3 zone 2 rides
ISM Zone 2 or regular Zone 2?
See there you go. That’s why I’m asking the question. I’m old and a complete novice to polarized as I said. I wasn’t aware there was a difference? How can there be 2 different zone 2’s?
They are two different coaching systems. Or rather, one coaching system and a bunch of other ones that use the power zones of Coggan.
If you meant Coggan zones, then by zone 2 you likely mean something like .65 IF. That’s fine. Basic endurance riding. All advocate doing a generous portion of this riding, like a fat baby eating butter mashed potatoes.
If you meant ISM zone 2 for any non-trivial amount of duration then 3 of those workouts ALONE with 2 endurance days are a fair bit. Trying to do three of those and then two intensity days will likely lead to you overdoing it.
Most of my cycling is comprised of two zones, just to avoid confusion I’ll not use “Zone 2”.
- Basic endurance riding
- Riding at an intensity that is higher than basic endurance but not considered HIIT, Tempo, SweetSpot, Threshold, Vo2max.
I sprinkle in high intensity selectively and it ends up being no more (on average) than 1 x week. Sometimes it’s twice a week, sometimes there are long stretches of no intensity during the week. Stop thinking in terms of single weeks. Think (at a minimum) in terms of six weeks, ideally longer than that. Six months even.
There are lots of terms to refer to what I’m talking about above. Point being, they are NOT the same thing. Sometimes on the internet they are. But if you figure out your basic endurance riding and then bump it up a notch or two, you will have found a nice productive place to ride that complements your basic base miles. You will also discover that too much of the latter can be counter-productive.
Did we capture what % of ftp his zone 2 is?
It sounds like it might be right up at 75%.
I think I saw it was 55%-75% of VO2Max rather than FTP. So assuming VO2Max is 20% over FTP (not a great assumption) minimum of the range is 66%. Max is 90%, which seems crazy. That’s basically sweetspot and I would assume would be far above the glycolytic threshold he’s trying to stay below. My take is riding between 65% and 75% feels about right to me.
He specifies it in different terms - based on the “talk test”:
This is great, because it accounts for lots of different kinds of athletes - ones who have really strong endurance (these folks would have Z2 as a high percentage of FTP or VO2Max), as well as though with relatively weaker endurance, like me (where my Z2 threshold is a much lower percentage of my TrainerRoad-estimated FTP due to the way TR estimates FTP).
hmmmm. isn’t this just going back to the old days of using rpe and just steady riding.
seems a step back in direction to me. especially with power meters etc.
I’m starting to feel that we have been over sold on power meters, they are a great device for recording output, and monitoring your progress, but they are record and monitoring your output, a lot of training is about changing you metabolic state, your VO2 is not 120% of your V02 it’s just a indicator of where it might be, and the same is true of Zone2 … it could (if you have a ok base) be about 65%, it could be higher
You could trying viewing the other way around, ride for 3 hours, at a pace where you can talk, and then see what your HR and Power was, was it .65% of your FTP ?
wow this is starting to get very complicated
i think i’ll just stick with ss 
SO TRUE, constant pressure on the pedals,
This is a pretty big range - for me its probably about 10% of my max heart rate…
I will let the team know that you guys are also interested in being able to customise the duration of Workouts in the Polarised Plans too. Thanks for the suggestion!
In the meantime, I suggest using Workout Alternates to find a shorter Workout on weekdays where your scheduled Workout is greater than 1 hour.
It’s funny. I was thinking the same thing this morning when I watched this video that seems relevant to this conversation. Particularly @ 1:45 
But either way, he’s saying use 75%-80% of threshold heart rate. For me, this seems lower than I like. 80% of what I think my threshold hr is is about 136bpm, but my z2 rides that I enjoy are at about 138-139bpm. I’m probably still there, but it kind of shows how many different methods with different accuracies are all aiming at the same thing or close to the same thing.
Thanks! Unfortunately there are no 1 hour alternates for my polarized threshold workouts.
So 2 intensity sessions every 10-14? Or you choose vo2max or Treshold every 10-14?
Fair enough. If that is your premise for what a sweetspot workout is, I see your point. 4x10 min sweetspot seems rather pointless to me. That’s more Threshold duration.
With a correctly set FTP, I would say TiZ for effective SS workouts are 60min and beyond.
I do think what ISM says has merit. But I also don’t think ISM and Attia’s definition of what “endurance” riding is, matches Coggan zones, or what is used at Trainerroad. When I follow their recipe for their version of an endurance workout, it puts me firmly in Coggan Z3.
I finish my ramp test, pdc tests today so I want to be a test case and do 4 weeks of this ISM training approach. Z2 (60-65%ftp), ISM Z2 (under LT1) and one intensity every 10days.
I can start separate topic with others that want to try?