Polarised vs Pyramidal Training: What You Should Do

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jarred Donnelly. Two identical athletes take on a training program. The first does mostly easy training with some high intensity work, and the other does mostly easy but with threshold training and, and very little high intensity. Who would come out on top? That is the answer we're going to find out today. The two examples provided are polarized versus pyramidal training models. And there's a huge debate about which one you should be doing. So we're going to help you figure out what the hell they actually mean, which model applies to you, and how to adjust your training accordingly. And lastly, we're going to look at what the science says around which one creates a faster result on race day. So, dad, welcome back to another episode. Let's start with our normal first segment. What are you grateful for?

Good topic, Jordan. Well done. My gratitude is absolutely for this year being an Olympic year. And I can't wait every four years. And during COVID was sort of a bit skewed with three years and a fourth year. So we've got the Paris Olympics this year. And for most of the sports, this is the pinnacle of every athlete who's vying for a place to represent their country at the Olympics. And that in itself is an incredible achievement to be selected to go to the Olympics for your country. And then those who have got ambitions of winning gold or getting on the podium, it's just the best year because everybody wants to be at their peak. And they could possibly have waited four years for this. And this could be the only chance they get in their whole career to go to the Olympics. And you know, there's a very, very few percentage of the population actually are at, are at this level. And I just love every sport because almost everybody who should be aiming for the Olympics should be coming into this year in the form of their life. So most of the sports get great competition and I can't wait for when people start qualifying and going to races that are going to allow them to qualify and to see what happens. And then the Olympics themselves, that's actually the most fun. I just love this year. I love the preparation of getting there. The trials to be selected and then the actual races. It's brilliant.

Totally agree. It's so fun to see all the meetups, especially the Diamond League, our runners coming to form in the last four to eight weeks. It's really cool. I'm actually grateful again for we've done this a few times but for all the messages we get about the podcast. It's becoming a bit of an infinite loop because we said that we're grateful for it on the podcast and then people message us more and then we're grateful for the messages and then people message us more. But I don't want that loop to end because is really nice and we do keep bringing it up because your feedback is super important to us and we really do like seeing and our favorite thing is seeing specific examples of how the podcast has helped your training in racing. And some people send us really nice messages about how they prepared for a specific race and what information they used and what helped them get more out of their race. So we really, we really do appreciate that. And on that note, dad, it's a reminder of our unwritten rule that has got a lot of people messaging us more. And one message stood out last week. I just wanted to read it out. It said, I thought you like might like to know that your podcast and coaching has led to my sister and brother in law getting into endurance sports and another friend reach out to learn more about triathlon. You're not only having an impact on me but the people around me. So thank you. And I just liked hearing that that yeah, we're getting more people into not just triathlon but endurance sports and fitness in general. So again, if you like our podcasts and you're enjoying the free information we give out, we are loving everyone. Honoring the athletes agreement to share the podcast with anyone around you. And the best thing you can do is do a screenshot of an episode you like and post it to your social media.

Yeah, I must say Jordan, when I when I see on our Instagram stories someone's posted last podcast, it's fantastic to see people reposting and spreading the good news so that more people can get some valuable tips if they can't afford coaching. And they can absolutely go and race with some really good advice.

So.

So yeah, keep doing it.

So, monster topic today. Let's get into the topic of polarized versus pyramidal training. And I just want to just set some clear definitions from the get go about what this is and you can get into the science of what it is. And we explained it a little bit in the intro, but basically if you wanted to use real layman's terms, it's basically just how do you differentiate between your easy training, your medium training and your hard training. So your easy training is the zone one and two stuff. Your medium training is your kind of sweet spot and threshold stuff. And your hard trainings you've been to max stuff. And this is just very general, but we're just trying to keep it as easy as possible. And a lot of people, when they're talking about the polarized or pyramidal that they're using, the kind of three zone system, which is zone one is easy, everything up to that first lactate threshold. Zone two is anything between LT1 and LT2. So that right up to that, that FTP point if you're on the bike, or that that second threshold is at any threshold number. Anything above threshold is VO2 max. We tend to on this podcast we use a five zone model or five to six zone model plus at Trivelo. And that's a lot more popular along among most coaching groups. So for the sake of ease, we're not a lot of the studies use a three zone model and talk about zone one, two and three, but we're just gonna stick to how we talk about it, which is a five zone model. Cause it makes more sense to a lot of people. So zone one being kind of recovery. Zone two is that zone two training, everyone knows, which is really that fitness level training. But it's still below that first lactate threshold point. Zone 3 and 4 is in between the two lactate thresholds. That's that sweep spot training at the very top end, you know, right below threshold or at threshold right at that number. And then anything above, you know is that zone 5, 6 plus where it's really high intensity. The lactic acid is accumulating at a high rate and you won't be able to hold that for long. And there's those, those are those efforts that are 30 seconds to three or four minutes, you know, that's super high intensity. So does that cover it, dad?

Yeah, without confusing the listener. We just want to keep it as simple as possible and be understanding that at Trivalo, we're going to be talking in this podcast about five zones principally. And the majority of other coaches around the world may be also using a three zone system. So we're not going to complicate it any more than that. There are different versions of how to use the zonal system. So we're using this model and that's what we're going to stick with throughout.

This podcast, regardless of what one use. I did mention that, you know, you can really just put it as easy training, medium training or Hard training. And the polarized approach is you're either doing lots of easy and, you know, combined with a bit of hard work. And the pyramidal approach is you do a fair bit of easy and then decent chunk of medium and then little to no hard. And it's called a pyramid because if you stack it on top of each other, it would look like a pyramid. So there are two different types of training that you can do. And we're going to go through kind of, yeah, what they mean and what you might need to do for your goals and your level as an athlete. And we actually had the, the man who is popular for making the term polarized popular in itself. And that was Dr. Steven Solo on our podcast. And he had a lot of answers to questions that we had that really clarified some things. Because, know, we've looked at this a lot and we had some questions directly to him, who's the best source of information on it possible, where he really clarified some things for us, which we really enjoyed. So if you want to check out that conversation, it was a really, really good, extensive conversation. But one of my favorite things from our discussion with him was when you're, when you're talking about, you know, is it polarized or pyramidal, what are you actually counting as what's easy and what's hard? Because we know that you might do an easy session and it could only really be counted as easy if the entire session is spent, you know, in a low heart rate, in a low power zone, below that first lactate threshold. But if you're doing a little bit of mixed stuff in there, you know, let's. Even if you do a high intensity session, you know, a high intensity session might be an hour, you might do 20 minutes of a warmup, 20 minutes of interval work, and then a 20 minute cooldown. You know, that 20 minutes of interval work makes the session a high intensity session because it's so hard and you'll get to the end exhausted. But really you've spent 40 minutes of that in easy zone. So majority of the session was easy. Couldn't you then count that as an easy session? Because majority of it was easy, even though it's hard. And so he really understood that point. He said, yeah, I get it. And he said, and that is the problem with trying to define things like this and keep things in boxes. Because I said, then we asked him, so you're counting the total sessions per week, whether they're easy or hard. Is it the total minutes spent of easy and hard work? Is it the Amount of minutes spent in a certain power zone, or is it minute spent of your heart rate zone? And he had a really interesting point on this as well, because he said if you do an interval session, let's say you're doing one minute on, 30 seconds off. He said your power zone might be VO2 max. Those one minute efforts are VO2 max. You're pushing 300 plus watts, you're really maxing out, and in 30 seconds you're going really easy. But your heart rate, because it's so up and down, over, under, your heart rate doesn't quite get to that VO2 max zone. It stays in that threshold zone because it's so up and down and you're not doing a long enough effort to get the heart rate really high. So he said, how would you count that session? Is that a VO2 session or is that a threshold session? I just thought that was such a fantastic point because it kind of is the first thing we want to talk about here, and that is that we can get so caught up in these definitions that we start to lose focus of what's actually important in training.

And also you could go on with that exact same session, the over under one you're talking about, because you would say the main set could have, say you did three by eight minutes of over under with a couple of minutes off in between. That adds up to 24 minutes. But in actual fact, if you just did 30 on 15 off or 60 on 30 off, you would only end up with about nine minutes out of the 24 at that true VO2 level. So once again, in a session where it might take you an hour and 10 minutes to do the warm up, to do the, the ramp test, to do the hard efforts and then do the main set, then do the recovery, you could have actually labeled that as a high intensity VO2 set. And guess what? You spent 11 minutes out of the hour and 10 in that state. And I think the opposite can happen. When someone does easy and for some reason, they come to a hill where they, their goal is to stay in zone one or two, and all of a sudden they ride this hill and there's 15 of those hills spread out over an hour and a half. You know, the overall average power will tell you, the athlete and the coach, that that was at 0.6 or 0.55. Tick the box, you've done it well, but in actual fact, you've done 15 times, you know, zone six in those, in that session. So does that get lost as well? So you've Got both ways happening where some sessions you can have a mixture and it's intentional sometimes that you want it to be like that. But if you're truly wanting to do recovery, you're truly wanting to do zone two, you're truly wanting to do sweet spot or high intensity. It's very difficult to identify what percentage in every one of those sessions, especially as you get to a higher intensity session, because the whole session can't be an hour and 10 of high intensity, you know, unless it's actually a race where you are racing at threshold and a, you know, a 10k run or a, or a one hour crit or, or a 30k time trial, something like that. And that can truly be, you know, that's your main, that's your high intensity session. But for every other one, it is really gray and really muddy. And, and I think, I think right from the outset we want to keep in mind that these definitions, almost these categories, these phrases we're using to try to categorize training can be fraught with danger because you could think that you're doing a polarized program or a pyramidal program, or a sweet spot program, or a trivalo program for that matter, but it has a mixture all the time. And if you were so analytical that you could work out in an entire week in every session you did what percentage you ended up writing at high intensity, what percentage you ended up writing at tempo, and what percentage you ended up writing in zone one, you would probably come to the same conclusion with all four of those types of training. And that's kind of what we're saying.

Yeah, we kind of wanted to come out and burst the bubble straight away a little bit and just, and just clarify that and go, yeah, it is, it is confusing because it depends how you define things and define sessions. But he then in our conversation, he went on to make just such a brilliant point. And he said in the 25 years since he kind of coined that term polarized. And he laughs when people say that to him. But he kind of said, I now just kind of, I now define it as easy or hard training. He's like, I've tried, I've simplified it even more. And he goes, the easy training is, it is just an easy session where you could back it up the next day. It's not going to take you more than 24 hours to recover. And he said, a hard session, whether it's sweet spot, whether it's that threshold, you know, zone three or four, whether it's VO2 max, regardless of how you define it, it's going to take you more than 24 hours to recover. You need more recovery between it and I just thought that was brilliant. And so then the discussion becomes, okay, if we're talking about polarizer or pyramidal, we're kind of just talking about you've got your bulk of easy sessions, which everyone should be doing and then how are you then breaking up your sessions between zone three and four sweet spot stuff and your VO2 max stuff. That's kind of what we want to get into. And potentially some examples of, you know, different athletes and specifically coaching models. We know that athletes around the world do, and the Norwegians are examples of people that do really use that pyramidal approach. Really do a lot of volume of that zone three, four work.

Yeah. And there's examples as well of athletes who would find, if they're not very endurance fit, they would find a Zone 2 ride. In our method where you're at, you know, up to 75% of your FTP, they would find that a hard session. Not hard intensity wise, but hard on their legs if they're on a bike. If I'm asking you to go for a 60 minute run and stay in zone two, you're not huffing and puffing, but you are still very tired from that session, even though it's supposedly a Zone 2 session. Yep. And you know, that's an example of identifying who your athlete is, what their fitness level is currently at, what they can cope with, and then giving them sessions that are appropriate to that person.

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. And yeah, I guess this comes down to a pretty key question that I would ask you is if an athlete comes to you and says, you know, what approach are you going to give me? Polarized or pyramidal? You know, how would you answer that? Because it's. I know that the Traveller method that you mentioned before, it's just not a priority.

No. And I would just say the focus you need to be worrying about is how am I going to get through the training program. And let's just not categorize what we're doing with you. We are aiming number one and you can call this whatever you like, call this the Trivalo method. We are aiming first and foremost to understand what your event is that you're training for and what the requirements of that event are. And here are the sessions we think are going to give you the best opportunity to perform at the level that you're expecting to do on race day. And we've got to find out who you are and what experience you've had. That's the first thing we're trying to do. Are you fit enough to jump into two high intensity sessions a week plus an endurance session or are you only capable of coping with one high intensity session? And, and your endurance might be, you know, if you're a runner, your endurance might be a 20 minute run. Cause you've basically done no running. Or if you're a bike rider and you haven't ridden over 60 minutes, that's your endurance ride for the week. So we're really asking a lot of more specific questions and we would try and steer the athlete away from this almost like where do I fit into, into the training program? Well, you fit into the program where your level is and what your experience is. And, and we get people from beginner to, to top of the elite professional level. So we're not going to treat the people who are at the top level in their sport who are maybe aspiring for an Olympic selection like we talked about earlier, the same way as we're going to get someone who's a beginner and anybody in between. We're really trying to learn where their level is already and what their experience is. And someone who's done 15 years of running and riding compared to someone who's done 15 weeks, you know, they're not going to be able to cope with the, the pyramidal or the, the polarized or the sweet spot. They're going to need attention according to what level they're at. And, and that's my answer is forget all these airy fairy categories. You know, they're great and they're good. Good for summary to, you know, if you're specifically saying I want polarized where I'm doing no gray zone, zone two. I'm just writing hard sessions and easy sessions like you explained. You know, okay, let's call, call that polarized and that's great because everybody knows what you're talking about. But I guarantee there is no one doing it exactly like that. There will be, there will be versions of that. And, and you know, you're not trying to do that either. You're not trying to, oh no, I can't, I can't stray into the sweet spot program. You know, we've found, and I talked to you about this off air was, you know, I love all these scientific lab testing that they've been doing. Without that we don't have a lot of information or data. But I can guarantee you over the years of coaching we have so much data that tells us a particular style of training will help a triathlete who's training for an Olympic distance. A particular style of training will help an athlete training for an Ironman. And they're not the same. They've got different nuances in it, even though they're both triathletes. And that's no different to what a 5k runner would be expecting to do as a marathon runner. They would have some variation in that. So we are not keen on categorising people into this is the area that you are going to train strictly under. We want to use all of the options to us and all of the ranges of zones that are available for us to use in your program. And it all comes back down to who you are, what your level currently is.

Yeah, the example you gave before about the person who struggles with a zone 2 endurance ride, because they're very untrained and they just find that super fatiguing just exemplifies exactly what you're just talking about. You know, it's. For them, the focus is on consistency and frequency of training. And they just need to get better at being able to back up, you know, consistent zone two endurance sessions before they can even worry about intensity distribution and whether they should be doing polarized or pyramidal. Whereas we do have a very top level athletes where we are looking very specifically about the amount of intensity they're doing. And we are really looking into quite minute detail about how much sweet spot work are we fitting in, how much zone 3 to 4 work are we fitting in to the interval length, you know, and that we are happy to go down that path for the specific athlete that it suits. You know, we are looking at how much VO2 work are they getting to their week into their training block. That's the level that we're looking into to get the absolute most out of that athlete. But that is a very specific athlete who is very highly trained, who is training like a professional athlete, who is doing monster hours where every hour is really counting here, but for majority of athletes it's just not the case.

But also, Jord, what you've said is so true, but there's another extension to that is, you know, at the pointy end that we're talking about just right now as the example, an elite athlete, what is their weakness? And we want to really improve that. You know, it's great to give them, you know, the standard VO2 stuff. They, you know, that's going to help them run faster, but if they haven't got the base to run faster. We can't give them those VO2 intervals. We, you know, we need to work on more strength and conditioning in their legs before we can actually throw this very elite runner who's really struggling. That's his weak, weak leg of his triathlon as an example. And I'm just picking this as an example to say, we just can't say, okay, if you're at this level as an elite, you do this swim, this ride and this run and that's what all those guys do. That's not actually what happens as well. We look at is your weakness in the pool in the open swim, is your weakness on the bike, is your weakness your backing up after a run off the bike and so trying to find out where their weakness is first and obviously keep training their strengths because that's why they're elite in the first place. But we're trying to find the small percentage gains to actually make their weakness no longer a weakness. And so once again, you're actually skidding it back, stripping it back to find out what is suitable for this particular athlete.

Yeah, so you mentioned a bit of the science before and you see a lot of studies trying to measure the two training models with mixed results. And um, a lot of the studies I've seen, you know, the, the, the outcome and conclusion of the study is just so dependent on what they're actually choosing to measure. And I think, I think this gets a little bit lost in the conversation because sometimes they end up measuring results based on peak power output and they, they might do that via a ramp test or they might do that by a 10 minute power test or a 20 minute power test. And what ends up happening is I saw a couple of, I've seen a couple of examples where a polarized approach, so a lot more high intensity work resulted in a greater improvement in their pyramidal approach. But that just seems obvious because they did more high intensity work and so their peak power numbers are going to most likely improve more. And for a triathlete that's not necessarily that helpful because yeah, it's obviously great to improve your VO2 max fitness, improve your VO2 max and get those peak power numbers up. But if you just did that and improved your 10 or 20 minute power, that is not going to help you in a race. It's not going to help you in a half Ironman or Ironman. It'll help you for the first 20 minutes for sure, it'll help your overall fitness, but it's really just a stepping stone. Towards getting, needing to practice your race intensity. And that comes from race ready sessions which is by definition zone 3 and 4, which is technically pyramidal training. So again it's this big mixed pot of things.

Yeah, the lab scientific experiments that are going on and they're really trying to pinpoint differences but unfortunately some of the weaknesses of them are the, the testing period is too short, it could be four to six weeks. The sample of athlete is too specific sometimes and the actual models that they're using are directed to getting a certain outcome. And in that example you gave by comparing polarized with pyramidal and in that particular one you were talking about, which I read as well, there was no high intensity in that pyramidal session training block. So how would you expect to get any other outcome except the other method is superior? Well, it is when you do it like that. And that's not how we would train people. So I look at some of these tests and go well that's a predictable outcome. You don't even have to do that sample test because I could tell you that's going to happen. Why don't you do some testing where you're giving people a mixture more of exactly what's going to happen in a real program and do it for longer. And that is hard to do because there are not enough people willing to give up six months to be an experiment. And so I get, I get that we need these tests to give us information, there's no doubt about it. But I'm just saying we have to take full face value and there are some weaknesses in the testing that are not giving the true outcome. And a lot of the time they're looking for a result and by manipulating the test that way they're going to get that result. And I would like to see a little bit different, you know, method of, of getting outcomes that are, you know, not really predictable. And, and you can't do that without actually doing the samples for a lot longer period of time. And there's so many things that go into getting the outcomes and you know, in a four to six week period. And I'm not saying every test is four to six weeks. I'm being very general here. But the point I'm trying to make is, you know, don't pin all, all of your outcomes and information gathering from every single test that you see because you all, you'd be jumping, oh, let's do this now, now that this seems a little bit better, let's do that. And that's not how people, that's not how people function by just, you know, chopping and changing from, from one method to another. The bottom line and all the things we're trying to get across here is if you stay consistent, you will start to improve. And whether you're using pyramidal or polarized or sweet spot, you will continue to improve with all three methods. And all the scientific research tells us that. But consistency is the one thing that everybody agrees on. If you can maintain consistency, then your performance will gradually get better. It may take three months, it may take three years, it may take 13 years. But if you just stay at it, you will actually get better regardless of what program you're using. But the athlete out there wants to know which one is better, which one is quicker, which one is faster. And my answer to that is, you know, everything takes time and everything's relatable to how fit you are in the first place and what you've been doing over a period of time. And the more you've been training yourself consistently, when you start to really hone in on some specific training like we talked about for each athlete, your results will start to really improve really quickly. Once you've got that load into your body from consistent training over a long period, all of a sudden, and we've said it many times in year two or three, athletes start to really jump up a level.

Yeah, I would never want what you're saying to be misconstrued because we just spend all of our time coaching other coaching athletes or researching better ways to coach our athletes. That is just what we do basically all week. And so you're always looking at the latest research, the latest information out there, watching the best interviews from sports scientists around the world. And I think the strength of trivalo, and this is where it could sound a little arrogant, but the strength of what we do is then apply it to real world examples. And we've been able to do that with coaching hundreds and hundreds of athletes and seeing how different athletes respond in different circumstances. And every athlete has such a varying array of factors that are applying to them. And as you always say, it's never one thing. And I do want to quote one specific study that they did on half ironman athletes. And if you just. I think what you're saying is you just be really careful of the supposed conclusions from these tests because this quote was in this study of half ironman athletes who did polarize or pyramidal, there were no significant differences observed between the polarized and pyramidal competition times. In fact, only two seconds differentiated both groups in a Race that lasted over five hours and that was two seconds median differentiation. If you just took that conclusion, you go, oh, both, both, both approaches work, doesn't really affect overall competition time. And that is just a horrific kind of conclusion outcome to, to stick to. Because there's so many varying, varying factors in there. And it becomes so hard to test race outcomes because as we know, so much goes into what can dictate a race. So many varying factors can literally create 2 minutes to 10 minutes to 15 minutes difference in a race. You know, we know that the biggest thing, and we talk about this a lot, is execution. How did you actually execute the race? Because you two athletes go in with the exact same training model and have wildly different outcomes based on how they execute. They could go in with the exact same fitness level and have wildly different outcomes based on how they execute the race. They could go in with the exact same volume of preparation, the exact same training sessions, the exact same VO2 max. They could be twins with identical genetics, but they could still execute differently and that would create a different result. So the test did go on to say, and we'll give them credit, they said there are more determinants than training intensity distribution in the final result of a long distance triathlon race. And I'm really glad they said that because that is just so, so, so crucial because you just cannot ignore the most important part of racing, which is execution, but all the varying factors.

And sometimes, you know, readers of research papers will pick out the sentence before that and not add the next sentence, which is there are variations and variables that like you just mentioned. And so they'll be saying, well, you know, there's no difference between polarized and pyramidal. This is a study that shows it. And that's what I'm trying to say. The study's great, it's excellent. There's nothing negative about it, but it's not accurately something that you can just take and say forever. That doesn't matter what type of training we give you, there's very little difference. And we beg to differ. Each athlete needs different requirements. And as you said, you could turn up having had sickness and you couldn't perform the way you wanted to. You know, who knows if anybody had a mechanical and how, how well did they measure their efforts across the day? Which is more important? Did they have a poor sleep? Did they stuff up their nutrition on the day? And that could have a completely different outcome to the results? You know, we're expecting the study to have all of these things exactly the same. And you Know, human nature says that that's just not possible. So there's so many variables that can happen to you compared to me. Even though we did the same program, we did the same preparation, we both executed the same way. But because you didn't eat well or sleep well the previous three nights, you performed poorly and I didn't. Yet we had the same program. And that's an explanation. You know, it's not to do with the program, it's to do with something other than the program.

Exactly. Yeah. So we spent a lot of time talking about how we don't want you to get caught up in these definitions and get caught up and one is better than the other. But we do want to talk about it from a coaching application point of view. What could apply to you and when. And so we mentioned before that the Norwegians do a lot of the pyramidal approach where they do a lot of training between LT1 and LT2, and the purpose for that, and the Ingerbridgens are a great example of this. The Ingeritzen family really adopted this, is they realized that they could get massive amounts of work in their training week, massive amounts of volume, if they just stuck really strictly between LT1 and LT2. So that's zone 3 and 4. And if they did that and they measured it using lactate, they can just do monster AM and PM sessions doing that and means they can get more in their week and they're getting more out of the week and they're able to recover. You just can't do monster VO2 sessions over and over again. You'll just break down. But at the same time, the ingredients still do high intensity work. They still do VO2 max work. They're not just eliminating it completely. They. And they race a lot. You know, they do a lot of race ready specific periods. And so it's just. That's an example of one approach working really well in that context.

Yeah. And if you also look at the Norwegian triathletes, they're doing exactly the same. They're having some really high intensity training sessions, but the majority of their Training is between LT1 and LT2, which is the gray zone in the three zone system that people. The research papers tell us to stay out of. And so we've got this evidence from real time athletes who are, you know, Olympians and gold medalists, world champions, who are using a lot of their training in that zone. That's the gray area and getting incredible results. And, and it's not a six weeks research paper. It's you know, the Norwegians have been doing this for, you know, they started when they were 12, 14, been doing it for 10 years. So that's what I was saying before. Where do you start, what level are you at, and how long is it going to take you to get to your peak performance as an athlete? And I really want to emphasize that there isn't one. That's right. It's a combination of all of the training that you think is appropriate for that athlete. Do they need more endurance? Are they just not fit enough aerobically before they can start to do high intensity? Or are they already endurance monsters and they just need some VO2 to lift their engine? You know, this is what you're trying to work out with every athlete that comes across our desk. And so, you know, we're trying to bring a combination of all sessions, depending on the stage of the year, what the event is, how far away the event is. And, you know, that's why we're always talking about people coming to us, don't come to us. For an Ironman with eight weeks to go, it just gives you less opportunity to actually do a program that's appropriate, you know, and we don't often say that. We just say, don't come to us with eight weeks ago to go. But we're not actually given the reason why. The reason is because we want to actually get you prepared in enough time without loading your body so much that you get to the race exhausted on race day rather than getting to the race trained well and tapered and your form is high and your fatigue is low. That's what it's all about. And that's part of this discussion on what type of program should you be under. The type of program we keep saying you should be under is one that's appropriate to you. It has a combination of all the zones that is, you know, and where your current level of fitness is and your experience. And once you can sort those questions out, then you can really throw a really good program at people for 20 weeks or for two years or for. In some cases, you know, we've been coaching people for seven or eight years now. And, you know, it's almost like it. All we've got to do is keep fine tuning the people who have been there for a long time. Just keep fine tuning what we know works well for them. And the example, one of our coaches has been doing the Norwegian method morning and afternoon. LT1 LT2 Nick. And that is the best he's performed, you know, in all the years of his training since he was mid-20s and he's now in his 30s. You know, he has never been as fit as he is now. And that isn't a great example of someone who can cope with the load and still do those high intensity sessions, do lots of racing. He's got great endurance and getting him in that gray zone, the zone between LT1 and LT2 has just made him such a better rider than he's ever been.

And yeah, to your point, always you would never want someone to listen to what you just said and then say that the LT1, LT2 is what going between that and training between that is what made the difference. Because it is probably the overall theme of this episode. It's never one thing. And Nick would attest more than anyone that the combination of all the good work he was doing, really good strength within gym, really focused on recovery, just I could list an infinite number of things that he was doing because he's one of the best athletes at doing everything properly combined for this. And like you said, the fight, I like the word, the fine tuning because it was a different stimulus that he hadn't done and that was kind of what we're looking for in his training program is, is something slightly different to what he was used to, to get a good response from his training.

I just think there's so many examples of, of athletes who improve at beginner, intermediate and elite level by just having different stimulus put into their training program. And that's, I'm just saying that's one example. And it wasn't just that that caused Nick to improve. It was that on top of the other stuff that he's doing so well, you know, we just added that extra layer and that really worked for him. And that's not to say it's going to work for anybody else. It, we found that it really brought him up and that was the missing link. And he was training a lot in that hard endurance type. When he first came to us he was very fit, endurance wise, but he hadn't done a lot of high intensity stuff. And so that's what we've started off with him and now we can spend a little bit more time in that LT1, LT2 zone where he can do monster efforts, you know, week in, week out, double sessions. And it's really brought him up. But we're still doing the key stuff, the recovery, we're still doing the endurance, easy riding and he's very strict on that. He doesn't go above where he should be and that's where People are making mistakes, you know, they're getting such good feedback from the improvement. Well, maybe if I just do the zone two a bit harder. That's actually not what's helping. That's why he's doing well, because his coffee ride is literally, you know, just rolling his legs over to the coffee, coffee shop, sitting there and have a coffee and then rolling back home. And then his zone two is not going above the heart rate that he's meant to or the power. And therefore he can ride the other sessions fresh and then he can race really well because he's done each session in the right zone. And the key component is he's just been super consistent, but he was consistent before and his diligence to training but now is consistent with the right stuff rather than layers of the same stuff.

Yeah. And for more specific coaching examples, I would say that majority of endurance athletes that come to us are really quite fit endurance wise. And as long as they're decently trained and they're not in that beginner category where they're quite untrained and, and haven't had much of a base, we do get a lot of, yeah, decently trained endurance athletes who can do zone two for a long time and can do backup zone two sessions. And so for them an easy prescription is more of a polarized model is, and we would never say to them we're going to give you polarized, but this is kind of what it ends up being, if you want to define it, is a lot more high intensity training because they don't do enough structured high intensity training. And that ends up being a really quick win for a lot of athletes because they start to get some change in stimulus. They start to get pretty quick VO2 improvement, a bit of top end improvement and that results in very quick, you know, testing improvement as well because we'll do a 20 minute FTP test and that's just a great way to get the ball rolling and start with a new athlete to start with that. And we'll find that most athletes who do this kind of training program to start with, they'll follow a model where it'll start off a lot more polarized. But then as they get closer and closer to their goal race over that six month period that you mentioned, it will become more quote unquote, pyramidal because they start doing more race ready zone three and four specific stuff because they need to do that, those longer efforts to get ready for their race.

Good summary. And that's kind of where we started with the podcast was we don't want to categorize, but we are using a combination of whatever we think is going to get the best outcome. And a little bit of everything we've found for most athletes, whether they're beginner, intermediate, or elite, is that finding out that they are lacking in this area, let's push that first, and then we can get more specific to what the race requirements of their event is. And that crosses across different models. And we don't apologize for that because that's using all the information to the best of our advantage. And so I think our summary is always going to be there isn't one perfect model. It's like we say, it's never one thing that's caused you to be a better athlete than you were, or it's never one thing that's caused you to perform poorly. It could be a combination of lack of sleep, lack of nutrition, anxiety at work, or stress about your actual training performances. All those things contribute to a negative outlook. And the same as when you are starting to go really well and your form's booming, you're probably sleeping well, you've got less stress in your life, your work and your family's all in line, everybody's happy around you, and you're training the house down and you're not injured and you've been consistent. They're all things that are going to contribute to you getting the best outcome. And every podcast we talk about, we are actually trying to give information about how you can be a better athlete when it counts on race day. And so discussing whether you use this method of training or that method of training is really important because we want the message to be across that it's not just one method. It's got to be a combination of all of the things that we've talked about so far.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And the last point I want to kind of make is I mentioned beginners there because these examples that we're talking about more apply to at least someone somewhat decently trained that's coming into the conversation. If you're not at that level, and if you're in the beginner category, a lot of this conversation just does not even apply to you or matter. We're not even close to looking at intensity distribution for you. It's about the consistency of training, getting used to training frequently. Just, just if you were just to do six easy sessions in a week or five or four easy sessions, that might be a monster jump for you for what you're used to. And so intensity just isn't that important. So it's really getting your frequency and volume of training up more consistently. But I think a really important point you want to make is that every program should have some sort of intensity. Even if you're a beginner, it's just the level you're at depends on how much volume of intensity is in there.

Yeah. And we've got to be very careful. And if we are talking about the entry level athlete, whether it's a runner or. And you know, there is a huge running boom going on at the moment. So we've got lots of people who literally can't run more than 15 minutes consistently without stopping. That's not a bad thing. I'm just saying that's actually a fact. I'm not saying whether it's good or bad. I'm just saying that's actually the running boom has caused people to really say, oh, maybe I'll have a go at this. And when they go to run, they actually can't run consistently without stopping. And so that's where you need to just do that every second day so that eventually you can actually run 10 minutes without stopping, 15 minutes without stopping, 20 minutes without stopping. And that's the very basic level. And so why would we thinking about giving you some hard running? We would not even think about that. Our goal is just to give you that load that your body can cope with that's really getting you used to just running every second day. And you know, that's the, that's the idea that you're talking about where, you know, the runner is quite different to the triathlete. Whereas as a triathlete, beginner, we're still trying to give them that basic running load experience, but we can actually give them some intensity on the bike where the risk is less. And as long as we've tested that athlete, we're going to give them high intensity at their current level. So it's not like we're giving them something that's unachievable. We're giving it to them because that's where they've tested. And so they would find that, you know, an example would be on the bike if someone's, you know, FTP is 150 and in four years time, if we were able to look ahead in a crystal ball, they ended up with an FTP of 300. They've doubled it in four years. So 150 would feel very hard to ride. High intensity session. When we give them that during the week, it would be the same feeling of hard if they're training four years down the track at 300. It's the same feeling except the numbers just doubled. So the experience you're getting is that this is hard, but the number is just moving up as you, as your body can adapt to the load. That's being the stimulus that's been thrown at you. So even if you're a beginner athlete, as a swimmer and as a, a rider, we would definitely be giving you intensity. Maybe not frequently giving you intensity, but giving it to you enough so you're going to get the stimulus to improve. But it's at your level, at your testing level. And the reason we don't do it as a runner is because the majority of people cannot cope with running fast. If they haven't had any experience, they will get injured straight away. Um, and it's not even worth a discussion. You know, just, just do take your medicine. Start with walk running and then you will, you, you know, in, in six weeks time, you'll look back at your 30 seconds on two minutes off. Oops. I think the Internet dropped out there, George. So I'm not sure what ended up getting, getting heard. But in summary, we absolutely want to make sure that, that at some point every athlete that we coach has some form of intensity, whether they're elite, intermediate or beginner in their program. And, and it has to be at their level. And that's why, you know, in all the other podcasts we talk about testing and that allows us to actually get an entry level athlete, whether you're a swimmer, bike rider or triathlete or runner, to be training at the appropriate level for you. Yep.

And I think I'd just like to finish the episode by summarizing our conversation points and a lot of conversation points from Dr. Steven Seiler. I think some of his key points here really just summarize what we're talking about with intensity distribution. And I'm just going to summarize these points and if you have anything you want to add to just butt in and cut me off. But I think that one of the key points we mentioned was that all this time later, he really just believes in separating it from a low stress zone to a high stress zone. And so you just spend most of your time in a low stress zone, 80% and then the last 20% in a high stress zone, whether that's zone three or four or five or six.

Especially if you're an older athlete. Jordan. I just think that is so crucial to people who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, who still want to Keep a high level of fitness. I just think you can't cope with as much intensity and I think you keep that aerobic fitness going and you'll be better off.

Yep. One of his main points is that when they study elite athletes and what makes them successful is they train a lot and there's no way to bypass the volume of work that you need to do. And the more volume of work you can do at easy, which is what the elite athletes do, a lot of the better you're going to be. And that's just as simple as it is.

No, I can't agree more. And look, the difference between an age grouper and an elite athlete is, you know, 30 hours a week compared to possibly 6 to 10. As simple as that.

Yeah. The best training plan is sustainable training plan. So just remember when you're thinking about all these models and rules and what kind of approach you're taking, the most effective one is the one you're going to be able to do consistently. Me? Make sure you put your ego aside. If it's an easy day, go easy. And I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be surprised if it were you saying this or Dr. Steven Salah saying this, but it's just put your ego aside for easy days. A cool point he did say is that data shows that polarized training is effective starting at six to seven hours a week. So even if you've got less time to train at that level, still doing mostly easy with bits of hard is going to be effective. If it's anything less than that, then you can just start thinking about potentially just training hard every time. We've spoken about that. If you've got four hours, you could probably just do four hours of hard training because you're gonna have enough recovery between. But the most common problem with average age groupers is they train too hard or they overtrain. And so if you're over training, then you need to rest more and do a lot more easy distributed training. Um, the last couple of things is to summarize the low stress versus high stress, low stress workouts, you'll be able to recover within 24 hours. High stress workouts, the recovery takes long. Um, and just understand that the period of training we spoke about this. But the period of training that you're in will determine your what kind of intensity you want. So early in the season you could potentially do a lot more high intensity VO2 max work. This is for endurance athletes working more towards race pace intervals as you get closer to your race. But someone like it who's training for a 5k or even less would potentially do the opposite. You know, they might do more base, base work as they get closer to that do more speed work. So that just wanted to put those points in there because I think he's been the person who really coined the term and he's probably the go to source in it. I really liked his summary points.

Yeah, they're great, aren't they? And there's not a lot you can add. They are self explanatory and at the end of the day, as long as you're getting a load and getting consistency, then you will start to see progress. And I think keeping it as simple as possible, even though we spent an hour talking about a very complex topic, you know, we are just saying there are periods when you need to train easy but you need to do a lot of training to get the value out of it. And that doesn't mean, you know, you're just basically not even getting your heart rate to a point where it's getting a stimulus. You know, easy training can be right up to zone 2 or 75% of your FTP if we forget about using zones. But at the end of the day we have to have something, you know, at FTP or above in that, in that model. So easy and hard training, they're the two things that are going to give you your best bang for your buck. As long as you're consistent and as long as you're willing to turn up each day, then you will start to see progress.

Perfect way to summarize it, this has been another pretty big episode from us. We really hope you've enjoyed it and we'll see you on the next one. Sam.