By the way, related to your question, World cup XC skiers would have much better overlap in terms of what zones they train to ITU triathletes. Zones that they both race at would be similar.

1) I basically see it as z1 easy z2 threshold z3 supra threshold. It's a more simplistic model than the one that many of us operate off of which is roughly the coggan 7 level model that's attached to the maximal adaptations that happen at each step along the way, but the simplicity is beautiful and this one is quite nice. I think one could very easily draft a plan based on the subjective concepts of easy/threshhold/vo2 but would still need to objectively specify watts & pace for standard duration races (i.e. 80-85% FTP for HIM bike 90-95% for HIM run, etc).

2) Seeing as the root paper (tho it's been over 2 years since i read it - need to go brush up!) was a meta analysis of many papers and not a directly controlled study I think they'd be using standard lab speak of 90% of lab tested vo2 max (if VO2max is 72 (mL/kg*min) then it'd be pace at VO2 of 65). Which is sort of frustrating. It would be nice (tho scientifically sloppy) to start phrasing the data in % of field test data as that would be far more applicable.

You can look at some of the work Phil has done on W'/D' with regard to total work capacity above critical power to get a sense of the limited duration one might be able to sustain in a training bout of such work. For instance you could phrase the workout of 4x8min for an athlete with CP of 275 and W' of 25000 as: 4x(8min at 325 on 2min at 100w recovery) which will look like this:

That's gonna hurt.... a lot. :)

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
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I think might try an alternate approach to how your question. Instead of "what output do I need to use when doing this workout?", rephrase it to "when I do this workout, what output do I get?".

In the study, the participants where told to give 100% effort to doing 4 intervals of 8 minutes with 2 minutes recovery between efforts. They weren't told what pace (output) to try to maintain. They let the length of the work interval throttle the pace to a level that they could do (and I'm assuming they were told the output from each work interval should be roughly the same, not slowing down or speeding up over the course of the workout). So go out and find your current parameters - do the workout the first time based entirely on a effort level that you can feel you can complete each work interval. Then after you finish, look out your data. You can then use that for further pacing adjustments and progress measurement.

The interesting point from the 4x8 is that it produced better results in that study. That it did it versus a shorter work interval, which would be at a higher output if told to give 100%, and versus a longer interval, which would be at a lower output. It's giving you a better guide to the high intensity effort level that improves threshold. Pace yourself to the duration of this work, not some other data point (%FTP).

That's digging pretty deep in to the suitcase. Ooooof. Nominally what we'd call "VO2 power" for longer and on short rest.

Nerdiousity question -- have you prescribed such a workout before (or something similarly designed on effectively depleting an athlete's ostensible W')? Did your athlete(s) actually complete it? I don't think I'd have the mental fortitude in a training environment. An equivalent track workout with training partners, maybe, but bike workout, not so much.

Yes, it'd be nice if some amount of the research done was more field-derived. Beggars can't be choosers though! And this is where judicious evaluation of your athletes comes into play.

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

Stephen Seiler actually came up with a 3-zone scale earlier in this thread

I also am still of the opinion that 3 zones works quite well for most people:
Green zone (talking intensity, starts feeling like you are working after an hour, feel like eating as soon as you are finished,
Yellow Zone (threshold, typical zone for those 45-60 minute workouts you hustle to squeeze in after work, pretty tough workout, but you did not have to go near your personal cellar of mental fortitude to finish),
Red zone (requires mental mobilization, clear increasing perception of effort with every interval bout, no appetite for about an hour after training).


And of course the most common training mistake is that a green zone session becomes yellow because of half wheeling, and the next day's planned red zone session fades to uhhhh....pink. Show me a champion and I will show you a person with intensity discipline who plans the work and works the plan, even on days when someone rides past them that they know they could reel in :-)

I agree, it will hurt a lot!
These intervals would be very close to VO2 Max, very very though indeed, but it is likely that cannot accumulate many minutes.
Seiler was instead referring to 90/93% VO2 Max (90% HR Max) which, from my understanding, should be just a bit above threshold.

Hi you all,

I'm convinced that the polarized training is the way to go if you have the time but what if you are not a PRO like the most of us ? I have only 10 hours a week to train (cycling) so if I follow the polarized model my training week would look like this :

Mon, Wed, Fri: 1 Hour indoor trainer Zone 1
Tue & Thu: 1 hour indoor trainer interval : 5 x 8' Zone 3
Sat & Sun: Outdoor ride 3h + 2h Zone 1

Before this I would do intervals every day (except for the weekends) just because it's not as boring as just riding for an hour indoors at Zone 1!

My question is : " Are the 1 hour indoor rides in zone 1 of any effect or is it better to do some intervals if you have only 1 hour?"

Here is also an interesting article from Ben Greenfield http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/...o-build-endurance-2/ who states that if you don't have enough time, the polarized model is not the best thing to do.

Thanks in advance

He does address this around the 26 minute mark, where he shows research that even athletes training 7-8 hours a week improve more with the polarized model. However, he is comparing (in the 3 zone model) 80/0/20 against 53/47/0. There are, of course, other possible regimes, e.g. maybe someone only training 7-8 hours a week could cope with 40/40/20 and perhaps this would give more improvement than either of the two studied regimes.

One thing I will say, though, is that you describe an hour on the trainer in zone 1 as boring, and I don't typically find those sessions hugely easy. If I have mapped the zones correctly, Seiler's zone 1/2 boundary is Coggan's zone 2/3 boundary, and I find an hour at the top end of Coggan zone 2 reasonably tough to complete. It's going to depend a lot on how hard you find the trainer vs the same power outdoors, but for me that isn't an easy session. My boundary is around 144bpm, and I would say my own experience is that I do recover significantly better if I achieve the same TSS by riding down towards 140bpm rather than up towards 150bpm, so I can believe that doing that will lead to me being able to do a good quality high intensity session more often. However I don't feel I need 4 days of that to be sufficiently recovered to do my next quality session, 2 or 3 days seems fine, so perhaps that is the difference between an easy day being an hour in zone 1 vs it being 3-4 hours in zone 1.

If you want to help argue against polarized training, best not to bring Ben Greenfield's writings into it.

  
If you have all the data, I wonder what would be the overriding measure for establishing these zones

Lactate
%MHR
or %VO2 max

I suspect it's lactate. The middle zone seems to be sandwidched between 2mMol and 4mMol

I always thought elite athletes for example would have a higher %of VO2max at 4mMol.

I have data from a test I did 2 years ago and I would say that based on lactate, green would end at 80% of FTP, red would start roughly at FTP

So on that test, roughly z1/z2 Coggan = green, z3/z4 Coggan = yellow, z5+ = red

Quick question on how the skiers train in the off season. Steve mentioned cycling, rollers and other forms of cross training.

Do they do higher intensity on all forms of cross training ? Do they do hard cycling and hard roller sessions and....
Or do they for example, all the high stuff (20%) on the bike and easy stuff on the rollers.

I can imagine the perfect canadian polarized winter plan....all the hard stuff (20%) on the bike trainer and all the easy stuff doing slower runs on these wonderful slow snow covered roads. A 10 hr week would have say 3 tough "red" sessions on the bike and lots of "easy running"

Of course this would shift as we thaw out.

Just back from doing 3 x 20 min, on Wattbike.
I made a note of Coggan's power zone and 75% or Max heart rate and planned to do 3 x 20 minutes steady in Coggan's power zone 2.

Even at a power well under Coggan's 75% top of zone 2 I was towards 83 / 84 % of Max heart rate. It was hot and I didn't use the fans but the 2nd 20 min and the 3rd 20 min gave both the same power, average heart rate and end heart rate.

I ended the session feeling hungry but really good found even the last 20 really comfortable.

But to stay under or near 75% of Max HR I would have to drop the pace or effort.

Even the first 20 minutes HR averaged 78%.

Power for all 3 20 min efforts was 71% of FTP derived from a recent all out 20 min test assuming 93% of Max 20 min power = FTP.

Now the $64,000 question is should I do the bulk of my training at this sort of power level or go even lower?

My feel is I should go by power as indoors I get very hot whereas Stephens data is probably derived from outdoor cooled performance.

So I'm going for keeping the power output and allowing heart rate to go over 75% for the bulk of my training. But is this correct?
I should add I. Did the session as 3 20s to test out both Wattbikes as I wanted to ensure they were agreeing with each other! which as far as I can tell they do,.

HR is affected by things like temperature, hydration, etc., so it's not a surprise to see things drift or just be higher indoors than out. Get a box fan or 3. -J

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Life is tough. But it's tougher when you're stupid. -John Wayne

Thanks, there are 4 big fans I just forgot to put them on. Not very scientific, but things stabilised and the 2nd and 3rd 20s were isentical power to heart rate.

Zones? Where we're going, we don't need zones.

The essence of the approach is to keep the intensity low enough on the easy days to allow you to really deliver the goods on the hard days. If you're not feeling reasonably fresh and ready to kill it when it's time for your next hard session, then you've been going too hard in the easy sessions, that is what the whole thing is about in a nutshell.

Thanks Steve, I need to see how I respond. Today was an eye opener, I wouldn't say it was easy but I can already feel I'm recovering faster and not feeling washed out. The threshold stuff I've been doing over th last few months has been taking its toll.

Interesting when we trained "hi-lo" years ago, the "grey zone" training was looked upon by us and our coaches with disdain. Then again, I was training for shorter XC skiing, and Olympic tris, not Ironmans and half Ironmans. Today's "sweet spot" training was the exact place that we'd be steered away from both on our hard and easy days. So what's old is new again (at least in this thread) :-). I think it was Desertdude earlier in this thread saying there is a place for everything depending on time of year and race goals etc.

Not wanting to pit physiologists against each other, but this has me remembering a quote from Andrew Coggan.
He mentioned on another forum that he believes that most people do not do their VO2max hard enough.
I guess this is summed up by the %FTP aims in the training with a power meter book, I was pretty shocked when I looked and the prescriptions were for 113-120%

I disagreed with him, as I believed that what was more important was spending time at Vo2max, and therefore aiming to do the intervals at the lowest power that could attain VO2max in a reasonable amount of time. This is the approach championed by Jack Daniels in running and is something I prescribed to.
For instance, if my VO2max pace was 5.00, it would be best to complete 5 intervals of 5 minutes at that pace than go out at 4.40-4.50 pace and complete less time, the idea being that if you are at VO2max all you are going to do is use the anaerobic system more and fatigue quicker.

This approach seems to align with what is being said here, keep a cap on intensity and gain from the duration.

Jack Daniels E pace is in Coggan's low zone 3 and runners do that daily and up to 2.5hours.

By the definition of sweet spot, you should be able to do a large amount of training depending on the hours you put in.

In many ways cross country skiing is easy structured, but also really hard to get good at.
Skiers will follow the same way of training year around. 2 (average) hard session per week, rest will be easy.
They do train strength year around, 2-3 times off season. At least once a week in season.
Do as much training as possible on snow. You will find the best skiers on glaciers all summer, or in the Ski tunnel in Sweden.
An interval session can be replaced by a competition. Skiers compete a lot, running/orientering/roller skiing in the summer, skiing in the winter.
Most important summer activity, running and roller skiing. Not a lot of cycling. Some years back Norwegian skiers did more training by roller skiing and cycling, result - endurance went down. Running is essential for performance in cross country skiing.
Running is done on trails, intervals usually done uphill.
Biggest months of training, October and November.
You taper by doing less easy workouts, you keep the interval sessions.
Intervals are often done with interval start, every athlete needs to find their correct level.
Cross country skiers have high VO2max.

You will not find that skiers do threshold in the summer and easy/hard in the winter. They follow the same way of training year around. Nothing fancy, not big charts with graphs. Mostly consistency pays off, be stubborn enough to go easy and though enough to go hard.
Of course you have the change in way of training between seasons, running/roller skiing vs skiing. But you follow the same logic.

All the training is by time, not by speed or distance. A training program will say, 1.5 hour easy classic skiing, that's it :-)

Hope this answer your question.

But remember that running and cycling impose different demands and have vastly greater recovery costs associated with them. I'd argue that 60 min of vo2 on the bike is much, much easier to recover from than 30 min of Vo2 work running.

I'd again caution people to put it in context and try hard to not take what is written for one sport and say Coggans cycling Lx = Daniels Lx.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Cyclists don't do Coggan's level 3 for more than 2 hours every day do they? I can't see how runners could possibly do that intensity for 2.5 hours every day?

Are you meaning Coggan's level 2? Do people really run that long, or would the up to 2.5 hours be 2 separate sessions in the one day?

Yup, i got to that in point number 2 :)

Just showcasing what, via field testing, such a workout might objectively look like as opposed to requiring a lab.

And to anyone reading AND comprehending... this is the end game... you gotta work your way here first.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

the "art" of coaching. understanding how your athlete's chassis recovers from a hard pounding bout like that. We can objectively track the acute stress to the aerobic system but can only subjectively infer such observations about the physical body.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App