Never really hurts to try. I liked my experience, but am back to TR mains for now. I do plan to add in some longer easy rides through my training, and the VO2 max work is something I need to continue to mix in.
Hard to know what works best for each rider, so be willing to experiment.
So I just finished up my 3rd week of a customized Xterra tri plan. It is somewhat polarized in the planning, in that the hard workouts are the two weekday workouts from Low volume short power build, and 1 interval session from the mid volume OLY tri plan. Swims Iām saying we can throw out as my swimming volume has only minimal impact on my total metabolic load.
My calendar is linked in my profile if anyone wants to look at more of the specifics. I donāt plan on updating to the same level of detail that Chad did for his, but give some general updates.
Caveat/exclusion: I am not ramp testing, but self selecting the power target based on how close I think I can accomplish it. If the workouts feel right on (achieving high HR during interval sessions, and low, steady HR during Z1/2 rides) I will not change it. For this block, I had a pretty good success rate on the bike, hitting target power for most of the intervals, only the last one being a few percent off of target .IF.
So this is really only polarized since I am not doing any in-between work, but it is not entirely a high volume plan, 9 hours is still pretty much mid-volume and mid 500ās total TSS.
So you can see I definitely had trouble with Bashful +2, Iām wondering if that was a fueling issue, but then again, hitting 125% for those later intervals is going to be really hard, no matter what so not sure there was much else I could to to get to that target. HR average for the weekend rides, was 122 for Gibralter, 121 for Andrews +1 and 124 for Bays+2, even though the IF was .71, .74, then .76 indicating that fitness has gone up.
Itās really hard to track my run fitness since it is not power based, but pace based and winter weather/clothes really make it hard to get a consistent pace. When I have the 20 minute tempo run in week 7 of the build, thatāll be the real indicator of where I am running-wise. My personal best in a 25 min tempo run last june was a 6:25ish average.
What I really like about this plan is my compliance was near perfect. I only missed one workout due to my work schedule since I swim at lunch and am not always free to do one, so then there was only 1 really altered workout for the bike portion. Previously I have had a lot of trouble doing a build with TR since there is not a specific offroad triathlon plan and have had poor bike compliance, and thus never really was able to increase FTP (but was able to move the shorter end of the power curve). I plan on only increasing the FTP setting 5 watts, as the IF of the workouts in the 2nd half of build get progressively harder and I donāt want to be a heroā¦ steady increases are still good improvements. Since I had to alter one of the workouts, I definitely didnāt have my FTP set too low, thinking it would be pretty close to where it would be if I was using the ramp, higher intensity work is just about perfect, and the lower intensity stuff is not terribly hard.
So thereās probably not going to be a huge increase from doing this compared to the standard TR format, but I think the real measuring stick will come during the race seasonā¦ how close to my manually set FTP can I hold in a race. I will be targeting .9 IF for Xterra bike legs. It is also not very hard to edit a TR plan in build, to make it more of a polarized plan, pick your two hard rides, swap the rest with zone 1/2.
I have not read this study thoroughly and I am no physiologist, however it appears that the THR group do no high intensity work at all! I do not think this compares well with the trainerroad plans as people have implied.
There is plenty of Z3 work in the TR plans. This study (to me) appears to emphasis the importance of these high intensity workouts rather than the importance of the low intensity ones; in fact the POL group and THR group have the same amount of Z1 workouts!
Have I missed something?
This study by Neil pops up all the time here. As already mentioned several times here, I donāt think this study can be used for comparision with typical SST approaches.
The threshold group was not really a threshold group. āTempo groupā would be a better descriptor. From the Methodology:
THR sessions included 60 min at a power output half-way between the LT and the LTP (i.e., in zone 2 ).
Now even if LTP was similar to FTP it would put this well below the typical SST training intensity. And well below threshold training. However, we can probably put LTP somwhat lower, e.g. moving the training intensity even closer to LT1. They were doing endurance rides, not threshold rides.
Additionally, the complete lack of any higher intensity in the threshold group (which is reflected in the outcome on 95% PPO improvement). From that it is quite surprising how much the ātempo groupā improved, which is probably indicative of the low training status of the study participants.
And finally, one should note which of the effects are actually statistically significant.
For me this study shows only one thing: principle of specificity. Tempo group no intensity, less improvement of 95% PPO when compared with intensity (POL group).
Has this ever happened?
I do feel that TR should have a polarised plan, whether or not they agree with it the principal.
It really hacks me off when people,talk about their age and taking it easy etc. and they are only 50.
Train hard and see what happens. You may or may not be tired due to your age. If so adjust, donāt settle for a cop out before you even start.
No, they havenāt covered Polarized yet. I suspect it is being wrapped into what I think will be a large product update/release. The one they have hinted at in various threads. No idea if/when that will happen, but they crew seems hard at work with not much else given lately.
Totally agree. A 60 minute effort is very significant and it is too easy to get wrong data from it. I rely on a 25 mile TT to validate my hour time. No point doing it artificially.
Google Dan Plews, set age group record at Kona and is low carb and trains another pro triathlete who just won Ironman Switzerland, also low carb
He does promote low carb in general nutrition, but definitely carbs for training / performance: Kona Edge: Dan Plews
Lots of gems in that article, but especially:
So yes when I do an Ironman triathlon Iām racing, Iāll be taking 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour and that will be in the form of gels and all the things that a normal person would eat.
That sounds interestingā¦ do you have more info about this? Thanks for pointing this out.
After reading so much about how important it is to have filled up your glycogen stores for endurance training, I would love the idea about low carb being competitive. I guess when itās a really long competition like Iron Man, it could be that most of the time you are relying on fat metabolismā¦?`!
What do you think?
I find it very interesting, especially if you do the math on calories reqād for a long race. Dan Plews has an article on the blog at Endure IQ | Blog | Optimizing Triathlon Performance, that seems to be a new company he has started and it has an article on Fat adaption/low carb for endurance athletes.
They never did do that podcast on polarized, did they?
Nope. I heard more hints on another cast a while ago. I think itās waiting for a pending feature release.
I expect POL will be covered to some degree, but might not be what we are expecting. All speculation on my part, so we will see eventually.
Finally got round to doing a FTP test after a change of tact this winter.
Iād been following TR plans this last 4 years and while I had great improvements for the first few years Iād plateaued and couldnāt shift my FTP upwards at all.
So this autumn and winter Iāve replaced many of my rides with easy rides <LT1 to see the effect. Still doing 2x hard workouts every week, mix of SS, VO2 but mostly threshold efforts to be honest.
Happy to say Iāve saw a 10% increase from the end of last season. Surprised myself with that increase after the stagnation that Iāve had for the least couple of years.
Iām pretty much following the fast talk podcastās 3x types of rides now every week. 2x short and hard, 2-4 short and easy recovery rides and 1x 3-4 hr easy ride.
Interested now to see how far I can push on until I need to refresh my plan again.
I think there is definite logic to support a training approach that incorporates some longer easier rides, in addition to the usual intense stuff.
I think a polarized model works well for a certain profile of athlete, but not everyone, and some athletes will benefit significantly from adding sweet spot workouts to the mix.
This thread is well worth a read.
Mikael is going to be interviewing Dr Seiler for an upcoming podcast, so that should be very interesting.
Since I had a little bit of a free period I figured that I would give an update. I am just finishing up the recovery week of my build, so will be might be seeing some fitness more gains over the next week if everything is consistent with my progress in the past.
Once again, only doing the short power weekday interval sessions from low volume. This period, doing the 2nd bike interval day the day after the run based intervals was a bit of a breaking point. Maybe I overdid the running intervals, maybe not. Maybe the three minute intervals are just that hard, and judging by a few of the pro workload threads, trying to do 9 VO2 intervals of 2.5 to 3 minutes is a hero task, there is supposed to be a point of diminishing returns and I think I at least reached it. What was good though is that I did hit all my power targets in the short power workouts of williamson and ansel adams.
Weekend zone 2 rides were roughly 75% of FTP for main target, but would usually put me at the zone 1/2 threshold. Hereās the first endurance ride I did. It says tempo, but I did a 5% drop from the power targets since I liked the duration of the workout, but wanted to give it a slight bump down to my HR target (around 125, I have a max of 175)
And here was my most recent indoor endurance ride, slightly modified for short power, doing 4 sprints during a mainly 75% of FTP power target
And hereās the most recent outdoor ride, power/HR is going to be very different outdoors since the power demands of outdoor riding cause more spikes in power necessary. If thereās a blind turn coming up, I will hustle a little bit to get past it when I know no cars are coming, but I still think overall HR response was ideal.
Overall, I have hit TSS numbers on the bike that I was only able to hit as one week spikes, and did these consistently through the build. 300 TSS on the bike was about my limit when doing harder weekend rides, and I think also being smarter about my runs has made it possible to get an overall higher TSS.
On to the run:
Hereās a long run from early in the build:
And now the last long run that was on pavement, a very comparable course to the one linked above. Almost 25s/mile faster at the same average HR, lower HR peak. Once again, no training in the middle zone. 133 is 74% of my max of 180 for the run. Maybe slightly higher by a few beats than people who would be doing longer, but I think that as long as Iām doing a pace where thereās almost no decoupling, that Iām going to go ahead and run/ride at that pace.
In all, Iāve been manually changing my FTP in TR, starting at 290, and now have it set to 300. Since short power and the XCO specialty have so many high power workouts, Iām going to be cautious about jumping too quickly.
I didnāt really summarize the Z4/Z5 workouts here, but donāt quite have the time now, and those are in the plans. Basically, I would get confirmation of correct power targets if I had a repeatable power, and it would eventually get me to >= 92% of HR Max from about the middle of the workout and beyond. So even though my FTP might be a little bit lower than Iād get from the 8 minute test, my HR response is telling me that I was right in the sweet spot for the high intensity work. As I mentioned briefly, I did have one failure on Kaiser +2. It was the day after a 20 minute tempo and I just could not hit the power target. I did ok on Matthes +2 the week before, hitting target on the first 6, but then things started dropping from there. As I said before, after reading through some of the pro workouts, 9 repeats at that power is a HERO workout, so hats off to people who can complete those as designed.
In all, 3rd year of TR, and highest compliance rate of my build yet. My compliance for the plan, swapping out the middle effort rides with z2 rides has made this a rather enjoyable experience as seeing consecutive progress keeps my motivation high. I think that I am a good responder to this kind of training since I have a pretty good background on sustained efforts. I had been doing too much middle intensity work as my high intensity and I had not been doing true VO2 max work as my hard work. With this focus on VO2 max, I am tapping in to an aspect of training that has been lacking for me in the past. Clearly the polarized aspect of this is working for a short power kind of athlete, but the improvements in the run, which are steady state efforts shows that increasing ability from the top up, pulls up the ability in the āeasierā efforts. 200-220 watts isnāt a high power, but having that as a 3-5 hour power ability for someone my size (I float between 152-154) Iāll definitely take it.
Now that itās finally drying up around here, Iāll be getting out on my mountain bike more, and that will mean more middle zone work, but my main target workouts will be the 2 weekday interval sessions from the XCO specialty LV plan, and 1 day of running intervals. I will try to swap one of them out occasionally for an XC ride, and will try to get in some longer XC rides on the weekends. Might shorten the time on those since there will be different power demands than the road rides and donāt want to add too much stress with them.
I agree. I also think that Sebastian Weberās theory regarding VLAmax goes a long way to explaining why both approaches (or even a combination of them) work - it all depends on an individuals physiology, not forgetting that that can change over a period of time depending on what training they do. Itās almost like The Unified Theory of Training.
We have an active thread discussion that episode in particular.
