Thanks! Enjoyed that a lot.

That was very interesting. Thank you!

Yeah, it was a great talk. Was able to attend in person.

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-Brad Williams
Website | Twitter: @BW_Tri |Instagram: @BW_Tri | Strava | Co-Founder & Coach at: KIS Coaching
Partnered with: Zoot Sports | Precision Fuel &Hydration | ISM

He's always interesting. I would be interested if he has data from non Norwegian athletes too. The Norwegians have long used the tons of very low intensity method of building fitness. Especially the XC skiers. But is that how all World Tour level cyclists train?

For me, the best how to train and at what level video that I've seen in quite some time. I can see where I've misunderstood some things in the past.

Thank you for posting.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

OK, how about a Cliff Notes version??? :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Here is what I got out of it.

80/20 is sessions not time. Time wise, it's more like 90/10.

Easy level one/two training which he calls "green" is conversational or breathing through your nose pace. This is the level that the great athletes have been extending. You can tell that you're adapting to training at this pace because your heart rate level stays the same rather than increases during the two, three, four hour training session.

Orange level is threshold/lactic level. He talks the least about this level. One gem is that people with more slowtwitch will have their legs screaming at them sooner than those with more fast twitch.

Red level is zone 4/5 training. At red level you strive for repeatability. Can you do five intervals hard rather than the three you used to do? If you can't, it's failing adaption and time to back off.

It seems like there is/was a real bias towards intensity. It's easier to measure in a lab. We are more impressed watching/doing a hard workout. Whereas the gains of the champions have been in extending their green level training.

You can watch/listen to the video at 1.4 speed so the 90 minutes goes under an hour.

Having heard Arthur Lydiard many times in person, it was Lydiard quality advice. Except that maybe Lydiard/I was wrong about always raising training pace to just below threshold as one adapted. Sounds like Ernst Van Aaken was maybe right by increasing time yet keeping it easy so as not to develop negative systemic stress. https://www.scienceofrunning.com/....html?v=7516fd43adaa

Others reading this may find other gems or things more meaningful to them. I'll probably listen to it again.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

No, it's not!
Seiler really doesn't have much research to back up his claims, and what he does have doesn't really fit with his narrative.

I find it remarkable how he is held in such high regard in the cycling community when neither exercise physiologists or top level coaches think much of him at all.

Oh cool - what's the median "polarization" of a World Tour cyclist? I'm glad you're here to fill in what Dr. Seiler left out.

The research backs up that this is exactly how World Tour level cyclists train, i.e. with ~80% of the workload below 65% of VO2max e.g. this TID work https://link.springer.com/...7256-200131050-00004 from Lucia, Hoyos & Chicharro. Lucia, in particular, has done a lot of research on the training & physiological characteristics of World Tour level cyclists.

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Alan Couzens, M.Sc. (Sports Science)
Exercise Physiologist/Coach
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens
Web: https://alancouzens.com

Is that percent time or percent sessions? (paywall on the full text).

If it's time, I'd argue that it's not fully consistent with Dr. Seiler's prescription, except during the "rest" phase.

Part of his claims, at least in this presentation, is that the difference between well-polarized training and poorly-polarized training is subtle. And the difference between 80 and 90 percent of time is huge (according to him).

That said, I'm not on board with TriBryan at all. I agree that Dr. Seiler depends a lot on case studies, doesn't seem to present case studies that don't corroborate his theories (if they exist), and doesn't present a ton in terms of quality research papers.

But on the other hand, he fully admits this. He uses very careful language, and freely wishes that soon we can start using the mountains of digital training data being logged to help sort out his assertions. I find his lectures valuable and interesting.

Edit: Though for an in-season pro cyclist it might be very, very hard to achieve 90% < 65% VO2max. You're racing almost every weekend, doing 6-7 hour races that might be mostly sub-threshold, but not "65%" sub-threshold. That can blow up polarization really quick. That's different than rowing, running, triathlon, etc, where races are far less frequent.

Calm down fan boy

That’s some serious projection...

I don't think anyone disputes that they train a lot at low intensity, it's this notion of "polarized" and "avoidance of certain intensity levels" which irritates many. To cite veteran Christian Knees of Team Ineos: "you know how we pros train, grinding at tempo day in day out". Saying that they avoid tempo/SST is just ridiculous. Two of our former juniors are with WT development teams. They do almost no work above LT2, lots of low intensity and a lot tempo/SST. >LT2 is for races. And they are with a really good team.

Lucia (2000) employed HR. Not sure if this is really the proper metric for road cyclists given the importance of training in the hills/mountains. Have they factored out coasting? I don't have access to the full text. Apart from this, I don't see much published information on TIDs of cycling pros:

Lucia (2000) road pros (pyramidial)
Zapico (2007) Spanisch U23 elite (pyramidial)
Schumacher (2002) track cyclists (highly polarized)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC4621419/

Cycling has changed quite a bit in the last 10 to 15 years. There is a lot of talk of new training methods and so but there is a lack of published research on this. Which is strange since even Bernal uploads all of his training onto Strava.

And with a few lines of python code you can extract all their data:



Dec-Oct 2019, the left bar is not just coasting but he also seems to enjoy extended coffee stops

FWIW, I agree with the bulk of what you have said. Seiler himself seems to have backed away from the extremes of the polarized approach (i.e. minimal work in VT1->VT2) & is now focusing more on the importance of a lot of low intensity training (90% below the first lactate/ventilatory threshold), especially for longer duration sports. This podcast with Mikael Eriksson was especially illuminating https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts177/

But as far as "grinding at tempo day in, day out." there are metabolic limits to just how much of that can be done. Keep in mind that most of these guys have VT1's of ~350W. To suggest that they are spending a large proportion of their training time working tempo at 350W+ (1200+kJ/hr!) is ludicrous & is backed up by the data you share from De Gendt. Even discounting coasting/coffee stops, the vast majority of his work is well and truly below this point (below VT1) & actually looks to line up with the 2000 Lucia study quite nicely.

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Alan Couzens, M.Sc. (Sports Science)
Exercise Physiologist/Coach
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens
Web: https://alancouzens.com

I should have provided more context. It was not meant that they ride tempo all the time. No. He meant they hardly ever go above LT2 in training (and therefore, he complained, never gets a KOM) but there are almost always some (low cadence) tempo elements. Even in their long base rides. This was meant with day in day out. Nothing above tempo (which in German includes SST as well)

Does he discuss.how to apply this to non elite. For people training 30 hours a week i can see how it works, but what about ppl training 5-10 hours?

Yes, he does. He said that this applies to the weekend warrior as well as the five day a week runner. I think he covers this in the first half hour or so.

Listen to it at 1.4 speed by clicking on the arrow on the bottom left to cut down the time it takes.

Was very impressed with the quantity of data that is out there because so many people are recording their workouts these days.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

i think this is pretty key. when you're racing say 70 days a season your intensity is pretty well covered, even if large portions of the racing is tempo, there are usually chunks of high intensity mixed in. as such, the training is going to be heavily based around grinding out to build the endurance for those 6-7 hour races, for 3 weeks straight.

most of us don't race anything like that much so have to build some intensity into training. though runners typically race more than cyclists/triathletes. of course there are many other ways in which we differ from WT pro cyclists so its hard to say whether we should pay any attention to what they do

One of the things which surprised me when I applied my little Strava hacking tool onto a few pros was to see just how spikey road racing is. And they don't mirror this in training.

Here are a few weeks for one of the better TdF pros. At the bottom of the image are some race days.

(I hope the image shows up, size is limited here, had to put it on a another website)

TriBryan, the Hambini of training methods. 😂😂😂😂

You been listening to the big folk talking?

You say that like it’s a bad thing...

Here’s a question. How do you approach that low intensity training. Do you keep going in a session until the point where HR starts to drift out of the zone, and then stop? Or do you keep going, albeit at a lower power? And if the latter, how to decide how long to go?

In other words, do you go based on physiological cues, or based on predetermined duration targets?

I hold the pace /power and extend the duration. Generally, week over week... The duration extends by about 10-15% for the same drift for me. That is... Unless it's driven by dehydration.