Isn’t that kind of the economics of it all? If you don’t cater to a broad enough spectrum of riders, the price goes up. At a certain point, you’d do better to just hire a coach. And that’s not even to consider the fact that TR is data driven and so there alone is an incentive to retain a wide spectrum of riders.
I’m saying that as a very average rider who likes the new mid-volume SSBII.
Oops! “It’s not that fun to find that point”
For sure. You’re pulling things out of me that I SHOULDN’T be talking about…hehe.
We can compare compliance rates for very similar workouts. So if all hard VO2 max workouts share a similar compliance rate, then one workout is a couple standard deviations out of the norm, well that one should looked at.
@Nate_Pearson
While you’re looking at plans, please look at Traditional Base 1
I agree having just gone through Traditional 1 & 2, starting Traditional 3 today. Are you telling me you can’t get the exact same training load, intensity and desired affect by mixing up the workouts? It’s boring as hell, especially Traditional 1. It “appears” very lazy programming, even though I know it’s not. I don’t care if you switched the smallest of things in the workout and called it a different name, just anything to break up the monotony. 
I’m not sure what you’re asking.
I agree, traditional base is boring as hell. The idea is lots and lots of aerobic adaption at a low intensity.
Why not just do sweet spot?
Ya, I guess to some degree. But like the “physics test” analogy I mentioned earlier - sometimes it’s good to have workouts in there (in my opinion) that a smaller percentage of people may be able to finish, but will still provide an adequate challenge to others who are slightly more capable in that particular area.
I already feel like there are plenty of tough workouts where Chad basically says “pay attention to how you’re feeling… not everyone can finish workouts in the same range… if it’s too easy, kick it up a couple percent, if it’s too tough, knock it down a few percent.”
I guess in the long run, I may be one of the ones who needs to kick it up a couple percent since the workouts are going to be made easier for all.
But, then again I’ve only been training for a couple years, so most of my easy gains may be behind me and I might just enjoy the changes as I continue to fight for marginal gains 
I had 40 weeks to train (too much time) before my only “A” race, so per the podcast it is recommended to do:
Traditional Base / Build (weakness or limiter) / SSB1 & SSB2 / Build / Specialty.
Are you recommending that I should have repeated SSB? My goal was to build a really deep and thorough base to prepare me for the Marji Gesick 100. Which is a 105 mile MTB single track race that makes Leadville look like a warmup 
You could go either way. If you’re dreading the long slow stuff of traditional base it might be good to go SSB, build, rest a bit, then into a full cycle.
Thanks. Since I just started Traditional Base 3 with a new FTP best 
, I’m gonna just ride (pun intended) this Traditional thing out. Plus I don’t want to miss out on doing Mount Bear and Mount Alice 
I see that individual workouts are changing too, e.g. last week Bashful +6 had VO2 repeats at 125%, now it is repeats at 122%. This might happen all the time but I have never noticed before.
Or Gendarme +3 for that matter. Being the second Tuesday session of SSB MVII.
Can’t stand those workouts.
Nate, I highly appreciate your opinion. Has someone looked into this, why do the best riders not train this way? Have they tried and failed? Or do they just not believe in the polarized method. Has Steven Seiler really not backed up that 80:20 enough? I know Seiler has a lot of data on nordic skiers, rowers, runners (cyclists?)… and the success of Norwegian athletes speaks for itself. So, if there is data that supports 80:20 is not really better, I would really appreciate it, if you could tell us more. I have seriously been thinking of switching to polarized training, mainly because I believe that I would recover better between intense workouts.
@jomu, If you haven’t seen them, there are 3 really good threads already covering Polarized in great depth.
I would love to see a time stamp or change history included in a given training plan. Perhaps it’s not overt in visibility, but a way for us to see what changes are implemented and when, perhaps note as to why.
We’ll have this for our build plan updates that are coming soon, but it will just live in the forum and on the blog.
Semi related thing to the training plans that definitely falls in the “our training plans are improving” category: I’d love to see every workout that is in a plan have a -1, -2, etc. variant. A lot do, but not all of them do. My situation at the moment doesn’t allow me to train before or after work, but I can run home quick at lunch and squeeze 45 minutes in. I’d love to be able to switch a 60 minute workout to a 45 for every workout that is in my calendar from a plan (I’m following sweet spot base right now). That would be so much easier than trying to drag my finger to the right spot to start and then trying to figure out where I need to stop and not be late back to work!
My theory…because they’ve already spent a TON of time training 80/20 when they were not a “best rider”. They’ve already baked-in all those long-ride cellular adaptations (perhaps even to biological limits). Now their lives are basically spent racing and recovering. The best riders (aka pro riders) most likely do a mixture of 80/20 and periodized training, once everything is accounted for.
80/20 still follows a periodization.
Super stoked about the tweeks you have planned! Sounds like you could definitely head in the direction of more individualized training plans. I know for me after completing SSB 1-2 I feel like a stud ( relatively) but hen I begin build phase and feel like I haven’t been training at all! I just an average joe but man when I saw this I got excited and can’t wait to see where TR goes with this! Keep up the good work.
Any chance that TR is starting to look at some adapative training? Yes the ramp test is a great starting place. But surely every work out could be used as such. If one fails several workouts or has to turn down the intensity several times could softwear not make some adaptations to future training intensity or volume. To take it one step future say one is undergoing a training plan for a specific goal let’s pick cyclocross where some known traits are needed vs others like aerobic power. Yet it appears as if I am unable to produce as much aerobic power at VO2 (approximations) as the algorithm calculates I should. But I need this adaptation to occur in the coming weeks for My performance goal, the software could in it self alter the selected workouts to play to my needs and constrained physiology. Ooooooo the possibilities cheers