Agreed, although as a relative newcomer to structured training (and road biking) I think “your mileage may vary” applies.
When I started 3 years ago another new rider wasn’t as fast. He went with traditional base training, and I couldn’t afford the time and went with Strava/CTS plans. We both progressed, but after 5 months he became a beast. In addition, I see a lot of local cat 3 / 2 / 1 riders out doing traditional base. And I know from being on flat ‘performance’ club rides that aerobic endurance is a limiter for me at 22+mph, so I decided to create time in my schedule and giving the TR traditional base high volume a try. “Everything old is new again” as traditional base is definitely polarized from what I can see.
I’ve listened to both episode 51 and 54, and to be honest I didn’t hear Dr. Seiler cite research on answering the “I have only 6 hours/week to train, how would I apply polarized” question. Instead believe he gave an opinion.
I’ll go back thru this thread when I have time, there have been a number of articles cited and I’m hoping there is some science comparing 6 hour/week polarized vs sweet spot.
I don’t really see it that way. The majority of the TB is long and low endurance. The select Higher Intensity rides are sub-Threshold to Threshold at best (ignoring the few sprint anaerobic efforts).
To be true polarized via the 3-Zone model, those intense rides would need to be over Threshold and push up in the VO2 max range (105-120% of FTP).
The toughest looking workout Mt Hale +3, is at 105% of FTP which is barely on the line between typical Threshold and VO2 Max. It is plausible that this is close enough to count, but it is the exception within this plan, rather than the rule.
If anything, TB3 in particular swings towards the SST model with all the SS and sub-Threshold work. Either way, I wouldn’t call it “Polarized” in the same context as the rest of our discussion.
You are correct. When I made that statement, was mentally factoring in my planned outside ride substitutions. Thanks for clarifying and pointing that out!!
yup, for example my Wed night rides are hammerfests and after a quick look the other day, I usually end up with 20-33% z3 for the ride. Also accumulate significant time in Z3 on longer 3-5 hour group rides outside, along with a metric ton of ~150W paceline time (~60% of ftp). So from quick mental math, not going to be a problem unless NorCal gets hit with a deluge of rain between now and the end of year.
This is a very relevant question that you raise. I have not yet seen any definitive answer on this (to the extent there is one) - although I think in one of the FT podcasts, Dr. Seiler says its possible to see benefits on as low as 6 hrs. I think this is probably true, although the magnitude of the benefit you might see on a reasonably low volume like this is likely going to vary a lot by person, with some people being good responders, and some people being less so (the same is true for any training plan).
On the podcast, Coach Chad has referenced that you need to put in a of of time for a Traditional Base approach to yield the same benefits as the Sweet Spot approach. I have no doubt this is true, but as @mcneese.chad has pointed out in his recent post, the TR TB programs don’t have much, if any, high intensity components to them. So if the TB plans were augmented with the right amount of high intensity sessions, would this get closer to the POL approach, and would you see benefits quicker? Maybe. It will certainly be interesting to listen to the podcast on this topic!
Just a quick question Chad. How do you plan to progress your Polarized approach through the different blocks of training? The way I see it since the focus on zones seems pretty clear cut the only way to add stress is with volume increase. What is not clear to me is if it’s necessary to do a entire block of strict zone 1 while increasing volume before adding in any zone 3. What say you?
Honestly, I haven’t planned that far ahead. I have 1 month (3 weeks loading and 1 recovery with a Ramp test to finish). That’s all I have set or considered right now.
I just want to see how a single load cycle goes and I will evaluate from there.
@Tezz and @mcneese.chad there are tons of options for how to increase stress that don’t necessarily include just increases in volume. Even if one was just restricted to VO2 max (which it isn’t as previously mentioned) training there are lots of variations to use. Combining traditional anaerobic loads, sweet spot variants, and threshold variants all fall within the ability to be used on a polarized approach. Even tempo or zone 3 (threshold model) have their uses. How they ar used is the “art”of training and almost any combination will work at least once to get some sort of adaption happening. Increase in the amount of VO2 max training within the program is an option but at some point the stress isn’t worth the return. An accumulation of 24-30min of vo2 max is usually considered a top end and anything more than that typically has diminishing returns. Again this is individual of course.
As to adding in zone 3 (I assume you mean polarized model zone 3 ) is typically added in right away in a polarized program. The quantity and intensity of this zone 3 work changes throughout the year but the ratio stays somewhat similar within a range. A caveat to that is that it does have some variation of course. A common approach a lot of coaches and athletes are using in the first part of their polarized season is using sprint work. High power, high rpm sprints, with lots of recovery between. This may end up being only about 2-5% of actual work time or even less . That will often transition into Vo2 max work which can make up as much as 25% of time in zone work. As mentioned previously this can often average out to 10% of total time during a season. I have rarely seen where this ratio stays the exact same throughout the season and there are tons of creative ways of making the program within the polarized approach aside from increases in volume alone.
Is there evidence (in the form of scientific study, not anecdote) that POL (a) works as well or better than “THR” for volumes of 5-9hrs/week and (b) does so for all or for which cycling sub-disciplines.
The one relevant study I did see defines THR as having no high intensity sessions, so I’d say that is not relevant to TR, as the build and spec cycles include high intensity.
It may have been mentioned in the Seiler casts, but only loosely. And I have not done a search to find them. I am a decent Google searcher, but I am less familiar with how to find scientific data like that.
It’s one of the reasons I am curious about polatized. Most of the studies seem to 8nclude well trained to elite level athletes and more than 6 hours per week (when time is stated at least).
It would be interesting to see the summaries from any testing like that.
@trianta the problem with that study was that it didn’t really define what the intensities involved were. They seem to indicate that mid intensity is tempo which means that if the THR group did 43% tempo and the rest at low intenaity it wasn’t a true THR program. Secondly this study didn’t seem to control for training time as the THR group did 15% more time working out which when we are discussing low hours of training Is quite significant. The reality, as Hutchinson points out, is that no one actually trains that way. Polarized or Threshold.
@mcneese.chad It has been a couple of years since I specifically looked for good research articles comparing the two with such short training hours but perhaps I will look again on SIRC. Previously however, there were no good studies comparing the two with such few hours of training that I could find.
The other one I saw was with 48 national level ahletes (austrian I think), who moreover had completed significant long slow ride training before the test period
and i didn’t notice anything about low monthly volume
just to be clear, I’m not saying that low or mid volume (let’s say 5 to 9 hours) POL is not, or ever, effective, I’m just curious to see somehing more substantial than anecdote
I just started using HRV4Training and realized their app quantifies your HR and gives you a polarization calculation. I’ve only just started using it but it looks to me like it’s probably a time in zone calculation. Either way it’s interesting to see.
Agreed. On episode 51 Dr Seiler explains the research is focused on intervals training because a) its easier to do in the lab, and b) can be done with untrained college students in 6-8 weeks, c) you can’t get untrained people to do 2 hour sessions in the lab.
Dr Seiler states that learnings from the elite can scale down to well trained cyclists, however various coaches say it takes 10+ or 12+ hours a week to really get the benefits.
I’d love to see some studies on well trained cyclists with 6-9 hours a week available to train, and the relative effectiveness of polarized vs interval training.
It’s well established that VO2Max work can be built in a short period of time and contributes to FTP, but it also isn’t as durable as other types of work. I would love to see what happened to these folks over the other 20-24 weeks of their seasons.
