Only stagnates if your hard and easy is based on fixed power levels. If they aren’t fixed power based you’ll see natural progression anyway.
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Respectfully disagree. If you do the same thing every week you will see initial improvement and eventually stagnation.
Yes that is why even Seiler himself introduces different workouts than beloved 4x8. He does sst with bursts and threshold workouts (as 4x16 fom the study that was a threshold not vo2 max) so basically you have 2 hard days where you should do some kind of hard work and rest is Z2. If you want a change, swap vo2 into frc or sprint work. Or you can block 2 hard days close to each other.
Polarisation by doing only low vo2 and threshold is, as you said, road to stagnation if done all year long.
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Isn’t any plan just some amount of easy rides with a few intensity sessions when you boil it down? It’s the progression of the key sessions (and in some cases overall volume) towards a specific goal that makes it a ‘plan,’ though you can certainly train without a plan regardless of whether that falls under a polarized banner or not. Where I think plans are valuable for many people is both in the specificity element, and also because they enforce deloading phases throughout a block or season- if you’re doing the same stuff every week and don’t let yourself adapt to that load, you’ll plateau regardless of the intensity distribution.
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That was the complaint that started a lot of this discussion though. TR was focused on SS training and many of us felt there were not enough easy rides, which was leading to burnout.
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I never stated anybody should train polarized all year.
I just said it was easy to formulate the plan. I child could easily accomplish it.
The fundamental foundation of all endurance training is progressive overload. Using this principal is the basis of all training plans.
I’m self coached. Could a coach do a better job, maybe. Is it worth paying for this maybe. Absolutely not. The single digit percentage difference it ‘may’ make is utterly worthless. I’m not a professional athlete. I’d need a full time coach to do a better job than myself. Additionally, the endless communication explaining my myriad of daily training idiosyncrasies to my coach would waste my valuable time.
The single most valuable aspect of endurance training is time. Time to train. Time to recover. Time to plan. Time to reduce life stress. Without a significant volume of time to dedicate to your chosen endurance sport, you will never reach your full potential. Fact.
2nd, right after time is knowledge. The more you learn, the more you empower yourself to improve. In the current age, it is very easy to significantly increase your knowledge. There are millions of free resources. Invest in increasing your knowledge. Precisely, like you invest in your training.
Because we’re chatting about it.
Train a proper base phase with HIGH VOLUME
Train 80/20, by session, most of the year.
Train polarized as you sharpen for racing.
Train pyramidal by distribution.
Sleep at least 8hrs a night
Eat healthy 6 days a week, give yourself a day off.
Get yourself near to, or into, if you’re male, single digit body fat levels, do it slowly.
Make certain you know your dominant fiber type
Do all that, do it for 5 to 10 years.
Then, you might be fast. Or not… but you’ll know for sure if you could be fast.
Good luck.
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No doing the same thing each week though are you? It gets harder over time.
Is there a particular thread we are supposed to use to give feedback on the “experimental” Polarised plans?
I am completing the 6 week MV Polarised plan currently, and I question the AT logic with regard to the 2nd workout of the week being an Endurance ride of ~ 2 hours
AT seems to be choosing progressive rides for Endurance within the timeframe of 2’15", and for example today it has come up with Walker at 0.74 IF or 2’15" at 75% of FTP. My current PL for Endurance is 5.7 and Walker is 6.3, so it is Progressive
I can do that, but it is not a typical endurance ride and will have a lot of tempo in it to hit that average outdoors and I don’t believe making Endurance rides as hard as this is consistent with Polarised training. More like an ISM LT1 ride. Make them longer yes, but not more intense for each workout, once you get up to handling say 65-75% of FTP
Of course i have chosen what i think is more appropriate for today through Alternates
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I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to approach it. Ride the intensity required as much as possible; if you have to dip below it, just return to that intensity as soon as possible; don’t chase averages and try to ‘make up for’ the dip.
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Totally agree. Go longer, not harder.
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I do agree with that, so maybe using hitting the average was the wrong thing for me to say. My focus is more my HR than anything on these rides, making sure I stay below what I believe is my LT1 HR.
The route I use allows a very consistent effort with free turns and little traffic, but even then at 75% of FTP, it will have plenty of Tempo in it with +/-.
It is no an easy effort due to the intensity, so longer and easier makes more sense to me for the AI progression.
The hard bit should come from the duration not intensity. Of itself, the intensity should be a long way from hard. Try not to hit averages but cap the maximum intensity you hit to keep you in Z2.
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I noticed that in mid volume base, AT doesn’t necessarily progress the endurance rides. It even adapted my endurance rides down after successfully completing a threshold ride one time. I’m surprised they haven’t put an IF cap on the polarized plan endurance rides.
My N=1 for base phase:
2020 (blue): SSBHV, with Z2 being filler before next SS workout
2021 (red): TBHV, Z2 based on power (HR usually in low Z3)
2022 (magenta): just Z2, capped by HR (80-83% of intervals.icu claimed LTHR)
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I agree.
I keep getting Walker at .74 IF recommended. The duration never gets extended, only the intensity
Easy enough to choose an alternative, but it does suggest the AI logic isn’t quite right
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I would start picking your own rides with lengthening durations to provide the progression. They seem to have no duration cap for the tri plans but are keeping one for the polarized plans. The tri plans are good ones for alternates.
Maybe they’re thinking that if you’re somewhat time crunched (which the polarized plans do assume by limiting durations) that you’re better off adding a touch of intensity and making it less polarized.
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Or more likely the logic that is used to select alternate workouts is tuned to not extend the duration beyond a certain (e.g., 15 minutes) amount. Which doesn’t really work for a POL plan where “easy” should be “easy” in intensity.
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Yeah, from what the TR team has mentioned, I’ve gathered that Adaptive Training is tuned for the standard plans - so it won’t be great if you’re using it for a POL plan. it will select similar workloads for similar times, it won’t look for similar intensity levels over longer periods of time.
Maybe I’ve missed it being discussed, but why are the threshold workouts in the POL plans steady state efforts whereas TR have decided that the most efficient threshold workouts for the other plans are Over/Unders?
Is it because it muddies the water on ‘pure zone split’, or because they’re just harder psychologically so designed to turn people off pol?
Otherwise I can’t see an enormous difference between ssb lv2 + z2 and pol base.
I think it is simply to strictly adhere to one specific documented approach to polarized (Seiler?).
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