Although wonder how his 9 sessions of high intensity during the month works for 3 sport athletes - that would mean only 3 high intensity sessions for each discipline per month, unless I'm mis-understanding something.

That does get to be an interesting question. Maybe you focus all of the intensity on your weakest sport though? Or maybe you focus it all on running where you get more running economy benefit from it?

Or maybe you focus it all on cycling where there is less injury risk?

Would be cool for some of the top triathlon coaches to chime in

I can try to give some insight in this kind of training since I grew up in it as a cross country skier in Norway. So first of all, this is nothing new, and the use of lactate and HR monitor started in the beginning of the 80. The interesting thing is that the HR monitor was mostly used to keep intensity down and sometimes we had to walk uphill to keep it low enough (you will find a lot of long hills in Norway).

Also training under this system is based on time, not speed. You will go and run/ski/roller ski for 90 minutes. Nowhere in your training plan will a coach tall you your speed. You as an athlete need to find out what is easy and stay there. One good sign, if people stop talking during an easy workout the intensity is too high. Yes, an easy workout is talking speed and yes you have to scale back in the hills (that is hard for cyclists).

During intervals individual start is quite common, you should not push too hard in the beginning and then die, but keep the whole workout at the correct level (do not go into read). For the top level skiers, using lactate is quite common to make sure they are not pushing too hard or too low during intervals (hard is usually most common, but low if the athlete is tired or close to overtraining).

How to set up a program with this methodology.
If you work out every day, you can have 5 easy days and 2 hard. If you work out more, keep 2 hard sessions and just add easy. For adults, intervals should be around 30 minutes (4x8,5x6, 6x5). The reference to 4x4 in the video is actually a reference to a debate in Norway about intensity, intervals and if you need easy training. If 2 hard sessions seams hard, start with one.
You will find it frustrating to go slow so maybe turn off your GPS and Strata :-)
During intervals, make sure the first one is the slowest, do not start too hard.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
And yes, I got in hell of a shape using this (sadly many of my competitors did the same ;-)

jroden wrote:

I've always been curious about how the elite skiers trained in Norway with all those big weeks of ski walking and such. Aren't they also doing a fair bit of strength training? I looked at a power profile for a recent MTB training race and was surprised a the power nmbers. The race was hour fifteen, time spent in the upper power zones looked like this

VO2Max 324-370 07:39
Z6 Anaerobic 370-463 10:15
Z7 Neuromuscular 463-MAX 06:19

So, a lot of time doing 10 second blasts of 700w followed by coasting. How would doing 4-6 minute intervals prepare me for all the anaerobic work? Even a nordic skier is doing a lot of work in the anaerobic zone, how do they improve those energy systems with this type of work?

Ok, taking this to a practical approach, as I want to give it more of a try.

The 8 minute intervals, what %of FTP am I aiming? 110% seems a little high, as I am likely to hit exhaustion on that. 105% seems more realistic and would probably give me the build up to 90% MHR mentioned.
In regards to how best to start off, would it be advisable to aim for the target wattage, lets say 105% and then try and complete 8 minutes, then another 8 minutes until I fail. Or should I go in with the strategy of say 4 minutes x 4/5 and gradually build the interval length each week?
And at what point should i re-assess and up the wattage if I am going for this building time approach?
Or do I start at something like the 4 min intervals at 110% and as i increase the interval decrease the intensity very slightly?

This was generally the way I approach sweetspot until I hit 5x20 and decided that was enough volume for one session! But I am conscious with this I want to have an eye on increasing wattage if my physiology improves as I get fitter.

Secondly, I dug out an old physiological test that shows my power/HR at LT and LTP. Is this of any use for the slow element? My LT was about 220, and LTP around 260 for 2mmol. Its a few years old now and I was not as fit back then, but I have the HR that corresponds to that, should I stick below this LTP ~2mmol?

When you say easy runs what does that mean?
My open 10k is about 6:15ish pace
13.1 is 6:23, 70.3 run is about 7:15-7:30

Thanks. Paypal works provided results are there

Easy means Easy.

Use your 10k or half-mary time and look at the VDOT tables. COnsider daniel's E-pace to be a speed limit.

Swim 4x per week. Mostly easy, only a little harder then warm-up effort. Some of it *really* hard, maybe four or five minutes at a time.

Bike 3x-5x per week. One session killer hard, with efforts of above FTP, another one hard, but as you get close to the race, switch that ride to include more race pace work.

Run: 5-7x per week, all easy. One hard. More than 10 weeks out, include hard intervals. The last 10 weeks make it a 70 to 90 minute run building to an hour broken at race pace.


That's it.

I accept paypal.

Scott (and others), thanks for this. I've spent the last week reading everything I could about the polarized approach. I like what I've read and would like to adopt this approach next season and see how it works. I've been doing the typical threshold/sweet spot training for the last few years and it worked great the first couple of years but I think I'm stuck in a rut and I also think contributed to fatigue issues that caused me some physical problems this year. I'm getting older so recovery and fatigue issues are something I want to pay more attention to next season. So I do like the sounds of having less "hammer time" in my workouts and some more easy time.

The polarized approach makes most sense to me for sprint, oly and IM distance training. If you're to take the approach that one of each SBR workout should be hard, the hard workouts more than cover sprint and oly distance and intensity. I'm good with it for IM as well since IM racing is at easy pace.

I'm having a harder time wrapping my head around a polarized training approach to 70.3 bike training (swim and run I get). I like to ride 4x per week. Let's say two 60 minute workouts, one 75-90 minute workout and the long bike of 150-180 minutes. If we're operating under the assumption that easy is something like 70-75% IF, I'm good with one of the 60 minute workouts being an ass-kicking trainer workout (4x8' at 105% or whatever), the other shorter rides at 70-75%. My concern is how to manage the 150-180 minute long ride. I "think" riding that ride at 70-75% would leave me undertrained for a 70.3 bike ride where I'd be targeting close to 85%. I can trust and have faith in the process but I'd like it explained to me a bit more so I can wrap my noggin around it better.

Well, actually our work with elite endurance athletes suggests that the zone your describe which is above MLSS but below VO2 max (~89-93% of max heart rate typically in well trained) is a really effective training intensity. In the Norwegian system, this is zone 4 of 5 aerobic zones. Seems that athletes can accumulate a lot of minutes there and stimulate adaptation, without digging too deep of a hole for themselves stresswise. And, they race well in zone 5, so the adaptations transfer up a zone :-) We think it also transfers down to threshold intensity, which is probably more imporant for triathletes.

thanks for asking this. I was sitting trying to phrase the question. I also train for HIMs mostly, now, my longest bike ride is 40-45 miles. how do I structure that?
my undestanding is that long rides should be done at low intensity zone 1 with kick ass sessions of 4x8 or 6x10 (that would just about kill me). Now, if long rides are easy and other sessions are intense is it ok to add short (like 45-60 min easy bike sessions)?

Now, for bricks, I try to run off the bike EVERY time even if for 5-10 min. So, say after a hard bike session should I do a hard run? and after an easy bike session should I do an easy run or mix it up?
thanks

Of course it's ok to add easy hourish sessions. While the time may vary from person to person this is essentially what the majority of your training will consist of if following a polarized approach and you'll be training more than all of the people who stay home because they think one hour isn't enough.

Regarding brick/transition runs you should save most of your hard running for when you're fresh. 2 or 3 hard bike/hard run sessions per season is probably enough. The rest can be mixed around a bit but only the bike part should vary in intensity and the runs should then all be mostly easy.

Can't really say for the time and distance recommendation. It depends on too many factors the most I could do is tell you if you should do more or less based on your current training.

A track session is a great idea because it will allow you to reach a very high intensity and that's obviously very important when the rest of your training is easy. And just forget about the junk miles concept. Unless you're overtrained pretty much more is better. Riding for an hour will benefit you more than not riding. To get better at SBR you need to SBR.

You can do some vo2 work in the long ride but then ride the rest at say 65-70%.

My N=1 found that early season long course race with a 110k bike and doing almost nothing in tempo/threshold (7% of my riding iirc). I felt great for about the first 95k then the last 15k were a really big struggle.

I'd argue that for LC racing as you get closer to the event you may want to adjust the %'s a bit so you have more in the middle, or more longer tempo/threshold intervals type stuff and maybe less vo2.

Don't forget specificity.

Scott (and others), thanks for this. I've spent the last week reading everything I could about the polarized approach. I like what I've read and would like to adopt this approach next season and see how it works. I've been doing the typical threshold/sweet spot training for the last few years and it worked great the first couple of years but I think I'm stuck in a rut and I also think contributed to fatigue issues that caused me some physical problems this year. I'm getting older so recovery and fatigue issues are something I want to pay more attention to next season. So I do like the sounds of having less "hammer time" in my workouts and some more easy time.

The polarized approach makes most sense to me for sprint, oly and IM distance training. If you're to take the approach that one of each SBR workout should be hard, the hard workouts more than cover sprint and oly distance and intensity. I'm good with it for IM as well since IM racing is at easy pace.

I'm having a harder time wrapping my head around a polarized training approach to 70.3 bike training (swim and run I get). I like to ride 4x per week. Let's say two 60 minute workouts, one 75-90 minute workout and the long bike of 150-180 minutes. If we're operating under the assumption that easy is something like 70-75% IF, I'm good with one of the 60 minute workouts being an ass-kicking trainer workout (4x8' at 105% or whatever), the other shorter rides at 70-75%. My concern is how to manage the 150-180 minute long ride. I "think" riding that ride at 70-75% would leave me undertrained for a 70.3 bike ride where I'd be targeting close to 85%. I can trust and have faith in the process but I'd like it explained to me a bit more so I can wrap my noggin around it better.

Cant say that I am surprised at all by this response. Polarized model works great. IMO the caveat is that you need to have a relatively sound base going in. ie. no low hanging fruit. I think yourself fits this well. Should help you break through the plateau and more importantly the fatigue issues you were having on your previous program.