Here you have a link to the original article

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fphys.2014.00033/full

No surprises there.

Do you believe one HIIT session per week each of bike and run is appropriate for a triathlete?

For most one will be enough on the run as hard running takes longer to recover from and if you're also doing one long(er) run it will probably be the most you can fit in. On the bike you could feasibly do more, but there is no right or wrong answer. But it is key to not forget the high intensity side of polarized training, it's not just easy all the time, otherwise you will be doing just the HVT (high volume training) mentioned by Friel, which led to no improvement for the (already-trained) athletes in the study.

I understand that this is how Renato Canova trains his kenyan runners

Polarized training seems to be getting more attention. For those interested this thread is a good reference.

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/Slowtwitch_Forums_C1/Triathlon_Forum_F1/Polarized_Training_-_Interesting_Lecture_Video__P4931310/

The money shot:
http://www.frontiersin.org/...ys-05-00033-t002.jpg

I was shocked as to how different the results were between POL and HVT. One thing I'd point out, though, is that POL actually had more training hours than HVT so....

The polorized approach isn't new. It's how Olympic and world championship endurance medal winners trained in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

It is only in recent times that people who don't win the medals abandoned what works.

Today most medals are still won by the athletes using the polorized approach.

Lydiard's approach was polorized, he had his athletes doing very intense intervals, not just long steady distance.


It should be noted that in this study, heart rate was used to control the intensity of the training - even the cycling training.

I lie hw Friel points out that no one approach is best. It depends on experience, phase of training and type of event. You might even mix the method in different blocks.

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What kind of swim workouts do you do in a polarized model ?

In all the charts you see skiers, runners, rowers....everyone but swimmers.

I am guessing swimmers spend a lot of time at or slightly below threshold.

Olbrecht trains his swimmers withe the polorized approach and is anti doing threshold work.

Good point.

I would add that elite Olympic or world championship media lists are full time athletes. They have the time to train in a polorized way, in fact if you train as many hours they do there is a limit to how much high intensity they can do.

The polorized approach is as much the result of the number of hours available and what is possible to recover from, as it is a training method.

Maybe not, that long lecture video did reference one study done on time limited athletes and polarized still got better results.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Is that the Stephen Seiler video?

Yeah.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

IMO, swimming is more skills related than fitness related esp relative to most triathletes fitness level. So for most of us the focus should be stroke & streamlining improvement and that takes time.

I'm a big advocate of polorized training, but then I have had some success doing sweetspot as well doing less than an hour a day.

http://www.nasvik.se/loadeffect.pdf

you lost me at "Joe Friel"

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Actually, "Joe Friel" is exactly what drew you into this thread.

>The polorized approach isn't new. It's how Olympic and world championship endurance medal winners trained in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Yes and no. There's long been the concept of varying training intensity over the time period of weeks/months/years.. Bompa, et al. But this more specific definition and analysis is interesting nonetheless.

Friel seems to be saying that the "easy" part of polarized training needs to be essentially L1 (no L2), which sounds silly to me. If I remember correctly, Seiler's definition of "zone 1" includes much of L2 and, for some people, maybe even a bit of L3.

Friel uses a 5 zone model and Seilor a 3 zone

Yes, I know. Friel is saying that Seiler's "zone 1" = Friel/Coggan L1, and that Coggan's L2, L3, and L4 would all be part of Seiler's "zone 2." I think he might be wrong about this.

i'd be interested to know how something like TP TSS would score these different training programmes - hours are obvious and significant to the practicality for most of us but benefit relates most closely to something like TSS (which is also relevant to recovery ability) so what is the improvement/TSS ratio?

also interested by the contrast from this to the popular sweet spot training which seems to be similar to THR