I do 2 hard seasons every week. These sessions are either 1 hour on the trainer or slightly longer if on the road.
Everything else is then easy riding… enjoying the world rush past.
OK, gotcha!
Yup, I’ve been using that table to set my zones for Garmin and Strava
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Unless you’re really fit, most rides on dirt will have significant time in the middle zone. Or you just have some relatively flat trails. So it depends… The trails I ride on, trying to keep everything easy would mean grinding up some of the hills at a really low RPM, which then adds a different kind of stress than just chugging along at 85-90 rpm.
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With mountain biking you do have to be really careful. It’s not outwith the realms of possibility to do a ride with an IF of less than 0.7 and have next to no time in the endurance zone.
Mike
Does Mathieu van der Poel polarize? 
If he does, I’m totally sold on it!!
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Yes I suppose lots of dead time on the mountain bike. Lots of long hills or steep hills. Tough to keep RPE lowing. It’s just so fun! 4hrs on the trails over road anyway!
Moto pacing up the Stelvio 
(if Google Translate is correct)
Here’s the follow-up Q&A episode where I give my perspective on a lot of the questions and topics discussed on this thread and elsewhere.
Polarised training Q&A and Mikael’s thoughts and perspective | EP#178
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Great follow up Mikael!
I didn’t ask this before, but was wondering as some people have touched on this but there hasn’t been much follow up.
- When doing endurance focused TR workouts, I know you have mentioned to try and get it towards the lower end of the endurance spectrum (mid to low .6x in IF) in order to keep HR below target. But what if you are still able to keep HR zone 1 (of a 5 zone model) even though power creeps above 75% of 1 hour power. Admittedly I don’t test, I’m using a manually set FTP in trainer road that gives me a consistent response to the prescribed workouts, so I’m not sure how close this number is to my hour power. There’s a chance I could be doing work at a higher percentage of my 1 hour power during these workouts but my physiological response to the manually set workouts is nearly identical to what I was getting from the 2x8 minute test.
Is there really anything wrong by just going by feel? I know that if I’m going to be reducing some of my total intensity sessions, that there will be other times I feel good enough to do a workout like I just did this morning, but other times an easy one like Pettit or Baxter will be just fine. Since I’m pretty much maxed out in my bike time due to work and other obligations, adding in more time is not possible.
Just spotted this from Alan Couzens on Twitter:
Surprised the average is as low as 68% of HRmax!
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He certainly polarises opinion - you either think he’s brilliant or you’ve never heard of him!
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Hey @Mikael_Eriksson, thanks for an excellent in-depth look. In fact the episode might be even better than the original one.
As a minor note, may I ask where you found the phrase “balls to the walls workout”? Not a primary takeaway from the show, but it was, in a way, a highlight. I was running while listening to the show and I laughed so hard on hearing the phrase that I had to stop…
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from the urban dictionary:
“term used by pilots. when accelerating quickly, the throttle is pushed all the way to the panel and the throttle (ball) actually touches the panel (wall). Hence, balls to the wall.”
From Wikipedia:
" " Balls to the Wall " is a song by German heavy metal band Accept. The song was released as the lead single from their 1983 fifth studio album of the same name. The anthemic title track is the album’s best known song, and became Accept’s signature song, for which a music video was shot that received[American airplay on MTV."
Interesting phrasing - I find I enjoy polarized training for exactly this same reason. I’ve tried the SS plans a couple of times, and just can’t get over the mental grind of moderately hard workouts every day, finding that making my easy days much easier and harder days much harder increases compliance for me, which at the end of the day is I think where the real gains come from (the “best” plan is the one you will actually do).
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Wonder if that’s the guitar riff used as the intro to the podcast?! 
I think that I first heard/read it from Chrissie Wellington. I had no idea that it’s song (though I wish I knew when I chose the guitar riff @oggie41 
) or anything to do with flying. You learn something new every day!
I think everybody should try to become in tune enough with their body and intensity that they can do any sort of workout (recovery, endurance, tempo/sweet spot/ threshold/ VO2max) on feel almost as effectively as with power and HR. And once you can do that, nothing wrong at all with doing it.
The TR low 0.6 recommendation is definitely generic advice from my side, it might not apply to you, although if you use the ramp test to set your FTP I think it’s likely that it would apply to you.
How did you set your HR zones? Does your HR fall in Z1 also if use the 75% of maxHR calculation for these workouts?
I completely agree that if you’re limited by time rather than ability to recover it makes sense to stay towards the upper end of Z1 (Z2 rather than Z1 in a 5-zone model), but I would still encourage you to somehow try to “calibrate” your Z1/Z2 transition point (or range). The thing to keep in mind with the 0.7 IF workouts in TR though is that they might be 0.7 on average which might be fine for you, but have several 10-15 minute segments at 0.8 which might be quite a bit into your Z2 (3-zone model). So it’s also about looking at the entire workout, not just the average intensity.
Yeah, I like the programming of using the power target and keeping it matched with that, I tend to choose a specific target based on where I am in the week and what’s coming up later in the week or next week. Right now my average HR for indoor bike endurance focused workouts is really low. Outside it is a bit higher due to hills as power creeps up a bit until I get in the right gear to keep HR from climbing and riding a higher percentage of my time in the drops. Indoors, they’ll be 100% below 72% of max HR, for an average that is usually 10 beats below the z1/z2 threshold. So even the segments at 70-75% I’m still breathing at about 1 inhale or exhale per 5/6 revolutions with a HR in the low 120’s. Runs average right at the z1/z2 threshold or 130 using a cap of 140 on the hills (max 180).
One of the difficulties of self-coaching is not having a sanity check… to me my body is saying this is easy enough, but others say it could be too hard. Seems like there’s quite a wide variation in what percent of max is your easy.
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Thank you, I feel really flattered 
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