Feedback Needed: Polarized Plan Questions for the Community

This is what ML is supposed to tell us, but at a much larger scale and in more nuanced nature.

4 Likes

I think that’s an excellent start. I’ve been doing Polarised since all my events got cancelled last year.

I’m n=1 and a masters athlete at 54 so bear that in mind in my comments.

If the longest Z1 ride is Sunday I’d suggest the Z3 days as Tuesday and Friday. I find to get the best out of my Z3 days I don’t want to do them after my long Z1 ride day. Nor do I want my long Z1 day after a Z3 day. 72 hours between my hard Z3 efforts also worked well for me as an older athlete.

I find a longer warm up helps me do better at the Z3 efforts. So maybe in your progressions you can have longer warmups or masters versions?

I tend to sit somewhere between low and mid 8 week plans in my off season. Right now I’d be on your high volume plan as my events are returning end of this month… Here’s my Z1 ride times for last two weeks, not much stopped time but I do seem to have hit all the roadworks and traffic lights these past couple of weeks.

I found that one Z3 (a week) was enough to progress VO2 max power and FTP a little more for about 6 weeks. This was after a period of twice a week. After 6 weeks it levelled off. After that once a week was enough to hold those power numbers steady over many months. I kept up the Z1 rides throughout the year. Two Z3 workouts a week with the Z1 was where I saw the solid progression.

Work / rest week ratios seems fine and pretty much what I was doing with a FTP retest at end of rest week.

I was using 30/15 intervals for the Z3 which I found work well as well. The short recoveries doesn’t really allow the HR to drop much during a set. But good start with 4/8/16 intervals.

Ideally it’d be good if you could nominate which day is your long Z1 ride day. For instance I can get out mid week for that but not at the weekend. The long ride day tends to be where the greatest constraint is. Then shuffle the other workouts round that as required.

3 Likes

I think you need to include the 3.5h plan with the 2 intensity workouts over 3 weeks.

the point of an “experiment” is to test what works. If you leave out conditions by assuming they don’t work, you don’t allow yourself to be shown the opposite.

My guess is also that few will choose these plans or even improve upon it (besides maybe a small group of injury recoverers/coming back after long break). But then at least we can put this discussion behind us, using data.

1 Like

I am interested in polarized training because, even though it takes more hours, the endurance level training doesn’t seem to disrupt my busy life that much. I get reading done while in Z1 and I sacrifice one day for Z3 training. Even though the Z2 is less hours, they cost me more during the day than more hours at Z1. But your AI will be measuring that as well from what I heard. :+1:

4 Likes

@Nate_Pearson - I have just seen an evolution of the plans and notice they now include a shorter interval progression through the weeks. I think this is an excellent addition and look forward to the pain of trying to get through those…

Just an FYI though - I noticed on the 8 week HV Build on week 2 there is a session Hualapai 2x16 @102%. On all the other plans that session is Chiricahua 2x16 @100%, which seems the logical step in the progression, especially considering the next one is 3x16 @100% and most of the other 16m intervals are 100% until much later in the plan. Just wondering if that is a ‘typo’ in that particular plan?

Really looking forward to these and AT now and coincidentally its almost the perfect timing for my first A event…

1 Like

That is on purpose. It’s because the next workout in the progression gives you another interval. If you look at the levels it makes a lot of sense.

So you do the 102%, then the next time you have 16 more minutes, but it’s at 100%.

7 Likes

thanks for clarifying…be interesting to see how that goes! And by interesting I mean horrible…

2 Likes

Thanks everyone!

We’ve got V1 of these plans buttoned up and they are being released as we speak. I bet they are up on the website in the next 1-2 hours.

You can enable them under this section when they are available: Log In to TrainerRoad

They will then show up on the website as an option to add to your calendar.

25 Likes

Designing and rolling out these plans in parallel with all the AT beta work taking place? Busy, busy! Good work all at TR. :facepunch:

9 Likes

Can I also ask what the rationale is for the intervals being at a generally higher % on the Base HV plan vs MV? On the Build its the other way around and intensity is about 2% lower on many/most of the sessions on HV.

Several of the early workouts are 2-4% higher for the same duration as the MV, so the plan has 2 extra sessions and higher intensity pretty much every week. I guess maybe AT will eventually address this but wondered if there was a specific reason?

Thanks

Thank you @Nate_Pearson!! Locked and loaded starting next week!!

Now to enjoy a weekend with a couple of long easy rides to take advantage of the early spring days. :smiley:

1 Like
5 Likes

Much appreciated, just in time for the weekend too, thanks Nate and team!

Guess it’s up to users now to get these workouts done and see if POL makes a difference.

1 Like

Signed up to early access, starting after my “recovery” week next week! Wish me luck.

Don’t know how good my data will be since i’m also running pretty much every day ish kinda deal
I’m gonna skip the rest of trad base and just go into this, LV style.

So from the looks of it, it’ll give me
2 slow medium runs (1.5 to 2h per week),
2 slow rides, might increase the duration of the first ride,
1 day of intensity on the bike,
and 1 day of intensity on foot where i’ll be alternating threshold and sprints on foot (depending on the week)
Sprinkle some strength on there 2-3 times a week and run very very short and easy bricks after each ride. :leg: :leg: lets hope for the best

1 Like

Rest days, no work out, count towards the 80/20 distribution? The whole thing is kind of twisted!

The outdoor versions of some of the endurance workouts are wrong. For example Perkins -1 is 2hr both inside and outside. And some workouts don’t have any outside options so cannot be pushed to a head unit.

Seilers not selling anything. He merely reported on observations of high level athletes that were successful and noticed a trend.

We’ll get this fixed.

4 Likes

Maybe not in his initial dissertation, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2004.00418.x, but those that follows sound like a sell or at least a strong option.

What is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes? What is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes? in: International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance Volume 5 Issue 3 (2010)

Abstract:
“Successful endurance training involves the manipulation of training intensity, duration, and frequency, with the implicit goals of maximizing performance, minimizing risk of negative training outcomes, and timing peak fitness and performances to be achieved when they matter most. Numerous descriptive studies of the training characteristics of nationally or internationally competitive endurance athletes training 10 to 13 times per week seem to converge on a typical intensity distribution in which about 80% of training sessions are performed at low intensity (2 mM blood lactate), with about 20% dominated by periods of high-intensity work, such as interval training at approx. 90% VO2max. Endurance athletes appear to self-organize toward a high-volume training approach with careful application of high-intensity training incorporated throughout the training cycle. Training intensification studies performed on already well-trained athletes do not provide any convincing evidence that a greater emphasis on high-intensity interval training in this highly trained athlete population gives long-term performance gains. The predominance of low-intensity, long-duration training, in combination with fewer, highly intensive bouts may be complementary in terms of optimizing adaptive signaling and technical mastery at an acceptable level of stress.”

Thanks for so quickly adding in the new plans! Are there going to be outdoor versions available of the new workouts that were created for the plan?