Actually, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut now. The disection of the minutea of the periodized model does my head in! Seiler himself says don’t over analyse it. Just try to roughly follow it and don’t get hung up on exact workout prescriptions.
3 Likes
Polarised model?
As others have pointed out TSS is not used in POL training. It is by session that is the stress your body has experienced day by day.
Having said that the weekly TSS is a useful metric as in increasing, decreasing overall load, but not a way to measure time at various intensities.
1 Like
This is the part I still try to learn, so ignore micro-management of TSS and focus more on different metrics and look at TSS and CTL as an outcome not driver of the workouts. TSS can be horrible trap if you start to chase them and cannot do proper recovery, because TSS or you add couple of watts to an endurance watts because your CTL will lower. And then you do VO2 max block and your CTL and TSS plummet and you come to conclusion that TSS is not a perfect metric 
1 Like
I thought, no matter which training methodology you were using, the basic principle remained the same: you want to have progressive overload, and POL is no different. You don’t necessarily have to use TSS, but you’d better use some good metric to make sure stress is gradually increasing week after week, and then goes down during recovery period.
Has anyone put together a POL training plan using TR workouts? From what I can tell the general concept of 80/20 is that 20% of your workout days should be high intensity (around VO2Max) and the remaining 80% low intensity (around endurance). So, for a five day training week like TR’s mid-volume plans, that’s 2 high intensity and 3 low intensity days. The 90/10 rule is that 10% of the total time is at intensity, the remaining 90% at low intensity. (Both “rules” came from the articles linked below.)
Using workouts from SusPB-MV and TB-HV, I put together the following 3-week block that I think “meets” both rules. It includes progressive overload in each set of workouts (Tuesday’s shorter VO2Max at 120% FTP, Thursday’s longer VO2Max around 105-108% for sustained power) and each week with more TSS and longer duration.
Block 1
Block 2
4 Likes
20% of 5 is 1 not 2. Which is why I personally wouldn’t chose to follow a strict polarised plan, although I’m totally on board with the general direction of “only as much intensity as you can recover from, the rest is easy/endurance”.
1 Like
This is what I’ve put together. Disclaimer right off the bat - this is only my second year of structured training. To say I know what I’m doing is comically inaccurate. However, I do believe most people seem to make this stuff out to be way harder than it needs to be. Going to keep the 80% easy, may even drop the workout intensity on many endurance rides because I know that’s probably overstated for my own strengths and weakness. Then going to make the hard days hard and design it out in an easy to follow/adjust way that’s easy to scale up week to week, block to block. Shooting for roughly 30-36 minutes in Z3.
The logic in the plan here is that I’ll progress the intervals over the next few months. Started this week with 6x6, but chose the easiest one which had a 30 second breather in the middle. Finished the workout but I think it was probably an overreach for the basis to start the plan. So I decided to build my own progression of 8x4 @ 105%.
Next 3 weeks on 1 week off while be a similar progression of 6x5 @ 105%. I figure I can keep doing that up to the often cited Seiler 8 minute intervals. After that, go back and start from the beginning at 108% and see how long I can push that duration out. So on and so forth.
3 Likes
Yes, so it is. (That’s why I never do public math.) That EVOQ.BIKE article talks about doing 2 hard days even for “low trained” athletes, and three for “mid” and “high”.
Maybe that’s where I’m getting confused. A “hard” day could be the really long ride, even though it’s not intense.
2 Likes
I like your weekends with a shorter POL Z1 ride on Sunday. I think I have too much duration in my attempt above.
I do that for a few reasons.:
First, I usually get to sleep in a bit more on Saturday. So I like to do the big breakfast and coffee thing and I feel more prepared for a bigger ride.
Second, I really like going into the start of a new week feeling fresh. I think mentally it helps me if I feel like there’s a lot of stress, bike or otherwise, I can remind myself I’m rested and ready. So easier riding Sunday helps with that. Can help break up any heaviness in the legs from Saturday.
Third, life happens, and if something happens and I need to change my plans, I always have Sunday to fall back on… This is just what works for me. I’d say give yours a shot and see how it goes.
1 Like
You have just repeated (in different words) what I said in the second half of my post after only quoting a very small part of my post. 
so I agree with measuring progressive overload.
My point is TSS is not used to track the ratio of high and low intensity, Z1 and Z3, it is sessions according to Seiler and other proponents of POL training.
Yeah, I often think what a pain the a___ it is that there is 7 days in the week. 10 days in a week would make planning training so much easier.
2 Likes
The French revolution is with you on that one!
2 Likes
I am rather surprised that imperial metric system didn’t covered this and created something 1 normal day = 3,42 imperial
1 Like
Updated plan with an easier day on Sunday, following the Velocious recommendation for a “medium maturity” rider, which I’m loosely equating to a mid-volume plan. It basically follows the VO2 progressions from the Sustained Power Build Mid Volume plan on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a 1:00-1:15 hour POL Z1 ride on Wednesdays, a 3:00+ hour POL Z1 ride on Saturdays, and a 2:00ish hour POL Z1 ride on Sundays. Constructive criticism welcomed. TIA!
4 Likes
Looks fine on paper to me, it’s the sort of thing I’d lay out for myself (except that as I ride outside almost exclusively, my plans are a little more woolly.
So my question to you is: Imagine you’re on week two and it’s time for your Thursday workout but your legs are still sore from Tuesday and you’re not really in the mood. Do you: skip the workout and have a totally restful evening, sub in a 2hr Z2 instead, or do it anyway.
I’m not suggesting there’s a right or wrong answer but want to know what your plan will be. That way when it happens you’ll know what to do.
Good question.
With only two intense days in the POL plan, I’d definitely try to fight my way through the workout even if I didn’t feel well. Next option would be to move it to Friday and swap the weekend rides to put the longer one on Sunday.
I actually completed SusPB a few weeks ago but struggled with several (ok, many) of the workouts exactly as you said. I’d take a back pedal, cut an interval short, or reduce the duration to try to fight through it, sometimes adding an interval after an extended rest to try to at least get the prescribed Time in Zone.
With that said, I’m doing to SSB I HV right now and totally bailed on the Wednesday 1-hour sweet spot workout. Even before starting that plan I told myself that 1-hour workout would be the first to go if I started feeling fatigued, sore, etc. I didn’t fuel well the day before and had two relatively poor nights of sleep so I dialed the intensity down and turned it into a traditional Z2 ride.
How could one not be?
If you do more intensity (or volume!) than you can recover from, you go backwards.
IOW, like Icarus if you fly too close to the sun your wings will melt and you will come crashing down. OTOH, if you don’t fly high enough you might not make it to the mainland either.
How badly do you want to get home?
1 Like
It seems obvious doesn’t it? And yet people bury themselves with a high volume of intensity but are told to “trust the plan”, “it never gets easier, you just get stronger”, so they just hang in there and continue to dig that hole. Then the inevitable inevitably occurs.
5 Likes
Sure. Or you can fail to stick to your workouts as prescribed, because you e. g. run out of time or aren’t rested enough. I went from MV for the last two years to MV+, and I consistently need 30-60 minutes more sleep than in years prior.
Keeping different causes and consequences apart is hard, but important, though. Overtraining is a medical condition that requires very different intervention than planned overreaching (which is part of any training plan) from over-overreaching from simply burning out psychologically.