My first time posting. I’ve been using intervals.icu for a few months now and can’t believe how helpful it is (thank you David!). And I’ve also lurked here in the forums and learned plenty (thanks all!).
I’m trying to organize my own training and am trying to draw on what I’ve also learned from Dylan Johnson (and his discussions with Dr. Seiler). One question that keeps coming up for me is that the definition used for polarized or pyramidal training often strays from the TID models. In other words, if one follows Dylan and Dr. Seiler’s recommendations to perform 2 (and at most 3) high intensity sessions a week, it can be difficult to get to a truly polarized training distribution, particularly if one’s zone 2 rides are consistent and longer. Those (and the rest intervals between … intervals) add up quickly. To prove this I’ve looked at the the polarization index of a typical Dylan Jonson week, and it will still get categorized as a “base” week (polarization index 1.86). And if I take one of my recent typical weeks, the same happens. In essence, I would have to perform three or more very high intensity sessions (4x8 min VO2 intervals, 3x10 or 3x15 Tabata intervals, 6x4 min VO2 intervals) AND limit zone 2 rides to get to a strictly defined “polarized” plan. Is that correct? Or should I be looking at TID across an entire plan? Even then, that likely means weeks that are very heavily tilted towards high intensity, a la block periodization, to balance out what I would assume is more (though not exclusively) zone 2 training towards the beginning of the plan during the base phase.
I know I’m missing something, and thus my question. I really like the “mostly zone 2 with 2-3 interval sessions a week model” as I think I can try to build a plan around that (and it has flexibility in it to account for the real world, parenting, etc.).
I think that it is next to impossible to reach a 80/20-target if you calculate it by minutes/hours spend in each zone on a weekly basis. So my question is if it rather should be calculated on sessions per week - that is, if you do 5 sessions, only one should be intervals above FTP.
So I would like to know if is NOT the wright way to estimate your weekly distribution by looking a the weekly distribution in intervals.icu.
Morten
80/20 is not meant with regards time, but sessions. Unfortunately I don’t recall where I saw it, but that’s what Dr. Seiler said on this topic. If you do 5 sessions a week, and one of them is high intensity, that is 80/20.
I agree with the consensus here, that polarized training is built of session distribution, and not time distribution (and believe I said as much in my original post). But if we have consensus for that here, then:
Why are the intervals.icu TIZ calculations based on the assumption that polarized training is based off of 80/20% TIZ distributions. I am doing 1-2 Z3 (in the 3 zone model) focused workouts each week but still don’t get anywhere near 20% Z3 TIZ (as Seiler himself says TIZ will often look more like 90/10%), but the TIZ calculation tells me I am doing “base” training and not “polarized” training. To put a finer point on it, what is the purpose of these calculations if they we all agree they are disconnected from the actual models (at least in the case of polarized training). To be clear, I am immensely grateful for the host of information we have access to in intervals.icu, so I’m not arguing that these calculations should be canned. I am instead wondering if another calculation/number that complemented these might make sense. @david , what do you think?
Reading between the lines, it seems like Seiler, Dylan Johnson, and others might be determining their TID somewhat differently. According to 80/20%, every one out of five sessions would be Z3 focus, but Seiler himself does two Z3 workouts each week (and even if he performs workouts 7 days a week, which would seem out of character given his emphasis on rest and recovery, that would be closer to 70/30%) and states that elite level athletes can get away with three such workouts on occasion. Dylan Johnson also recommends two Z3 workouts per week, and on occasion three (video of his conversation with Dylan Johnson here). Thus, I am wondering if both Seiler and Johnson are weighting their workouts by duration. In other words, does a 2h Z1 ride count twice what a 1h Z3 session counts in their calculations. I ask because that might get one in the realm of 80/20 or 75/5/20 when performing 2-3 intense sessions each week. Does anyone think that a tool within intervals.icu that allowed one to designate the Z1/Z2/Z3 focus of a workout and use that, in addition to duration, to calculate a weighted, session-focused TID would be useful? Or am I asking for a gilded lily?
I’ll just close by saying how immensely grateful I am for this tool (thanks you @david ) and for this thoughtful and informed community. Intervals.icu has revolutionized how I monitor and plan my training and having a community to turn to with questions is amazing.
Polarized training principles have been discussed over and over again. Mostly by people who don’t believe in the underlying message that you need to do a lot less intensity and a lot more low intensity volume. All kinds of interpretations were made, one more correct then the other, to the point that Seiler himself apologizes for the fuss that was created.
One important thing, in my opinion, is that Seiler‘s work is the result of statistical research on several decades of data from mostly pro-athletes. Some of that data dates from a time period where Power meters were not yet used regularly and thus only contains HR data. More recent data has both Power and HR in it.
The conclusion from that statistical analysis was that pro’s, do way less high intensity then what was generally thought. This was very different from what was on the menu for amateurs and recreational athletes, who in general had less training time filled with higher intensity.
I’m not gone go through all the details on how things turned out but I will give my interpretation of how I see it. I may be wrong on some details but am pretty sure that the main message is correct.
The very short version:
Consistency is key! Anything comprising consistency must be avoided as much as possible. Meaning that the workout you do today, must be tailored in intensity and duration in such a way that you will be able to do your next planned workout with the highest quality possible. If you train 5 or more times a week, you must, for every single session, be sufficiently recovered to do that session with high quality. If you are to fatigued to do that session as intended, you loose the benefit of it. We all know that lower intensity sessions can build quite a bit of load/fitness while they are relatively easy to recover from. Higher intensity sessions require much more recovery time.
Working out while not sufficiently recovered on regular bases, will dig a hole and performance will plateau or even diminish. A nice way of explaining this, is with the ‘supercompensation’ theory.
Look at this chart and you will see three basic situations:
If no training follows before the end of the supercompensation phase, you return to base level. No progress is made, there’s no consistency
If you train too soon, before the recovery made it back to at least base level, your base level diminishes. You are digging a hole, overreaching, overtraining…
The ideal situation is to have your next session as close to the top of the supercompensation period as possible. The person who finds a way to pinpoint that timing, will be rich in no time . The result is an ever increasing base-level.
All timings on the x axis and all amplitudes on the y axis are dependent on the intensity and the duration (time) of the former workout. The purpose of planning to get better is to maximize the outcome of this chain by also finding the right frequency of sessions. And then you have the three letters of FIT (Frequency-Intensity-Time/duration), unfortunately not in the best order, because building fitness is best done by first increasing Frequency, then Time (duration) and last Intensity.
I could go on for a couple more hours on this subject, but I lack the time to get in to detail. I just hope that the above gives some more insight into the subject of planning for performance improvements. It’s a very difficult subject because the number of variables is huge and every individual responds differently. So please, give your coach huge respect if his plan is making you perform better year after year.
Thanks @MedTechCD for the insights, they’re definitely helpful.
I’ve been trying to build my base, knowledge is this case, for my next year. Just finished reading Racing and Training With a Power Meter, and been watching lots of WKO5 webinars (while on the turno) as I found them useful, even though it’s completely tailored to that software, I’m just trying to extract what I can.
For my base next season, I have time constrains. Not time physically, but riding outside in Canada during winter is quite hard, and I can’t manage to put 15hr a week on the turbo, I just’ can’t, it’s not for me. I’ll buy a fat bike for this winter and planning to do lots of “easy” rides outside to fill the endurance rides. Plus, some “double-journeys”. 1 hr early morning, 1 hr later afternoon to accumulate 2 hrs of endurance, it might work for me.
I this scenario I believe SS plays a interesting role in order to reduce time and still get the benefits of relatively quick recovery, not in excess.
So, my pigback in this topic would be, what’s the ideal/suggested approach for the high intensity portion? Focus on tempo? Something like 4x8 @FTP progression to 2x20, 3x15, 2x25, 3x20.
Tim Cusik suggests in the webinars 1 hard workout for maintenance each 8-14 workouts, and I’m assuming this hard workout would be vo2 max, am I right?
The “progression” from a 4x8 workout would be to increase power, not time. IIRC the target ends up being around 108% FTP.
An important part of interpreting what people say about polarized training is that in the 3-zone system, Zone 1 goes up until LT1, which is well into the Tempo zone in 5- or 7-zone models…so it’s not supposed to be super easy by default.
It depends what you’re trying to achieve. Seiler has often said to do both extensive work (4x8, 5x8 and 6x8) as well as intensive work (add 10W to the next 4x8 session).
If you’re trying to do the 4x8 as he laid out, you need to be doing 8 minute efforts 4 times with 2 minutes rest at your best effort…it literally can’t be too easy. If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing “Seiler 4x8s” and getting far less out of it for a small reward of slightly less pain and you’re shifting away from the entire idea of Polarized Training.
There is no magical one workout. Doing the 4x8 as you indicate, doesn’t make your training polarised, or not polarised if you avoid doing exactly as intended.
Listen, or read, the transcript where Seiler is asked how he does his “4x8”. Scroll to the bottom (just before the take home message) if you don’t want to hear everything discussed in this podcast.
The context he’s using there is someone starting to use the workout, and easing into them is definitely a good idea because they’re very hard. It isn’t some semi-serious TR workout, it’s very hard and practice helps a lot.
If you want to do the workout because the study said they were the best at building VO2max, then you should use the format from the study, which is 4x8, two minutes rest, as hard as you can over all the work periods. Done correctly, you’ll get the 20 minutes at 90% max HR/VO2max zone that is the actual intent of the workout. If you make it easier, you’re not going to get that, so if someone doesn’t want to do that power level they would probably be better served with longer intervals at a lower output.
If you’re going to do something, do it right…at the same time, if you don’t want to do something, do something else.
I have done these and agree that they do work well. I’m not disagreeing on the actual workout but rather that it’s not a workout for everyone, especially if an athlete doesn’t know how to pace a workout over all 4 intervals. Starting off with sub-threshold, and building up to being able to do this in the build period yields better results than starting off with these from day/week 1.
Trevor (Fast Talk Labs) discusses the interval workout analysis here.
Evolving from 4x8 to 5x8 first, is almost surely going to make you hit that 20min mark more. If you always go 4x8 and up the wattage target, chances are high that you will fail before the end of the last interval. If you first extend to 5x8, there’s a much better chance of nailing the next wattage target in 4x8.
I used to pick 93-95% of my best 8m from the last 42 days as a starting target and worked up from there.
The hardest part is off course that you are going to (almost) failure any time you do this workout and that surely isn’t for everyone. I haven’t done those workouts anymore the last 2 seasons, because I consider them too demanding at my age. I am doing a similar approach with over-unders, and that suits me better.
In this context, and after reading Seiler’s 4x8 recommendation, I understood I should not progress the 4x8, as the results are better seeing after 8 weeks.
So, bottom line, 4x8 once a week, 95% 2min rest for about 8/10 weeks. Is that a good strategy for a base period?
I personally think that these super hard workouts have no place in a a base period, but opinions will differ. Base period to me is focus on low intensity volume and gradually mix in some sparse high intensity from tempo over sweetspot to threshold.
VO2 workouts can be done in the build period.
The base period can still have threshold, at the lower end of the range (91-95%), which is essentially all but 88-90% of sweet spot range (88-94%). That’s where the time to exhaustion is best developed, hence the “extensive” description. If one does a 20-min test to estimate FTP, the person is essentially capable of riding for 20-mins at 105-108% of their new estimate FTP. So starting with a 3x8-min session at 90-94% with 2-4 minutes recovery intervals should be doable. Extending it to 4 and 5 sets over 3 weeks should be very easy. In 12-16 weeks, the person should be able to get to at least 2x20 or 2x30.
I agree that Seiler’s 4x8 is one of the workouts for the build phase, or the final block of build (if 16 weeks). But it all depends on what the goal event/training is aimed at.
The answer to life the universe and everything is 42, but in cycling, the answer is “it depends”.
Progression is one way to build the endurance/stamina (capacity as @MedTechCD referred to in another discussion) before you add intensity on top of your foundation.
. The result is an ever increasing base-level.
