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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [Bill] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [Halvard] [ In reply to ]
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In case someone is looking for the link (sorry went back a bit to look for a new one and couldn't find it) you can find it here now.

https://vimeo.com/98353863
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [Halvard] [ In reply to ]
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FWIW guys, i think those spikes are pretty normal for mountain bike racing and don't mean you are doing anything wrong, necessarily: there often are few places where you can really nail it and lay down some power so you sort of have to seize those opportunities. Also you can get rhythms where you maintain momentum up and over hills but only if you really jam it. A lil effort ends up with big payoff, but the result is spiky power. in mountain bike races, you usually have very high variability, high(ish) NP and somewhat low AP. AP is more dependent on the nature of the course than anything else. I've seen Annike Langvad's (sp?) power data and it was similar, with relatively low average power, and i'm sure we'd all agree she's no slouch.

I know this is an old thread but I only recently discovered it and found it extremely useful. It gave me some new perspectives to take a look at my own training. I had been doing mostly threshold based and was finding myself in a rut. I made very good progress at first, but then was finding i had trouble keeping momentum with training, motivation for training and progress with training, despite including plenty of rest. It was a struggle to get through what should have been "normal" weeks.

After reading this thread, i took a look at my data and found some interesting things, specifically: (i) there was very little low intensity work, all those rides were generally listed as "optional"; (ii) endurance rides were prescribed at Z2 or Z3, meaning solidly in the grey zone in a three zone system (I was fine with that, I thought that was what you needed to do to improve); (iii) my Zone 4 threshold days already would have been considered "hard" in the three zone system as heart rate drifted up to the 90s % by the end of efforts; and finally (iv) the testing protocol i had been using absolutely was overstating my threshold power, judging by the heart rate that went along with it.

So, even without deciding to "leap without looking" or jump on the bandwagon or that polarized training is the only or best way to do things, I found some good lessons in the method, which i think we'd all agree on.

(i) I added more easy days, and made the easy days truly "easy" based on heart rate and RPE rather than power (in case power was overstated due to threshold test protocol). I think we'd all agree easy days should be easy.
(ii) I took one of the "moderate" (i.e., tempo or sweetspot) days each week and made it simply a longer easy day, on the view that what i had been doing was not sustainable, and this at least would be. I think we'd all agree that if any day starts undermining the quality of your key hard days, it should be modified.
(iii) I took a look at the remaining days, and made sure that they were appropriately hard, given that now I would be more rested going into them. Basic principle of overload, right?
(iv) I made my skills days (e.g., descending, single-track, etc.) easy days; since you're never really going to get a specific, measured training stress during these days, you might as well keep them easy and save that energy for tomorrow's intervals :)


So, you can ignore the controversy and get some very basic lessons that i think most would agree are good practice.

And the funny thing? After i made these changes, my schedule started to look a lot a polarized schedule. And second funny thing, after a couple weeks of this, my intervals are higher quality, my Garmin's estimation of my Vo2max is up, Threshold Power is down (but i think that's because i have a better view of what it *really* is now), and according to my HRV app, i am absorbing all of the trainings better.

I suspect that one reason the method is successful is because it is very easy for a self-coached athlete to implement and keeps its basic principles front and center. It doesn't rely on knowing what exact percentage of FTP you're supposed to work at, on carefully balancing days and days of stress, on having to know when to struggle through a tired "somewhat hard" interval vs. pull the plug, on getting the duration of your work *just* right.

Instead, it seems like you just have to do two things, really, keep your easy days easy, and remember back to the old way we used to do intervals, before we all had power meters, where you went based on what RPE you could sustain (although now the PM is a useful check to make sure you're being honest and being consistent).

Maybe it's not that the threshold model can't provide good results, but rather that people often have a hard time getting good results on the threshold model, because it's too easy to screw it up.
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [devolikewhoa83] [ In reply to ]
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Also:


Not really a polarized question per se, but curious how much people are trying to work the anaerobic system throughout a macro cycle.

Specifically, I just did some intervals, 6x6 w 2 minutes rest, at around 317 to 320 average watts, which had heart rate just barely knocking on the door of 93% of max by the time the last one was done. I didn't have any trouble with this really, it was hard but it was doable. I probably had one more in me but i didn't want to go too deep.

However, my actual FTP / MLSS is probably somewhere around 280 to 290. 20 minute tests have always overstated it, even if i multiply the result by .93.

Question is, were these perfectly doable intervals nonetheless a bit too intense at this point, involving too much anaerobic contribution? Would it be better to focus on longer, lower intervals (more like traditional threshold) until the aerobic system gets a little stronger?

My understanding is that the anaerobic system can be pretty easily brought back up to speed in a few weeks, but also takes a while to recover so you don't want to be accidentally taxing it too much. To be clear, I will need that lil guy (the anaerobic system) for my events (endurance MTB) but my main events for the season aren't for another few months so I don't want to overcook it.

Posting this here because this is also a discussion of self-guided training systems as much as polarized, so figured it's appropriate :) :)
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [devolikewhoa83] [ In reply to ]
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devolikewhoa83 wrote:
Also:


Not really a polarized question per se, but curious how much people are trying to work the anaerobic system throughout a macro cycle.

Specifically, I just did some intervals, 6x6 w 2 minutes rest, at around 317 to 320 average watts, which had heart rate just barely knocking on the door of 93% of max by the time the last one was done. I didn't have any trouble with this really, it was hard but it was doable. I probably had one more in me but i didn't want to go too deep.

However, my actual FTP / MLSS is probably somewhere around 280 to 290. 20 minute tests have always overstated it, even if i multiply the result by .93.

Question is, were these perfectly doable intervals nonetheless a bit too intense at this point, involving too much anaerobic contribution? Would it be better to focus on longer, lower intervals (more like traditional threshold) until the aerobic system gets a little stronger?

My understanding is that the anaerobic system can be pretty easily brought back up to speed in a few weeks, but also takes a while to recover so you don't want to be accidentally taxing it too much. To be clear, I will need that lil guy (the anaerobic system) for my events (endurance MTB) but my main events for the season aren't for another few months so I don't want to overcook it.

Posting this here because this is also a discussion of self-guided training systems as much as polarized, so figured it's appropriate :) :)


Have you read this ?
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [marcag] [ In reply to ]
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Reading it right now :)
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [marcag] [ In reply to ]
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Great study

I hadn't read that one, but i had read an observational work that had referenced it. But, it was good to be able to dive into the details. Very helpful. Thanks!

I guess the next step is, then, to integrate the learnings.

For example, i also remember from one of hte other materials--maybe "Hierarchy of Endurance Needs"?--that elite rowing champions incorporate (Norwegian) Zone 3 (I think roughly maps to Zone 4 or threshold in the cycling parlance) at certain times of year. So, while 8x4 may be the optimal approach over the study period, real athletes, even those that are informed and not overly married to tradition, seem to act differently, somewhat. So what gives? (And i *believe*, although i could be wrong, that the Zone 3 was sessions rather than %Time in an HR intensity zone, so it wasn't just a year's worth of heart rate transiting between stop and go go go).

One potential view is that periodization as a whole is accorded more importance than is warranted and that just because something is necessary for a Norwegian medalist to get from 95% to 100% does NOT mean that it is necessary for me. Seems reasonable, right? Worry about things like periodization when everything else is completely dialed. So, in that view, 8x4 up until just before competition would be the way to go, then replace one session per week with 30s to 60s intervals at max to get the anaerobic machine back, do a lil taper and you're good to go.

Honestly that probably would work. I'm more just concerned that trying to do that for the next 16 or 17 weeks might overdo it--require too much anaerobic contribution and gradually fatigue that important but fatiguable energy system.
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [devolikewhoa83] [ In reply to ]
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My takeaway from that study was the different areas of improvement that the 4x8 group got. They had the best VO2max AND threshold improvements of the 3 groups.

I do one of these sessions per week. Mostly because it's a "fun" location in which I do it and there's the bonus it's working the things I need. More than that would prevent me from getting some other key workouts in.
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [marcag] [ In reply to ]
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what are your other key workouts? Are you fitting in multisport stuff, or all cycling?
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [Stephen Seiler] [ In reply to ]
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Hi all,


Going into a nother week of my "revised training" after coming across this thread and the linked articles, and still going well. To be clear, not sure whether this is because of one method being superior to the other but rather because I had been following a program with threshold, sweet spot and tempo scheduled up to four times per week and for me it was just waaayyyyy too much. I've been getting better progress, more consistent ability to build, better sleep and better overall health by taking two of those days and making them easy, and making hte other two days harder than the previously were.

Good stuff.

One question I've been thinking about is on all of the Long Slow Distance that the observed athletes seem to be doing.

is there an actual physiological benefit to these sessions, OTHER than recovery or technique? In other words, does it build endurance?

I know that my long easy rides build endurance, but what about the shorter ones? What about all the other easy sessions that these athletes are slotting in?

According to m Garmin watch, which tries to quantify load based on EPOC, it says not much is happening other than "maintenance" or recovery. According to XSS accumulation on Xert, Xert thinks pretty much no work here is being one at all. TrainingPeaks thinks *some* work is getting done.

But are these systems all missing something important? Even if the heart rate is not raised super high (which is what the EPOC / Garmin / FirstBeat system is looking for), maybe work is being done at the muscular level?

or is this really all just technique and recovery? In other words, it's riding that doesn't do that much but lets you be fresh enough to really crush it on the "hard" days, and that's what the real benefit is?

Just curious. Not sure if someone has looked at whether doing 2 hard sessions plus 8 easy is different than doing 2 hard sessions plus maybe 2 easy. If 95% of the benefit is coming from the hard sessions, the results between these two shouldn't be that different.

And this has an impact on pretty much everybody's programming. I'm about to go head out for a two or so hour easy ride. If there's realy no endurance benefit to this (my long rides would be more like five hours), then i could instead do a 30 minute recovery ride and call it a day, or use the extra time for fun things like stretching and pushups :)
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Re: Polarized Training - Interesting Lecture Video [Halvard] [ In reply to ]
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Halvard wrote:
I am sure the principals are used here in the US, but the term polarized training is maybe not used.

Polarized training is not difficult. They way it is incorporated in Norway is that the athlete should be empowered to know what is right. The coach is more there to discuss, not so much to write a plan in detail. Here you have some writing from a American biathlon athlete that spent a year in Norway.

Preparations started last weekend when coach Torgersen asked me to produce a training plan for the week prior to the national competition. The Norwegian training philosophy before important races is that everyone has a different individual recipe for being in top physical form. Therefore, everyone had their own �training recipe� prior to these big races. Me, on the other hand, had no idea of what to do so I looked through my old training diaries (finally putting them to some good use!) and put together a plan for the week. I knew it probably wasn�t going to be perfect the first time around, but at least it�s a starting place to learn from. Anyway, I felt that my training the week before the championships was well thought out and had some benefits.
http://blogs.fasterskier.com/...008/09/21/sommer-nm/

Again, I feel that discussing Norwegian training is best done in reference to the experiences I had before traveling to Norway, which included a detailed and structured training plan created by the coach for the training group I was participating with�both in college and in Minnesota. In each situation, training plans had morning and afternoon sessions that I followed dutifully with not too much thought as to how they were formulated.
This �show up and train� mentality, if I can call it that, was challenged as soon as I got to Norway. I still remember my first workout with Team Statkraft Lillehammer, a roller-ski and shooting workout, where I asked the coach, Tobias, �What do you want me to do today?� I received a blank star and he said something like, �um� don�t you have something to work on? We are having easy skiing and shooting today�� There was nothing specific about how long the workout should be or how much I should shoot�simple things I�m usually told. After a somewhat confusing and frustrating workout, I launched myself into the encyclopedia that is Norwegian training.
From that point on I realized that planning on my behalf needed to play a larger role. At least in regard to the structure of easy trainings�intensity trainings were planed along with other time-trials or tests. This caused a greater thought process in choosing workouts, as well as asks the question, �What works for me?�
http://blogs.fasterskier.com/...ll-treningsfilosofi/

Within the same overall approach you will find individual variations.

The American cross country team is one of the most improved teams the last years. And Kikkan Randall is the fastest sprint skate skier in the world and huge favorite of the Olympics. Here you will have a nice write up by a top Norwegian skier that trained with the Americans.
In our team we are much more strict with intensity, controlling pulse and lactate both in L1 and L3 training. Especially when training at altitude.
The fact remains that it is still harder for us to go slow, than to go fast � we are always eager to take a new step. But sometimes it is best not to push the limits. When we do L3-intervals at home we never go together in a group because history has told us that someone will always push too hard when we ski in a pack.
http://skitrax.com/66180/


Interesting 8 years ago

Seems similar to ‘new’ training posts
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