Cool, I’ll have to give it a relisten on a longer ride. Thanks for pointing it out.
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Mikael did a good job as usual, but I was a bit disappointed with Seiler. Now, I don’t have his credentials, but being a Pole, I have opinions on every subject. Namely:
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The constant references to % of your max heart rate are annoying. HRmax percentages as a way of setting zones have been discredited more times than I can remember. These things really vary athlete to athlete. Why not use percentages of your LTHR or at least FTHR? Seiler wants you to run for an hour (max effort), so if you follow his prescription, you should be able to estimate your LTHR or FTHR with reasonable precision.
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Speaking of which - his only idea for estimating your FTP is the one-hour test (hat tip to @JMethfessel for mentioning this). I mean, really? The CEO of this here establishment would probably call that “crazy sauce”. Much has been written about why it’s a bad idea for everyone except top PROs, and even they probably don’t care enough about FTP to go through it.
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As @Rizzi noted, Seiler recommends that even 5-hour-a-week athletes do polarised. He really doesn’t budge, even though Mikael sort of prodded him to admit there are exceptions
But the argument Seiler keeps bringing up - “if you do more intensity than you would in polarised training, you’re too tired to do high intensity properly” - is dubious on such small volume.
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% HRmax is exactly how the Norwegian Olympic Federation prescribe training zones.
http://www.coachroblowe.com/?page_id=5761
Mike
Yes, other tests have their drawbacks, too. But if your FTP is based on a botched one-hour “max” effort (and it really is hard to get right), you’re none the wiser, and you’d probably sooner eat your dirty diaper than do it again. People go out of their way to estimate FTP based on shorter efforts in order to not do the 60-minute test. There are good reasons for that.
That’s hearsay. Coach Rob Lowe wrote something about Norwegians using this in “all endurance sports” (he also mentions that it doesn’t work so well, to his credit). Meanwhile the coach of top Norwegian triathletes (the podium sweepers) says they use lactate testing.
My ramp test doesn’t have a large anaerobic, no matter, for zone 1 instead of lactate testing I use the talk test and first deep breath tests to estimate HR/power at LT1. And then ride nice and easy with periodic checks of HR/power. After awhile it’s pretty easy to ride by leg and breath feel and enjoy the scenery.
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Lactate levels are next to useless in the field for actually training with.
As a tool for performing intervals %HRmax is ideal because it is actually usable in sports where power isn’t an option.
Seiler isn’t saying that you should just go with 90%, 60%, or whatever and be done with it - that’s just an estimate. If you have access to a lab you would carry out lactate and VO2max testing to determine where your turnpoints are and then calibrate that against percentages of HRmax so that you have a tool to work with. You can do exactly the same with power.
Mike
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Given the variability in HR in general, possible error in determining HR peak for cycling, and looking at my own variations over time in resting HR, I feel that over time it may not matter that much whether I was using the more complex formula or just multiplying by .9. For me it just ends up being a few beats per minute difference, possibly and likely within the margin or error for the entire process.
@Mikael_Eriksson thanks again for another excellent podcast! Regarding this transcription:
Experimentally we’ve seen that the polarised model scales down to the 8-hour a week athlete, and even the 5-hour a week athlete.
here is my transcription of what he said (my emphasis in bold):
31:14
- The studies we’ve done suggests that this works, that it does scale down
31:30
- so that we’ve seen experimentally, that model works, it scales down to 8 hour a week athlete
- probably also even the 5 hour a week athlete
My emphasis.
I’d still like to know:
- if there is any research on 5 hour/week cyclists?
- how many studies on 8 hour/week athletes have been done?
- actual pre-season training distributions for Pro and Amateur cycling teams
While the 2013 seven week intervention study is very interesting, I always remind myself it was done early season. As we know vo2 work delivers quick gains, and vo2 is fastest to lose. From my own experience doing a 4 week block of vo2max work in the early season, it works, and so the results of 2013 are not too surprising. My biggest walk-away is that longer 4x8-min intervals at a slightly lower intensity are better than 4x4-min intervals at higher intensity. At least with my own intervals at those timeframes, I would get more total time at/near max aerobic uptake (WKO4 estimates) with the 4x8-min intervals so the results are not surprising, and reinforce Billat and other data I’ve seen.
All that said I agree with Dr Seiler’s major points,
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Agreed. This hair splitting seems to distract from the point that we are not machines. And as such, the precise points we aim to train at or above are more flexible than rigid. When we consider the wide variability in our bodies and couple that with the various measurement methods, we have to recognize that “precision” is something to be consider a relative term as opposed to absolute.
Close counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say, and I think a step back to realize that is likely true for much of our training needs. We can use a one or more of these methods to gain a basic direction for our training. But we should be open to adjustment because of our own particular differences and related variability. Start with some numbers and try to make some educated changes along the way to better target your individual needs.
I know my chart starts with some basic assumptions and links between various metrics. They were all pulled from the various podcasts and related references and mashed together. Not everything agreed from one end to the other, and I know that any comparison between things like HR, Power, VO2 and such should be taken with a healthy grain of sale. But I am finding that they are reasonably close to the desired prescription when considered against the desired stress on the body for each training objective.
All that is to say, it’s fun to dive in deep, but I find I am better off with a shorter look and just improvising along the way. I am a kinda-numbers guy, but run short on desire to really dive in the way that many others here do. For me, it begins to take a bit of the fun out of it, so I try to strike a balance between getting enough direction from the numbers to hopefully be pointed in the right direction. But I really try to keep it shallow and short for my focus and look at the other stuff outside the finer details. YMMV
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So when trying to grab the actual article for reference to see how it was reported, I did find a presentation Seiler did previously that is pretty interesting. Others have mentioned there wasn’t a good comparison of athletes comparing a group that did mainly low intenstity training to mid intensity training. There is a study here. By my calculation, they were averaging about 8 hours a week in training, but not beginners, and very small n of 6 in each group. Either way, 8 hours is not a huge commitment to a college level runner.
And then find this gem
So not cycling… but most aspects of endurance training are transitive.
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This is where I feel the Polarized model has to be ineffective. We know that progression is made when either intensity or duration are increased. It seems if someone that only has 5 hours at most every week to ride will plateau quicker following a Polarized model due to the fact that the Z1 rides really can’t get longer. The only thing that could change is you do them at a higher wattage.
If I do 1 hour of intensity every week and then do one 4 hour ride (5 hours total) how quickly would I be increasing my ability to ride the next 4 hour ride at a higher percentage of my FTP while still keeping my heart rate in zone 1?
From my understanding, this is precisely why the Sweet Spot model was created. It achieves results faster for those of us who don’t have the runway to slowly build a large aerobic engine.
Seiler has to admit at some point Polarized will have little or diminishing returns. I think he’d admit that it can’t possibly be optimal for all athletes, but he does make it seem like it’s a good option for those with 7-10 hours.
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Possibly. If one 1hr ride was 4x8@105%, what would the other 1hr ride be? I would be curious to see how effective a plan is that has you doing one day of 4x8 @ 105 + one 4hr Z2 ride is. I’d be curious to see the progression of FTP on a plan like this versus some thing like Sweet Spot Build Mid Volume.
I kind of want to try this, but I do feel like hitting 4x8@105% over and over would get real old, real fast, and I feel like my anaerobic engine would be greatly compromised. At some point you have to do things differently and work other high intensity workouts into the mix. Right?
Why wouldn’t you progress/change the workouts as your goal event neared? Meaning start with 4x16, then 8, then 4 (or reverse that order), race goal event, then repeat?
Edit: looks like guy above me responded just before I did.
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Good point. Yes. It sounds like the point is to do the intensity at a level that gets you to 90% of HR max. Whether it’s 4x4@115%, 4x8@105 or 10x1@130% doesn’t seem to matter, no?
I believe I have heard him say this in one podcast or another. Equally in this podcast he seems, on the face of it, clearly to be using simple percentage of HRmax (sport specific) when calculating the low intensity threshold. Whilst the difference between the two approaches is typically only a couple of beats when taking 90%, the difference is much bigger - of the order of 10 bearts - when taking 75%. For this reason clarity on the correct approach at the low intensity range would be welcome and perhaps Mikael can provide that.
There was a bug recently that showed Froome’s training ride on Strava. Basically he did a long endurance ride but with a few mixed intervals thrown in. What’s the idea behind that? Specificity, or is that a good way to cover all aspects of fitness and would be done weekly?
Fully agree. I don’t think anyone should be trying to manufacture a particular intensity split. Matt Fitzgerald’s book probably hasn’t helped with this.
It should just be a case of doing as much low intensity work as you need as an individual to keep training consistently long-term.
For the volume I’m doing (5-7 hours p/w) my low intensity training % would be more like 60%-70%. There’s no way doing 80% easy training would be the most effective approach for me personally.
For the high intensity I think this is spot on. Keep the training stimulus varied and get some race-specific efforts in there.
Seiler wasn’t saying you need to make your hard stuff really hard… he recommended 90% intensity for high intensity. The other big hitters all seem to be in agreement that there needs to be intensity control in the high intensity training as well. Back to long-term consistency again 
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@oggie41, good post and I agree with most of it. RE Fitzgerald though, if people actually read his book and listen to him it’s not confusing at all. He speaks of making most of it easy and keeping it easy.
I’m a very high volume trainer by amateur standards, so I may be off base here, but my assumption is that if I was to scale it down to 5 or even 10 hours/wk it’d be SOOO much easier to allow the 80% to creep into Seiler Z2 because the fatigue simply isn’t there at the same level as it would be if training 20 hours. Fitzgerald is pretty adamant about ensuring the 80% (or whatever it is) is actually easy. Too much Seiler Z2 eventually lands people with hard not being hard enough.
Fitzgerald’s approach isn’t confusing… I was just referring to him pushing the 80/20 intensity split. I’m not doubting it works well for some athletes training high volume, but I’ve heard him say in interviews that 80/20 scales to low volumes. I suspect that’s more about him trying to sell lots of books to your average age-groupers 
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