Thanks for this! I’ll read more into it.
Funny enough, looking at GC, it appears that I have negative decoupling during my interval training but positive decoupling during my endurance rides. This is all still under 5% so that should be good.
My focus now is very much on endurance and base building using more of a polarized approach. The main thing i’m doing is adding stress through more volume but over time. Hoping to build from 8 hours to something around 12-14 in the future.
Fractured my right hip in Early April. Decided to do nothing but zone 1 of 3 in recovery. Was able to ride the trainer 7 days a week because no intensity. After 3 or 4 weeks I started doing 2 hours per day on Zwift, same route every day so I could benchmark my times at certain waypoints. July I went outdoors for the first time for group rides or sometimes indoors on Zwift events (Audax 100 km rides, about 2:30 hours in duration). This was the only intensity I added. Feel great and riding strong and recovering well.
Oof from 354 to 710. Ouch. Was that all low intensity? Were these 2 a days or 1 long ride per day (looks almost like 2:30-3:00 daily).
Seriously impressive
Monday to Friday 2 hour ride all Z1 of 3. Saturday and Sunday a bit longer (2:00 to 3:30 hours) with some efforts in Z2 when the pack on Zwift would push a short incline. Rarely if ever into Z3.
This was a typical weekday ride. I stayed right a the top end of Z1 after the warm-up.
how far in to zone 2? Zone 2 in itself is still technically fine. The guideline to stay under 75% of max is a safe bet in that most people will have LT1 at or above 75% of max. Alan Couzens and I think even the 80:20 authors Matt Fitzgerald and I can’t remember the other guy have noted that LT1 is usually closer to 80% of max when tested. I’ll be buying a lactate meter here in a few weeks, so I’m curious to see how my lactate/HR match up.
I spend the majority of my endurance rides in Z1 HR, but that is because I can go up to about 75% of FTP and stay within Z1 HR (it’s a bit harder outdoors though, probably because I ride i the drops more than on the trainer). The talk test is going to be the best way to really estimate where the first turnpoint is, and for me it’s right around 80% of my max HR.
Not far into Z2 but its definitely solidly in there. I find that I can keep the lower HR of 75% only when my power targets are less than 70% of FTP; being at most at 65% of FTP but ideally under.
It kinda stinks because this really excludes a lot of TR’s endurance exercises because they typically target longer duration work at 70% of FTP.
Curiously though, I find that I really need to go much harder to get my HR into Z3 than expected. I tend to have to hit 105% of FTP to get a HR of 88% of max. For some reason by body likes staying in Z2 heart rate.
Just turn the intensity (power) down 5% as required.
Personally; I just do Baxter as advertised, if my HR creeps up a bit then so be it. If I train in the wild I have HR spikes with traffic lights and dodging cars etc
I use the assumption that the MAF formula keeps me in Z1 of 3. I target MAF +10 bpm = 129 bpm as the upper end of Z1.
Max HR 167 so top of Z1 is 77% of max HR. I try not to let my HR fall below 120 bpm, or 72% of max.
Targeted Z1 power range is 195 to 210 W depending on how my legs feel that day. Estimated FTP of 270, so 72 to 77% of FTP. Exact same % range as my HR.
Sounds good.
I don’t know why my HR tends to be higher than generally expected at certain wattages. Part of me thinks it could be a miscalculation of my Max HR or the fact that I have had a long time away from the bike due to work for 3 months.
Are there any studies of the polarized model that have looked more from a power rather than physiological perspective?
For aerobic efforts (i.e. Z1 of 3), I think conventional wisdom is to base your training on HR. I used the MAF HR calculation for the top end of Z1 and the power range outcome was merely a by-product of training at the planned HR.
Where would you put this training in a periodized plan for an A race? My A race next year is a 60 minute mtb XC race in July. Would I do these workouts throughout most of the winter? Then move toward more specificity in May/June?
I guess I just haven’t seen much talk about how to integrate this with other types of training. Would this be considered both base and build phase?
I do find it funny how some folks see Seiler as some kind of messiah for cycling training when he has little experience with cycling. To me it seems like you are all taking your training back to the 90’s basing it on heartrate alone. Seiler uses heartrate as you don’t have power meters on skis! 
You’ll all be eating steak for breakfast next!
Yes, polarised training works for athletes. I am not an athlete. I train 6 to 10 hours a week not 20 to 30. Spending 5h 30 a week in zone 1 would not be beneficial to me; splitting the time over 5 days I would not see the benefit as sessions would be too short; 1 very long ride on the weekend would be good but that would leave very little for the other days.
Following a TR plan works. I will plateau, but that’s inevitable given the amount of training time I have at my disposal.
The more hours you have to train a week, the more polarised your training will become.
Ps If it’s all about heart rate, not sure why every pro cyclist uses a power meter, yet a lot don’t use heart rate monitors! 
I did 2 races 4 weeks apart, and between them did 10-12 hours a week polarised: 2 hard sessions (1 in the taper week) and the rest endurance and recovery.
After the 4 weeks, my 2 hour race NP was up 10 watts, and I was able to keep responding to attacks from start to finish, whereas in the race before the polarised training, the last hour was just dead-legged sweetspot.
Anecdotal, but then so is your training experience.
My personal theory is that polarised training keeps you fresher and stops you from over-training while giving you the stimulus you need to make gains. I might do the 3 hard sessions per week TR plan over winter when I’m not near racing, but as soon as race season hits, I’m going to dial it back and do more easy riding.
Taylor Phinney trains to RPE and covers up his power meter in TTs. It’s just there to record data for his coaches.
Congrats on the improvement dude! 
Like you say, it’s all anecdotal as we don’t know if training another way would have made us even faster.
With regards to TP, I’m not against training to RPE. It’s training with heartrate that I have an issue with.
I don’t think of it as “training with heartrate”, but “training with heartrate factored in as an important metric”.
For easy rides, I use a combination of heart rate (keep it below 70-75% max) and RPE (breathe through my nose). Afterwards, I’ll often look at my heart rate drift to see what watts I could push before it starting going up.
For hard interval sessions I use watts to set the intensity targets but use heart rate as a rough guide to see what effect they’re having, and increase or decrease the intensity as necessary. Obviously it’s subject to other factors but I find, as an example of a rule of thumb, that reaching 94-95% maxHR means that I’m just about to be done for the day. So if I get close to that with several intervals left, it’s time to dial down the intensity or cancel the session altogether. Overall it helps me measure the effort and get more out of my session.
Don’t forget that the skiers do a lot of bike work as crosstraining.
However, just to bring up the HR issue you’ve got, If you want to talk about pros and HR, Bora Hansgrohe has a pretty prominent coach, Dan Lorang who thinks if his athletes are going to have one tool to measure it would be HR.
The thing I think that is funny about most of the criticisms of HR, is that which makes it a very useful tool compared to power. Power does not tell you how you are feeling that day. HR shifts with energy levels and weather conditions. There’s a reason world records aren’t made in super hot or high altitude conditions, but HR will tell you how your body is reacting to those conditions instead of trying to stick to a power number that may or may not be relevant on that particular day.
Another prominent coach, Joel Filliol coaches a group of athletes that include the worlds best on the ITU circuit only uses power as a measurement of the ride and to go back and evaluate the ride after the fact. Easy is easy, and intervals are based on RPE. They do mostly hill repeats and group/bunch work taking turns pulling and coming hard out of corners (think crit practice).
The issues I have are twofold; heart rate lags well behind power output and heartrate can be influenced by many factors.
Looking back at my training many years ago, where I was using Joe Friel’s training bible, I was clearly overreaching by performing intervals based on heart rate. For efforts at ftp or above I was probably anaerobic for the first 30 seconds, then V02, then threshold, heart rate would catch up and then I’d probably be completing the rest of the interval below the prescribed effort level as I’d have gone too hard in the first 2 to 3 minutes. With power, inside on a smart trainer, you’re hitting the target straight away. Outside you can immediately back off or increase power. There’s no guess work, no going well above for the first few minutes and you’re completing all intervals as your coach or TR have prescribed.
On to the second issue. I go out for a ride and have heart rate and power showing. My heart rate is low compared to normal for a given power output. Why? Don’t know. Do I stop training? No, of course not. Ok, this time my heart rate is high compared to normal for a given output. Why? 
Do I stop training? Again, no I don’t.
If I were riding to heart rate only I’d still continue training but wouldn’t know how much power I’m putting out. So, in the first instance, riding to heart rate, I would be putting out more power than prescribed. In the second I would be putting out less. Not ideal if you’re following a training plan. It could potentially mean you aren’t working in the prescribed training zones for the workout.
Where heart rate has some use is when it’s looked at retrospectively and against power and other data ie. my heart rate was lower than normal for 4 days in a row compared to to the effort I was putting out, I haven’t had a day off for 10 days, perhaps I need some time off?
It could also be used in conjunction with power to look at decoupling. However, IMHO, heat plays a factor in this, for me anyway. If I go out and ride, I will leave in the morning, as midday approaches I could see a 10° increase which must have a bearing on heart rate. The same applies for indoor training. I keep my backdoor open and have two fans on but the room still continues to get warmer and warmer the longer the session goes on.
That’s my take on heart rate anyway. For me, a watt is a watt no matter what and therefore, power trumps heartrate.
Again, you’re stating reasons that aren’t necessarily knocks on using HR, since your fitness is dynamic, not static and you will have good days and bad days. I’m not sure what resource told you to try and hold a specific HR for a specific duration as that is not the prescriptions for the interval sessions published by Seiler. The goal is to maintain a steady effort throughout the workout. HR is used as a metric since that was a consistent metric between sports. Power makes targets much easier to conceptualize for sure, but we also aren’t throwing power out the window here. It is a very important metric for your output, but HR is a metric to show how your body is reacting to the output. My power output for suprathreshold efforts > 90 seconds is almost always off from the specific power target, yet I consistently reach my desired physiological response.
Again, there’s a very real reason why endurance records are made in cool conditions, and not at altitude. The performance drops in hot conditions are real, so if HR is tracking up and up, you’re still racking up more stress than prescribed by the workout if you stick to a specific power target.
I get what you’re saying but would ask these question: what’s the purpose of the workout you’re doing? And how can you be sure that sticking to a particular prescribed number of watts is helping you achieve that purpose? And what happens if you try to stick to the number but can’t do it? Or you stick to it but it feels too easy?
So again, 2 examples. I know that the purpose of a Z2 rides is to stretch aerobic capacity while allowing for quick recovery for subsequent harder sessions. They can be also used in combination with fasted training to improve fat burning. So if I start getting towards 80% maxHR, I know that I’m potentially compromising the recovery element, and potentially burning too much glycogen.
Then if I do Seiler’s 4x8min intervals, I know the purpose is to accumulate as much time as possible at a high % of vo2 max. Heart rate is pretty good indicator of this, so if I’m below 90%, I go harder until I reach it, and if I’m above 93%, I’ll knock the power off a little to make sure I don’t blow up.
There’s a balance here. Obviously if I was doing 1 minute anaerobic intervals I wouldn’t look at HR and just go on power/feel alone. But HR does have a use and have its place, and going too far the other way by being a slave to a power number is imo an equally extreme approach.
Depends of the rider, for example Froome do better in hot conditions :
https://cyclingtips.com/2016/08/chris-froomes-lab-results-analysed-just-how-good-is-the-three-time-tour-de-france-champion/
“The data from the sub-maximal testing revealed that Froome reached threshold at approximately 420W under ambient conditions and, even higher, at 430W under hot and humid conditions”
