, the more you might consider a lean towards SST.
$0.01. 
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Yes - very good. Joking aside I think a lot of us on here (and on the UK time trial forum) would be quicker if we just did some more training rather than arguing about which of the training we ARE NOT doing is best. I also wonder myself what I’m talking about when I pontificate on how my TSS is impacting my CTL over time and whether my Cd can be improved if I could just squeeze myself into another unrealistic position on my tt bike 
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If you listen to the Fast Talk interval podcast with Seiler, he is definitely saying that the intervals are done in the context of a build period prior to a race. He never says you do this 52 weeks per year.
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A couple things to keep in mind
One, you really don’t have to be so regimented about it; things don’t have to be an either / or. TR has it set up one way: i.e., all long easy rides (Trad Base) or mostly sweet spot (most of the SSB plans), but it’s not the only way. There is no reason why you can’t do a bigger variety of workouts. You do not have to do ALL one, then ALL another, etc. You could do something like sweet spot or tempo during the week, long easy rides on weekends – half and half. There is one caveat to this: if you do too many different types of training intervention in a cycle, it will be impossible to isolate the effect of any of them, so you probably don’t want it to be a complete grab bag. But you can definitely be more flexible with this stuff.
Second, the training needs to be looked at in context of what you are trying to achieve. E.g., if you are trying to work on your short, very high end power, your other rides will need to be pretty easy in order to be recovered enough to work that hard. I.e. you will gravitate towards something that looks more polarized. If you want to build back up the diesel–think about pro crossers during their mid-season break–you can do a block of long rides with tempo. It’s not that one is better, but one might be better for what you are trying to achieve.
Third, you can always work backwards from what’s working for you vs. going top-down. E.g., if you are doing SSB and you find that you are too tired, you can replace a few SS workouts with easy rides. You wind up with something that’s like semi-polarized. Again to the point that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing on SSB. And as you get fitter you can replace those easy rides with the prescribe SS or tempo (if you wanna build thediesel) or you can replace SS or tempo with higher intensity. Again to the point of viewing the plan in context of your goals.
And at the end of the season, your training distribution probably will look closer to what hte pros seem to do: i.e., lotta low intensity, a chunk of middle, and a chunk of very high. But how you distribute those WITHIN the season will vary.
Finally, my only pet peeve with SS is when the only claim you get is “it allows you to build TSS.” Bothers me because it’s the tail wagging the dog. TSS is just math; maximizing the model (which is meant to approximate physiology but is of course simplified) doesn’t necessarily mean you’re maximizing the physiology behind it.
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It’s not my only claim.
Also going to say for the record, I really like TR’s Traditional Base, if you can commit to the time requirements of mid or high volume it’s worth trying (I did it mostly outside). And I’ve done well with TR’s Sweet Spot Base when doing mostly trainer workouts.
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Sorry, was not referring to you, calling you out or anything like that. If you find CTL approximates your fitness good enough and that more CTL thorugh SS means more fitness, that’s all very well and good.
I meant when coaches say that.
If they want to say, I’ve coached a lot of athletes and seen this work for them, that’s one thing.
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CTL represents training load, and in my own mind ‘can be’ a proxy for the size of your base. I’m a slow twitch athlete and respond well to volume and tempo / sweet spot. VO2 work is really hard for me, and not something I do well at until I’ve built a strong base.
And yeah, I agree that broad statements like “do polarized” and “build CTL” don’t tell the story around the adaptations we seek from a particular phase of training. It bothers me too.
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It baffles me how people don’t understand this concept, which is the absolute most basic of the basics.
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I say this completely honestly, if folks want to provide me data I would be happy to compare a sample of polarized versus sweet spot people.
I completely agree, it seems to me that most people seem to argue about how much icing to put on the cake and what method they are going to use to put the icing on the cake, opposed to actually focusing on how the cake will be built and how big the cake should be (or can be).
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