Polarised training suggestions

First-off, I am totally aware that getting a coach would be absolutely the right way to go if one wants to be even slightly competitive. Thus this thread is not going to try and achieve that.

My question relates to how a normal cyclist would go about to build a simple, yet effective training plan that would emulate the Polarised Training philosophy.

I have read most of the Training Bible from Jo Friel, so I understand the concept that one would need to build towards a goal date and that it is usually good to take break every couple of weeks to recover and also once a season to freshen up.

My question is related towards what a typical training week should look like for a time-strapped cyclist trying to achieve the Polarised spread.

Would most sessions be around the 1hr mark and mostly focused on interval training of various lengths to strengthen your various abilities? Maybe one long ride on the weekend just to keep things loose and social?

I know https://trainerday.com/ (Formerly ERGdb) has allot of workouts to choose from, so would easily be able to get various workouts from there. Just trying to understand what one would search for?

Overall structure: 3 weeks progressively harder, one week off

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Hi Alwyn,
Thanks for the question. There is no one-size fits all model in terms of training plans. When you are a beginner, doing anything consistently and with increased volume and intensity is going to bring big gains. The actual distribution of training intensity (called TID) per day will also depend on your goals and your available hours. We built a model that will match all these attributes to a plan here (https://fft.tips/tpp). However, a paid 1:1 coach might do an even better job, or if you are self-coached then lets look at a typical week of say 6 days on and 1 day off where you wanted to follow a polarized model (TID of lets say 71:7:22) averaging 1hr per day. OK, so at 71:7:22, then your time-in-zone would look like this: [low intensity] z1= 3hrs z2 =1hr [middle intensity] z3= 15mins z4 =10mins [high intensity] z5 = 1 hr z6 = 14 mins. This is across the whole week so dividing that into daily sessions might be 2x low intensity rides of 2hrs each 1x threshold session of 25mins and 2x HIIT sessions of 40mins. If this sounds too complicated, we have a calculator for it here: https://fft.tips/tiz. regards alex

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December break meant that I missed your reply Alex, thanks so much. I will have a look at what I can build for the time being while I am self coached.

Sorry to jump in on this thread, your analysis for Polarised is very interesting even if I struggle to stay in the Polarised zone in any week (the lure of enjoying cycling persists). There is much debate on whether you should mix endurance with HIIT (as per https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/what-cyclists-should-know-about-combining-hiit-workouts-and-strength-training/) and I’d be interested to understand how this relates to polarised training with Z1/2 and Z5/6 being the focus in any one week, especially if coupled with strength training (at low intensity)

Hi Clive, you are asking should you do base (aka HVLI aka endurance) training on its own or should you combine HVLI with HIIT? or are you asking should you do cycling endurance AND strength training…sorry the terminology is confusing.

I will answer the first question. Should you do just base training alone? OK this is very clear. Unless you are a raw beginner, you should always combine base with HIIT (which means polarized or pyramidal TID). The debate is more what you should do with threshold and sweetspot…maybe some but not instead of all HIIT. You might be aware I reviewed the evidence here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFXnjPvyO1M&feature=&t=15m30s but I will take a few minutes to look at the evidence again. Anyone who states you can be base on its own, or threshold alone or sweetspot alone needs to cite their evidence.

Seiler et al. (2013 Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 23, 74–83) analyzed the performance adaptations of different types of high intensity interval training in 35 recreational cyclists were randomized to four training groups. base (aka HVLIT) group trained 4–6 sessions/wk and the three HIT groups trained two sessions 4 × 4 min (94% HRmax), 4 × 8 min (90% HRmax), or 4×16 min (88% HRmax) plus 2–3 sessions HVLIT. All three interval training groups tended to improve in physiological capacity after the training period, while the HVLIT group remained relatively unchanged.

Stöggl and Sperlich (2014 Front. Physiol. 5:33. doi: 10.3389) compared HVLIT (83/16/1%) vs. THR (46/54/0%) vs. HIT (43/0/57%) vs. polarized TID (68/6/26%) in 48 well-trained runners, cyclists, triathletes and cross-country skiers. While all four groups increased time to exhaustion, the polarized TID increased VO2peak (+11.7%), time to exhaustion (+17.4%), and peak performance (+5.1%) to the greatest extent. Exclusive emphasis of THR or HVLIT did not lead to further improvements in endurance performance.

Stöggl and Björklund (Front Physiol. 2017 Aug 2;8:562) randomly 36 athletes to assigned to one of three groups (HIIT; polarized training POL; HVLIT applying no HIIT). Only the HIIT group achieved improvements in peak power/velocity and peak lactate and acute HRR was improved in HIIT (11.2%, P = 0.002) and POL (7.9%, P = 0.023) with no change in the HVLIT . They conclude that HVLIT had no effect on any performance or HRR outcomes.

So the conclusion is that all three good quality well powered RCTs found base training alone to be not optimal compared to other options. Hope that helps!

regards alex from FFT

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Alex,

Thanks the for very clear answer regards should I only do base with strength work, even if my question was a little ambiguous in hindsight.

I have watched some of the video - but never got to the how you apply it part :confused: Having finished the video now it makes more sense (the last three minutes!). My general TID has historically always been Threshold Pyramid, or Pyramidal in an 11-16 hour week of 6 days on and 1 off (that 1 off is mostly active recovery). TL of 600-999 per week.

Using intervals.icu has certainly helped me understand what I have been doing with indoor/outdoor rides, I just now need to figure that application (with you spreadsheet) to polarised 80/20 going forward whilst still enjoying what I do to shake it up a bit and avoid any stagnation.

Regards Clive

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My two cents is that everyone needs to pick up the actual papers that @fastfitnesstips references and read between the lines. Especially the Sperlich and Stöggl paper. It is a bit surprising that a research paper doesn’t present visual graphs of what is going on with the data in the tables. For example, the % improvements in TTE between POL to HIIT was 17.4±16.1 to 8.8±8.6. A wide range in those bars.

Secondly, POL training is touted to work but in athletes with some years of pre-conditioning. Not sure if it is for everyone.

Someone who is interested in this subject area, but is struggling to set up a Polarized training scheme or doesn’t know what metrics to track in order to understand improvement from pseudo-improvement should really hire a coach. For those not shy of doing a bit of reading and self-coached, the Sperlich and Stöggl paper presents loading patterns suitable for a POL scheme.

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