Quality over Quantity vs. 80/20 (or Chad vs. Matt ;))

I’ve been wanting to chime back into this thread again for some time but just never found the time.

I’m aware that the conversation has moved on a little from where it was last time I participated but I wanted to keep things grounded to the overriding principals that govern 80/20 / Polarized training and particularly what the top end athletes are doing. My focus will be on Seiler’s work as I haven’t read any of Fitzgerald’s work in any depth.

For the purposes of this I’m going to ignore the time-crouched aspect of the conversation, for the time-being at least.

It is clear from Seiler’s research that the top endurance athletes do not do much periodization in the sense that is being discussed. Typically, they may have a month away from any high intensity work after the end of the season but when things kick in again the split will be 80/20. Simple as that. They do not do a block of ‘Traditional Base’ as there is always high intensity work work. As the year progresses the main change is that the overall volume is ramped up but the spread of low to high intensity stay the same. Approaching the race season, the intensity of high intensity training goes up and the low intensity goes down. As I think he said in one presentation, there’s no ‘fancy periodization’ going on.

One of the things that is obvious from this is that base training is so fundamental to the fitness of any endurance athlete (anyone doing a race that last for about 4 minutes or more) that it must continue all throughout the year.

Base, build and specialty phasing reduces the amount of aerobic (or sweetspot) endurance work quite dramatically in search of preparing the athlete to work at threshold and at high percentages of FTP.


One of the things that is missing from the conversation is how athletes prepare for race intensity efforts. For athletes who race for less than an hour this is pretty much done already through Vo2 workouts. Typically, cross country skiing races are 30 minutes or so but can be up to 2 hours at world cup level so there will be some sweetspot work in there.

It’s not clear from Seiler’s work exactly how this works, but I’d hazard a guess that almost all of the race preparation for a pro athlete is done very close to the start of the season or actually during races. It’s impossible to peak for a full 4-month season so there’s no harm in using races as preparation for the later and more important part of the season, especially If everyone else is doing that. Unlike most average joes these athletes are racing up to 3 or 4 times every weekend for large parts of the season.

How does this fit into a race plan when an athlete doesn’t race much, or at all, in the lead-up to an A race, which I imagine is pretty typical of a huge number of TrainerRoad users? Maybe that’s the next step in the puzzle.

Mike

1 Like

Fantastic point that I just wanted to call out and highlight as I think many of the posts in this thread ignore. The idea of polarized training isn’t around a base phase that uses the polarized model and then you go to a non-polarized build. You do polarized all the time

1 Like

I started listening to that earlier and will finish it later, maybe after work. I’m not familiar with the bike leg of a draft legal triathlon. I’d like to understand the demands/tactics of that a bit more as we’re talking about their training. How does it compare to a normal triathlon bike leg, or conventional cycling pack racing?

Fitzgerald’s work is in his book: “80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower”. He’s also written numerous articles for Runner’s World.

It’s also important to point out that Seiler’s take on a polarized model (based on his population studies and follow up experimental work) is not entirely in line with what Matt Fitzgerald presents in his book. Seiler is a scientist. Fitz is a science writer. Fitzgerald cites Seiler quite a bit. And the overall thesis (“slow down! but also go really hard”) is the same. However, Fitzgerald attempts (and personally I thinks succeeds) in distilling these principles down to runners who didn’t go through a Division 1 cross country program.

Much of what I’ve challenged about Sweet Spot intervals in this thread comes right out of 80/20 running. No runner would do:

Tempo run → Tempo run → Endurance run → Tempo run → Tempo run → Slightly longer tempo run

“Tempo run” being the roughly equivalent of a Sweet Spot interval session. And yet, SSB-HV is exactly the above pattern. It’s very monochromatic. It’s the same workout, nearly every day, for 5 straight weeks. I have about 10hrs/week to train. SSB-HV requires 8.8 hour/wk. So in theory I could do it. But I’m not doing tempo intervals everyday for 5 weeks. But maybe that’s what cyclist do. Never mind polarized, it’s not even marginally varied in intensity distribution.

You can’t really (easily) get an idea about what it is about from Seiler’s work alone. From his work, it seems like it is actually about blurring the phases, like Bob Kennedy (the runner, not the Senator) used to do. You’re always working on ALL of it. It’s just some times during the year gets more attention than others. So basically, ye olde periodization.

True. He touches on it a bit here

(about half way through)

And he (Seiler) suggested to Trevor Connor on the Velonews podcast that he’d like to come back and “talk about intervals”. So we’ll see.

1 Like

I just started listening to that very interview this morning on my way to work.

I think it’s been said before in one of the threads on here, that Seiler isn’t a coach trying to sell anybody his ideas or get them to sign up to a training plan - he’s just doing research. That, along with the fact that training isn’t, by and large, particularly prescriptive (despite what online coaching want you to believe) leads to a situation where the information isn’t as cut and dried as we’ve become used to.

That’s not to say that there isn’t bias in his work - he has a lot of time and reputation invested.

2 Likes

I think you can’t compare running tempo to sweet-spot, in the sense that the former is not as well defined by coaches as the latter. Sometimes they use (5K) pace as an anchor, other times % of HR, and sometimes some sort of RPE (i.e. “90% of maximum and feel comfortably hard”). I’m not even sure that tempo for runners who do 1500m is the same as for those who race 10Ks.

Sweet-spot on the other is a fairly (if abstractly) well-defined range based on a pretty objective metric (power) and on a set “anchor” (FTP, which a theoretical “hour” capacity).

Good point about the variance in SSB-HV, though SSB-LV and MV have over-unders thrown into the mix. I also believe I’ve heard coach Chad say that it’s almost always a good time to do suprathreshold sessions (if you think you can recover).

Cheers :slight_smile:

1 Like

Not polarized at all. Lots of aerobic base, and threshold work. Everything I’ve read, including here at TR, says you can never get enough base.

1 Like

I am curious to see how much actual intensity the top athletes are doing during the offseason. The Lydiard approach, which is where much of this dogma of training came from, did absolutely no intensity except maybe some fartleks during the base phase. There were then two interval phases leading up to the major event/season. First a block of strength through hill work, and then a block of speed work just before the event. This is much like what Friel used to suggest as well, with the majority of intensity coming in build/peak. From an observational standpoint the 80/20 figure is in a large aggregate timeframe, not necessarily year round.

Don’t forget his two runs a week consisting of 10 mile @ marathon pace during base. That’s “intensity” although not higher than ftp. Hard runs nevertheless.
Joel

1 Like

SS_IngridKristiansen

This graphic shows the zone distribution of Ingrid Christians over a year.

bin

This one is from a top class skier.

So the skier is doing the same intensity year round while Ingrid was not. Although the skier data lumps all z3-5 together, we can see that Ingrid did not do VO2 max work until Feb/Mar/Apri, Tapers in April/May and does a lot during competition following a pretty standard race preparation periodization schedule.

Of note though is that late season, the percentage of intensity is higher for the skier, doing only about 10% of intensity during the offseason base period.

It’s good point about Z3 to 5 being lumped together for the skier.

“Intensity” is a generic term and open to interpretation without more context.

It can be overly relative and subjective unless properly framed with more quantitative references.

(That’s probably the reason the Seiler model uses Low, Moderate, and High Intensity to define and label his 3-Zone model).

  • image

@mcneese.chad I meant greater than aerobic theshold by the term “intensity”. Not “hard” or “difficult”

Coaches and scientists often say “intensity” to mean > AeT. That’s all I meant. It also wasn’t precise and seemingly snide. Not my intention.

Seiler does what I think most scientists do: base their models or zones on actual physiological phenomena, like the lactate curve or respiration, and not field tests like FTP or “hour power”. It makes it confusing sometimes. Your chart does a good job reconciling his with TR zones

1 Like

i haven’t read about this before. He suggested doing three long runs at your maximum steady state. The goal of those workouts is if you can’t maintain the pace you did for the first half during the second half you went too hard. Then shorter easy runs.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/Arthur%2520Lydiard.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiD2Yjmyr7eAhVHnlkKHZ0UBxIQFjARegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw1vIpnMtbmNkpcNYwk0UXRw&cshid=1541467349719

There is a schedule in the latter half of the paper, the only intensity in the offseason is a 3 to 5k time trial every other week. So some intensity, but much less than 20%.

Intensity thoughout the year, a lot of LIT, but also quite some “no man’s zone/zone to avoid/bad zone” training.

The Road to Gold: Training and Peaking Characteristics in the Year Prior to a Gold Medal Endurance Performance

Eleven elite XC skiers and biathletes

grafik

Annual training characteristics.

A: Total training time (h) distributed into endurance training (zones 1–5), strength and sprint (bars, y-axis), and total training frequency (sessions) (line, z-axis) during each month and divided into phases. B: HIT frequency (sessions) distributed into zones 3, 4 and 5 (bars, y-axis) during each month and divided in phases. There was a statistically significant difference (P<.05) in total HIT sessions and zones 3, 4 and 5 respectively across the GP, SP and CP. Pairwise post-hoc tests showed: * Difference in total HIT sessions across phases (P<.01). # Difference between zone 5 sessions vs. GP (P<.01).

Exactly the same as for the eltie Swedish XC Skiers, posted here before. Significant amount of training in Seiler-zone2/5-Zone-model-zone3&4

1 Like

So during general prep, the xc skiers did < 10% of their total time in zones 3,4,5. And this is for a low impact sport. They don’t approach 20% until late in their training cycle while still being below 15% of their total time at intensity.

I have done 6 weeks of zone 1 training together with base running. Managed to increase power at same heart rate. Doing this on a turbo is extremely boring, I think I will go on like this for another month before starting a TR plan. Perhaps will add VO2 max workouts once per week for the remaining month.

I think ‘intensity’ and ‘high intensity’ are being used interchangeably.

1 Like

@themagicspanner Exactly, and I think that’s causing some confusion.

1 Like