Halvard wrote:
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.
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