You wrote:Hill training is a prime example of how runners incorporate polarized training into their schedules.

Can you explain what you mean with incorporate polarized training?

One of challenge with sports with large skill/technique components - like swimming and running and (I'm *guessing*) cross country skiing - is how do you generate intensity of adequate quality when you are very fatigued because it becomes harder to maintain technique, which then inherently limits speed.

In swimming, using resistance tools - like a parachute or a band - is a simple way to allow you to find more load at a slower speed, which requires less coordination.

In running, the most common way to do this is to run uphill as opposed to running on the flats. Running uphill, it's a higher load for a given speed, so you can run slower and still get much of the stimulus of at a faster pace.

As a result of this, you are able to keep the quality of your high quality training appropriately high.

Polarized training means, roughly, a lot of very easy training and a little bit of very hard training. It's easy, as you get tired, for the very hard training to become less hard because of neural fatigue. If you can mitigate the neural role a bit - through things like hills - it's easier to keep the hard part of your training appropriately hard.

Put more simply, running hills hard is easier than running flats hard when you are tired. And therefore, it becomes a good way to keep the distribution of your training load appropriately polarized over long training cycles.

You can keep trying to twist things around, but the fact remains that the PMC doesn't care how you train; it is just a reflection of your daily TSS scores. The latter, in turn, rewards duration more than intensity, at least once you take into consideration what is actually humanly possible (e.g., good luck achieving a CTL of 100 TSS/d on only 30 min/d). The latter is true not only for the original TSS, but also its imitators, i.e., rTSS and sTSS. Thus, to the extent that individuals might be incentivized to chase CTL at the expense of anything else, it would tend to discourage doing lots of middle-intensity work, and instead reward those who are willing to train at an easy-to-moderate intensity for multiple hours per day.

We're absolutely in agreement that chasing CTL to the exclusion of other inputs is a negative. And that merging TSS across sports is not recommended. So I think we agree on more than we disagree...

So, to summarize:
1) PMC doesn't care how you train
2) but it rewards duration over intensity
3) and CTL is maximized by a large volume of easy-to-moderate intensity work

I'm not sure how you reconcile 1 with 2 & 3. And how you reconcile 2 & 3 with the idea that the PMC doesn't discourage polarized training.

Came across this infographic, which I thought was elegant in its simplicity and also quite effective in communicating a somewhat complicated topic.



The middle one is the worst. And yet that is the one that I believe is typified by most common training plans, especially the trainingpeaks/TSS model. It "rewards" a lot of "kind of" hard work, and yet I don't think it's actually necessarily indicative of what provides the most effective stimulus. I realize that the TSS model has had a lot of success in cycling, but I think it's a lot less applicable for triathlon, especially because there's really no good way to measure TSS in the pool and because I think it undervalues the impact of easy running, which I think are much more valuable than easy cycling...

The takeaways, in my opinion, are two fold:
- the value of a lot of very consistent but easy training.
- the benefit of only a few very hard sessions.

The ideal mix is a combination of high and low intensity, with only moderate middle intensities. Basically, minimize how much so-called "sweet spot" training you do, because it is not at all the sweet spot...

Credit for the photo goes to Mike Young, PhD on Twitter - @MikeYoung

Hi Jordan - just to clarify, the infographic was made by Derek Hansen, the head of strength and conditioning at Simon Fraser University.
http://www.strengthpowerspeed.com/

He runs a world-class program here and our athletic department is lucky to have his services.

Dave Clarke

How many athletes have their FTP overstated in TP , essentially understating TSS/CTL ?

How many athletes have their FTP overstated in TP , essentially understating TSS/CTL ?

One of challenge with sports with large skill/technique components - like swimming and running and (I'm *guessing*) cross country skiing - is how do you generate intensity of adequate quality when you are very fatigued because it becomes harder to maintain technique, which then inherently limits speed.

In swimming, using resistance tools - like a parachute or a band - is a simple way to allow you to find more load at a slower speed, which requires less coordination.

In running, the most common way to do this is to run uphill as opposed to running on the flats. Running uphill, it's a higher load for a given speed, so you can run slower and still get much of the stimulus of at a faster pace.

As a result of this, you are able to keep the quality of your high quality training appropriately high.

Polarized training means, roughly, a lot of very easy training and a little bit of very hard training. It's easy, as you get tired, for the very hard training to become less hard because of neural fatigue. If you can mitigate the neural role a bit - through things like hills - it's easier to keep the hard part of your training appropriately hard.

Put more simply, running hills hard is easier than running flats hard when you are tired. And therefore, it becomes a good way to keep the distribution of your training load appropriately polarized over long training cycles.

No idea in TrainingPeaks, but it's not uncommon even among WKO4 users, whom you would assume are a bit more sophisticated. In fact, we even have a term for it: "vanity FTP."

That's one of the benefits of implementing the P-D model, i.e., it provides an independent, objective estimate of FTP. It's not a perfect approach (primarily due to limitations of the raw data), which is why the program doesn't automatically push mFTP to sFTP, but it does provide a useful reference point.

I would most like to see TP include an option for RPE, since I think that would add a lot. But I'm able to "track" that effectively enough by simply communicating on a regular basis with my coach.

This is what I would also like to see. I want TP to have a bit more functionality to allow us to create a custom likert scale to track RPE or even how you feel during and after the workout. Or something as easy as sleep. I'd be much more interested in seeing athlete 'data' on how they feel like they slept for the past few weeks. Or stress levels, etc. That might be much more telling that CTL.

I am told it is in the works.

Friel wrote a blog about estimating TSS including a chart which correlates his zones as well as the 10 point Borg RPE scale.

An athlete can manually edit any workout and place a proxy score based off of RPE using a conversion tool such as this. Once a manually edited TSS score is entered it appears in the log as *TSS. Any triathlete who finds rTSS or sTSS bogus can simply edit the workouts and put a *TSS based on their RPE.

Seems like a good concept from Friel.

Yes, Foster did propose an RPE based system, but his work is long before TSS (of any variety) ever existed. As far as I know, Foster did not offer a suggested conversion to a number that would plug into the PMC. I brought up Friel's blog because it is more specific to the TSS style numbers in the PMC.

If you only show data from elite XC skiing (which you are doing repeatedly), there is no indication or justification that these data are pertinent to anything other than elite XC skiing.