Polarized Cycling Zones, Endurance Training Plan & Zones Calculator

What is polarized endurance training? Put simply, the polarized training model consists of lots of time spent training at a low intensity (endurance pace) with small doses of very high intensity efforts. Tempo range is avoided in the polarized model. This blog post contains details on every aspect of polarized training. Click a link to jump straight to a section!

I also highly recommned you read our “Science of Cycling” guide to get some great foundational knowledge of exercise physiology.

Polarized Training

Sections
↓ *What is Polarized Training*
↓ *Calculating Your Polarized Cycling Training Zones in Word Form*
↓ *The Issue With Polarized Training*
↓ *Tempo, The Silent Killer, An Introduction* *(full article* *here*)
↓ *Does Polarized Training Inhibit FTP Gains?*
↓ *Biologic Durability and Repeatability in Cycling*
↓ *What Should The Time Crunches Cyclist Do?*
↓ *Intervals: Are Your Intervals Hard Enough… too hard??*
↓ *Max Watts Vs. Repeatability*
↓ *Aerobic Vs Anaerobic Contributions in Cycling*
↓ *Downloadable Polarized Training Zones Calculator*
↓ *Steven Seiler 4 x 8 Minute Polarized Cycling Intervals*
↓ *Polarized Training Zones: Which Model Is Best?*

There’s been some buzz around polarized bicycle interval training in cycling after the Velonews podcast, Fast Talk, hosted 2 interviews with Dr. Stephen Seiler, Professor of Sport Science in Norway. You probably know of the Stephen Seiler Polarized Training Intervals, or know him for his popular study based around 4 x 8 intervals.

A handful of EVOQ.BIKE athletes listened to the Fast Talk podcasts and had some questions about these intervals. These podcasts have been out for a while, but after finally giving them the solid listen that they deserve, I wanted to open a conversation and finish the Complete Guide To Polarized Cycling.

I really enjoyed the content, and if anything, it made me really happy with my training regimen; the importance of “the long ride” in an endurance sport like cycling lives on, and anyone that follows me on Strava knows that I love a long ride!

See Also: Cycling Training Programs

What Is Polarized Endurance Training

While there are many positives and key points that they highlight for polarized cycling, I don’t see an entire polarized regimen working for most of my athletes that have limited hours to train and aren’t getting paid to ride their bike.

While it comes across as a very simply plan to follow, the follow through would be hard for many cyclists because many aren’t riding solely for competitive results. Social and personal achievement is attached to our riding throughout the week and weekend, and the polarized plan makes it hard to find small wins along the way.

These small wins, on basic workouts, are important for most cyclists, and they keep many of us ticking along. Strip these away, and I could see the polarized training being less enjoyable for many. I always stress to my athletes, even the ones at the highest level: if this isn’t fun, we are doing something wrong.

I decided that while many won’t have the 6 hours to dedicate to listening to these podcasts, rewinding to fully digest it all, taking notes on your numbers, etc etc, I summarized a bunch of the main points and things that I found interesting about Stephen Seiler’s training. If you want to give the full episodes a listen, they are episodes 51: Polarizing your training with Dr. Stephen Seiler, and Episode 54: Applying the polarized training model with Stephen Seiler. Links below.

Four Things I Like About Polarized Training

Is polarized training better? There are some benefits and drawbacks to polarized training listed below:

1) What is the benefit of polarized training? The training regimen has a massive emphasis on cyclists improving their aerobic power output
2) The podcasts dive into the importance of not just your maximum power output, but the repeatability of efforts.
3) The training highlights the downside of group rides, and how it doesn’t move your training forward.
4) It is an incredibly simple plan to follow if you have your zones set properly

Four Things I Dislike About Polarized Training

1) No race specificity.
2) There seems to only be a small window of intensity-based intervals that you can perform, which could lead to stagnation in your training.
3) Many cyclists will struggle to follow this if they aren’t riding 20 hours a week because it isn’t “sexy”. At the end of the day, all training programs need to be practical.
4) Many athletes won’t follow this protocol because of the type of riding that amateur riders encounter in their community

Updated Bonus Tip: Most athletes will always ride towards the higher end of the cycling power zones they are prescribed. For example, if it says ride 65-75% FTP, most are trying to nail 75%, myself included.

This can become an issue because then you are riding a lot at 80% in order to make up for the times you need to coast (hopefully not more than 10-20%), and therefore riding too hard, too often. This is exactly why Seiler came out with these, to avoid this!

The group ride issue is the biggest problem for most cyclists that dislike riding alone and are more focused on the social side of the sport. This is not a bad thing: adults being active and having fun is a great thing! It’s just usually not helpful in raising your fitness and preparing you for competitions (whether trying to drop a friend on said group ride, or winning a competitive race).

Now, just as any as training instruction goes, keep this in mind: there are a million ways to train, and you have to find what works for YOU. This all sounds amazing when you listen to it, but then listen to “Is FTP dead?”, episode 33, and there are other people who are also very qualified coaches that do NOT agree with polarized training. I give my thoughts on all of this as we move through it, and at the end of the post, I’ll take a look at my own data and a few athletes….what’s the chance that we’re already training in a polarized model?

Calculating Your Polarized Zones In Cycling

(Updated for 2021: See the Polarized Cycling Training Zones Calculator below (Please download to your own machine, I cannot give you access to the online file, or some troll will ruin it!)

Polarized Training only has 3 zones, whereas many of us are used to 5, 6 or 9. How in the world could there only be 3 zones? The power bases training zones are defined below.

Zone 1: easy base training, below aerobic threshold
Zone 2: no man’s land (tempo) or sweet spot
zone 3: high intensity

Seiler finds that elite athletes are training 80% in zone 1, very little in zone 2, and 15-20% of zone 3. To be clear, these percentages are for calculating a training session.

When you break it up into pure time, which seems easier to track and conceptualize, it’s 90% in zone 1, very little in zone 2, and 10% in zone 3. You can even lean more to 95/5. You really don’t need all that much intensity when you are looking from 30,000 feet.

So in order to follow a polarized training model, you need to cut out the sweet spot and tempo riding. They really don’t get into a concrete definition of how to determine YOUR three zones until the second podcast, but I’ll list them below.

The boundary between zone 1 and 2 is: 0.77 multiplied by your 60 minute max average watts. For me, that would be 307W (399*0.77 =307W).
The boundary between zone 2 and 3: your 60 minute average maximum power output. So for me, 399W.
The upper end of zone 3 is your 6min power. 510W

They also use percentages of power at VO2Max, and use the following calculation: the boundary between zone 1 and 2 is 65% VO2Max power, and the boundary between zone 2 and 3 is 85-90% of VO2Max power.

According to WKO5, 520W is my power output at VO2max, so:

520 * .65 = 338W, the upper limit for the green zone, zone 1.
520 * .9 = 468W, the upper limit for the yellow zone, zone 2.

So between the two different methods, the numbers are pretty close, but you might find some variation depending on when you did your last 1 hour test, as well as when in training you are. Your VO2Max Power levels might be higher if you’ve recently tested, or if you’ve recently gone through a VO2Max block and either 1) got a bump in training fitness or 2) Got used to the VO2Max intensity and were really able to crank out some high numbers!

In applying this to training, the border between zone 1 and 2 is more important because that is often where people cruise at. However, the second method seems more accurate for “going hard”.

One of the hosts says that he also sees 2.5 hour average power being a good border for zone 1/2, and I don’t find that to be true simply since so many guys are going harder for longer. My 2.5 hour power is 324-351 depending on where I am in the season, so it’s too high. A few years back though, this would have been more valid. A 30 minute test sounded really long, and like many other cyclists, I was only doing 20 minute intervals. I’ve lengthened everything out and will do 240 minute intervals to really bring up that long distance wattage. Has it helped me? Immensely.

For those using heart rate to calculate training zones, your target heart rate for cycling can be created below. They recommend doing the polarized zone 1 rides by heart rate because of heart rate or cardiac drift, which can happen after 3 hours. Once you move along in the ride, what was zone 1 can become harder on your system so the watts stay the same, but your average heart rate actually drifts into z2 heart rate.

For Z1 heart rate, 70% HR peak is your target heart rate for cycling for low intensity rides, with the border being a max of 75%.
For Z2 heart rate upper border, it is 85-87%, or 92% for someone fit.

That power data seems pretty accurate to me and definitely usable.

Calculate your training zones right now if you have access to your VO2Max power output and let me know, are they similar?

Talk to a coach

Screen shot 2014-04-15 at 7.57.46 AM.png

One Major Issue With Polarized Training

I’ve worked RACE SPECIFIC high intensity efforts that were less than 6 minutes, improved, and done better in a race because of this training. These intervals would not fall into the polarized model, as they would be at power outputs above the top end of zone 3 (520W).

Case in point was the Fort McClellan PRT Road Race that had the main climb being a 5 minute crusher, insanely steep. I smashed 5 minute intervals until my eyes popped out, improved on that duration and ended up 10th behind former Sky lead out man, Greg Henderson. Eric Marcotte rolled up to me as we hit the climb for the last time, in a severely shattered group and said, “Big boy getting over these hills today, huh?”

I just laughed and cried, knowing that the biggest attacks were coming; and I’d get dropped.

Issue With Polarized Training Zones

As stated above, one of the boundaries created with my zones would be the upper boundary for zone 1 at 338W. My FTP is 415W right now, so that’s 81.5%. That is solidly into tempo, and polarized is “supposed” to do away with that.

If I was targeting a lot of rides at that number, I would CRACK!

And if I was targeting that number as my average, I’d be riding over that number, riding closer to 85% FTP. This would surely leave me “failing” zone 1 rides, and asking myself “What the heck is wrong with me?”

The thing that would be wrong with me is simply that I’m riding too hard, and accruing too much fatigue along the way!

Be aware that the top end of your Zone 1 in a Polarized Cycling Training Model might be too high.

Post Ride Fatigue With Polarized Zone 1 Rides

If you take this approach, they really stress how the fatigue is so different from the fatigue that you may used to. You’ll feel EMPTY when you finish, and you could just start eating…fill it up again.

You haven’t created a big sympathetic response, whereas when you do a hard high intensity efforts you feel wrecked and don’t want to eat right away. There’s a big difference, and I remember my early zone 2 rides that were truly only z2, and I’d come home and devour food! I completely agree with this and know that the benefits of long, consistent, endurance rides are phenomenal for creating a massive endurance engine. I feel my biggest strides were made from the 75% FTP rides; not the 100% rides. There is no replacement for the long ride.

Going to exhaustion at a slow pace is something that I love doing. I’d call a slow pace 65-80% of FTP, with your goal of having your average watts around 70-75% FTP. According to the podcasters, this taps into fiber populations that include the fast twitch fibers and activates ALL of them, including 2As and 2Bs that aren’t used to doing endurance activities. Once you totally crush them, it’s a whole new tired.

Steven Seiler states that he thinks the best Pro Tour athletes are the ones with the biggest polarized zone 1. I don’t know if that is true, but I’d love to believe it so I can keep doing tank emptying, long endurance rides.

Problem With Online Cycling Training Plans

All of these cycling training plans online and lots of new data seem to point to ways to cut corners and get physiological bumps in fitness.

Steven Seiler points out that this could simply be the nature of the lab. It’s very hard to get someone to come into a lab and ask them to “get years and years of long, slow, endurance rides under your belt and we will study you”.

However, if you have people come in for gut-wrenching, all out thrash fest, you can get a quick bump and now you’ve got an “effective workout plan”. This is very American, with the saying, “No pain, no gain!” We want to make workouts more efficient: more intensity, less time, and back to normal life.

I see this in a lot of new athletes that get into cycling and start to find their local group ride and training race. I was sucked into this as well when I first started riding. I’d do the Tuesday night training race, go hard again on Wednesday, and then look for a group ride Saturday, and do a long ride Sunday. That is way too much intensity for a young buck new to the sport. Even for a seasoned cyclist, what equates to 4 hard interval sessions in a week is a LOT.

I’m not saying there isn’t a time for turn and burn, but it should NOT be every workout, or even every other workout!

view our training programs

Results For Untrained Cyclists

Back to the lab, working at 75% HR MAX is boring for the scientist and the participant. Interval training at intensity is more exciting! Also, you can see crazy results on untrained people pretty quickly.

This is very true: if you noticed one of my posts, I told athletes to skip their weekly group ride once a week, and I’d give them four MAX AEROBIC workouts, knowing they’d get faster because most athletes don’t work that system enough. They go on group ride after group ride where it’s just smash and sit in; that gets you almost nowhere in an endurance sport.

You’re never pedaling consistently, which is one thing I drill into my athletes. Do an endurance ride with only 10% or less in Zone 1 and you will get faster. No doubt. Although I’m no longer a fan for many reasons, starting my cycling career in Rochester, NY had me riding fixed gear centuries and I’m sure that helped my cycling economy!!! You can’t stop pedaling.

Another great point is made: studies of trained athletes can be trickled down to the untrained athlete. Meaning, if you have the time to follow a pro athlete’s program, and put in 15-20+ hours on the bike, that will most likely be effective. However, studies of untrained athletes cannot be scaled up to the trained athlete. Don’t read an article on untrained athletes and assume that those same results will work on you if you’re already training 5-8 hours a week. The recent intensity focus has been delivered to the untrained and people are trying to really scale it up to themselves.

Grant Holicky from Apex Coaching was interviewed and he talks about how too much time is spent by most athletes in the polarized zone 2. Most people make the easy too hard, and the hard not hard enough. “Training is about working the edges of the system.” I totally agree with this. This goes back to the group rides: most people are wasting TONS of energy and time just ripping up short Strava segments and not focusing on longer duration, endurance based, cycling intervals.

How many times have you gone hard for 8 minutes? And done it 4-6 times? Probably not many of us are doing that enough.

Tempo, The Silent Killer

Endurance and tempo gives the same physiological response, but one just makes you more tired. This is why I consistently call tempo the silent killer. You won’t crack after 3 weeks of tempo, but when May hits and you start riding tempo all of the time (it’s called fast fun for a reason), by July you might start feeling a little stale.

The stale feeling also happens to athletes that ride too hard through November, December, and January, finding themselves left with a stagnated feeling just as the race season is about to start.

All of that tempo has made your HARD efforts not hard enough. You won’t feel totally wrecked from too much tempo, but I guarantee it hurts your overall performance if not used correctly.

Bottom line: Make your hard efforts super hard! But then RECOVER FROM IT. You need to actually ABSORB the training stimulus. Don’t go wreck yourself again.

In the next section, I’m going to look at the following topics:

Does polarization reduce your ability to push your FTP power output ceiling up?
Biologic Durability and Repeatability
How does the time crunched athletes apply this model? Is it possible to use, or is this just for the professional riders?
Are we going hard enough? Or, are we actually going too hard that we can’t absorb the training? (This is really interesting!)
I have 6 hours to train: what do I do?!
Which is more important: my max watts or my repeatability?
Aerobic Vs. Anaerobic Power Contributions to Cycling

This is part 2 of the polarized training for cyclists series.

As mentioned in the previous post, the topics covered in this article will be:

Does polarization reduce your ability to push your FTP ceiling up?
Biologic Durability and Repeatability
How does the time crunched athletes apply this model? Is it possible to use, or is this just for the professional riders?
I have 6 hours to train: what do I do?!
Are we going hard enough? Or, are we actually going too hard that we can’t absorb the training? (This is really interesting!)
Which is more important: my maximum power output or my repeatability?
Aerobic Vs. Anaerobic Contributions to Cycling

Does Polarized Training In Cycling Inhibit FTP Gains?

For polarized training intensity distribution, when you measure power data the time is actually 90% in zone 1, and 10% in zone 3. This is really wild when you look at your power output, and one of the guests on the podcast mentioned seeing numbers more like 95% in Zone 1 and 5% in Zone 3! I wasn’t surprised to hear that. 10% of your riding at or above 90% of your VO2Max power training zones is a LOT! To add to that, if you’re doing quality intervals of duration, those are really taxing on the body, making it hard to come back for more.

So here is another issue that I have with polarized training. We’re basing so much on VO2Max, but we only want to be riding there 10% of the time; or can only physically handle that physical stress and load. I’m okay with that amount, because it’s a lot, but you can boost your VO2Max ceiling by raising your FTP; you can raise your FTP by riding at Sweet Spot and 100-105% of your current FTP; but polarized training does not have a way to utilize these FTP boosting properties (and indirectly, pushing out your VO2Max). These efforts are also very race specific to late race attacks as well as getting in the hard break, especially if you are a cat 2-5 and racing with stronger riders. The attacks that are always pulled back are from the athletes that can attack and create a gap from the peloton (30-60 second attacks at 200% FTP) but they lack the ability to fall into 100% FTP for 3-5 minutes afterwards which creates the lasting separation. I don’t foresee an athlete riding a 30 minute break at the end of the race by simply hitting intervals above 90% VO2Max. Many people’s 85% is right at FTP, so to be hammering over that is hard…you’ll be doing 6m intervals at most. Never doing a 10 minute interval sounds crazy; supra threshold is a thing to be practiced in cycling; no?

See Also: Strength For Cyclists

Biologic Durability and Repeatability in Cycling

The next topic is on biologic durability, or biologic resilience, which is created with a lot of the low intensity volume that allows athletes to hit those hard workouts over and over again at full strength. You can recover faster and this low endurance training really builds durability in their system, affecting the hormonal system, muscular system, and cardiovascular system. There is no shortcut to building this. This all goes back to making sure you are fully recovered from hard efforts, and I 100% agree with all of this.

Low intensity riding, or what is traditionally referred to as endurance pace (55-75% FTP), should be a mainstay in your cycling diet. When possible, lean towards 75% as opposed to 55%. This has gone by the wayside for so many athletes, especially for the group ride addicts. Those rides are littered with a massive amount of coasting and intense surges. They never work their aerobic system effectively. One of the best, and easiest workouts, is what I call the 10% workout. This is a workout for some, and a mantra for my more advanced athletes. Go out for an endurance ride and try to have your traditional Zone 1 (<50% FTP) time be less than 10% of your total ride time. So if you go for a 3 hour ride (180 minutes), have no more than 18 minutes of Zone 1 time. This sounds easy, but it is not! You’ll rack up close to 6-8 minutes simply getting out of the city. Once you are out on the open roads however, PEDAL YOUR BIKE. I will follow up this post with one on what a really good endurance ride looks like, and you may be surprised! This low intensity riding has been key in my growth as a cyclist in terms of being able to ride long, hold higher average watts over durations over 2 hours, increase my power 20% over the years, and build this biologic durability that they speak of.

If you have biologic durability, you can do some blocks of supercompensation, but most athletes need to max it out at 2 hard sessions a week. I remember getting 2 hard workouts early on, and then the weekend was just endurance cruising. Supercompensation was simply hitting the climbs at VO2Max until I couldn’t anymore; so that was the third high intensity training session. But that was IT! And I was religious with my zone 2; I never even went into tempo (76-90% FTP). I have changed my ways and do some extra time around 80% now simply because of time constraints and a joy for riding; I definitely don’t ride for optimal performance at all times. It has to be fun, and to me, getting tired and burning as many kilojoules as possible is just that: FUN. Plus, I like eating food. Follow me on Strava if you feel so inclined to see the mega adventures.

Get Your FREE power file analysis

How Many Hours is the Polarized Model?

How many hours a week should I do polarized training? With the polarized training model, to a point, the more hours you can put in the better. The more time you are able to spend training at low intensity cycling power zones, the bigger your aerobic engine will be. Professionals with unlimited time to train will regularly do 25-30 hour weeks! If you have an upper limit of 10 hours, then do 10 hours!

What Should The Time Crunched Cyclist Do?

Base miles work! How do we get around that if you don’t have time to pedal at a polarized easy intensity for 90-95% of the time? Well, let’s get specific with the hours.

If You Have 8 Hours To Train

Back to the Canadians on the podcast: let’s look at an athlete that has 7-8 hours to train. I would say this should be split up into two weekend rides for 2 hours (one being 3 hours if your total training time is 8 hours), then three 1 hour rides during the week. The example they use is an athlete that is going to a stage race with 5k feet climbing a day, where they would prescribe 2 x 45m of tempo (to define, that is 75-90% of FTP), which they claim still in bottom part of 90% of world of polarization. This is my problem with that…90% FTP is not in the bottom 80% of polarization. So they’re proving the effectiveness of the middle ground, the zone 3 tempo ride. Do enough tempo and they can absorb it; you can’t just do high intensity intervals and really easy miles if you want to attack a 5,000 foot climbing day. This ECHOS the fact that the polarized model is for professional cyclists that can log a LOT of easy miles below tempo to build that biologic durability. If you are doing 8h a week, 2 hard workouts a week is still your max. The hard has to be HARD. The rest will be mainly endurance, tempo, and some over unders. While I don’t prescribe a ton of sweet spot unless an athlete has really long climbs in there event, Here’s a video I posted about how to use sweet spot training to boost your cycling performance.

If you have 6 hours to train, based on polarization, go with the following:

1 ride should be 2-2.5 hours, stretch yourself horizontally. Have two rides of 1 hour in duration at intensity and one ride of moderate intensity.

Warning: The following is NOT Polarized Training, but what I’d recommend, since it’s worked for so many athletes.

If you can, do one ride for 3 hours (I realize this may be hard to escape for that long, but maybe you can make this a Saturday AM ride. Leave at 5:30am and return before the family breakfast is over. A lot of this comes down to: how bad do you want to be good? Or great!?). Then do a 2 hour and 1 hour ride with intensity that week. We should define intensity: it’s not on the gas off the gas for 1 hour with your buddies. Do some specific VO2Max intervals; work on PMAX; work on intensive and extensive anaerobic intervals; work on Max Aerobic intervals. Then for the other four days of the week, fill the time with calisthenics or things you can do while you are doing things with the family, or whatever the other major time requirement is. Put your kid on your back and do some damn push ups!

At the end of the day, polarization wants the athlete to get more minutes at 91% average heart rate instead of going crazy for 4 x 4 minutes. I don’t agree with this for all of the aforementioned reasons, especially race specificity. But I do agree with their bottom line: don’t let everyday become middle of the road hard! Be careful of the group ride that pushes you when you don’t need to be pushed. Many times (almost always!) those efforts aren’t event specific.

Polarized Training on 10 Hours Per Week

I put out this video on how polarized training can be used for everyone! Hunter Allen sent out an email that was forwarded to me many times, as he painted polarized training as this “ALWAYS SMASHING” or “ALWAYS BORING EASY RIDING”. That’s not true polarized training.

Time crunched athletes always get promoted the idea that you need to get the most out of each session (which is actually true for ANY cyclist), and the way to do this is by just increasing the intensity. This is physiologically not correct because you end up overtraining your glycolytic system. Said differently, you train to produce energy via carbohydrate and similar powers where you should have more energy demand coming from fat oxidation. You can’t just bake the cake at a higher intensity!

Too much tempo and sweet spot gets prescribed, and while there are oftentimes initial gains, they fade, and now you’ve trained your glycolytic system too much, and you haven’t focused on fat oxidation and VO2Max training.

There were some crazy training intensity distribution proposed, and I’d like to correct those. If you have 10 hours per week to train, your training distribution by time should ROUGHLY look like this:

Zone 1: 15-20%
Zone 2: 50%
Zone 3: 15-20%
Zone 4: 5%+-
Zone 5: 2%
Zone 6: 2%

You do NOT want to be spending 35% of your training time at Zone 3 with another 15% at Zone 4. There will be initial newbie gains in these cycling power zones, but this is not the way to become the fastest cyclist you can become in the long term!

Do Pro Cyclists Use Polarized Training?

If we take a look at Strava, there is overwhelming evidence that most professional cyclists use the polarized model in training. They do BIG volume at endurance pace and typically a couple days of short, high intensity workouts. VO2max work and over/unders seem to be a favorite amongst the pros. Check out our blog on pro cyclist power output to get a deep dive into what a pro cyclist’s training looks like.

There is one caveat to this that we must consider, and that is professional cyclists also race 60-80 days per year and they will spend TONS of time racing in the tempo “dead zone” that the polarized model says to avoid at all costs. Interestingly, professionals will regularly race to help them gain fitness ahead of their biggest goals so this begs the question if a purely polarized approach is right for the general population. The pros are spending lots of time doing tempo in racing, so maybe we do need to train it as amateurs??

Are We Training Hard Enough With Cycling Intervals??

Next up he talked with some Canadian guys, Andrew Randall and Steve Neal, and the point that stands out the most is that you can train with intensity only if you actually absorb it. Are you actually improving from an all out effort?

First you absorb it, then you improve. If the ultimate goal is to improve, you can use testing to see if it’s working. While 4 times a week intensity might work for 2-4 weeks, usually Randall and Neal see athletes losing motivation to continue or they just get worse. The real problem of trying to do an all out effort 4 times a week goes back to Grant’s point: the hard won’t be hard enough! It might feel hard, and it might hurt, but you aren’t giving your body the physiological stress to actually get faster.

This is so incredibly true and I’ve witnessed it in myself and countless other athletes. This is why power meters are so helpful for cyclists. There are days when Zone 2 might seem hard, and there are many reasons to push through and knock out that last endurance ride at the prescribed wattage before a rest week. There are other days when endurance may seem SO EASY, and this is where many cyclists falter; they just ride harder. Don’t do this. Save that energy so that you can make the hard workout, a few days later, REALLY FREAKING HARD. Many athletes sabotage their race performance because they let their nerves, instead of their brain, do the thinking before a big event. In trying to stay sharp, they get tired, and probably go in a 95% of their best.

Nothing but high intensity power training zones is a recipe for cracking down the road. I would say 1-2 times of intensity a week is the best bet. Quantity, duration, and how intense you are going in the power training zones is completely varies athlete to athlete. And yes, a group ride most likely takes up one of those rides, and that’s why you need to be very cautious using these rides, as most group rides get hard for very short bursts of time, and then everyone coasts. This type of go hard, coast, go hard, coast, may only improve your 30 second effort. But then if you’re in a race or weekend ride when someone really drills it, you’ve trained your body to need that rest. If it doesn’t come, guess what, you’re dropped. So, instead, work different durations on these group rides and stretch out some of those efforts to 3-5 minutes. Then you can enjoy the group ride but still get some quality intensity. You can also get an extra boost if you use Lactigo before your group rides or races.

Are We Training Too Intensely With Cycling Intervals?

Seiler mentioned that David Bishop in Australia says that conditions associated with very high blood lactate may have some inhibitory effects on adaptive signaling, which works well with Seiler talking about not getting TOO intense. 90-92% HR max is good, but 95% HR max is too much. I like this, because I hate going hard, but I don’t agree with it. My 1-2 minute power has gotten better since I moved to Tennessee because Patrick Walle made me do it. It was my weakness, and it’s really boosted my ability to break away from packs and then hit my bread and butter FTP throttling. If you can turn a criterium into a time trial, it’s great if you’re a time trialist. I’m seeing large improvements with a former USA National Champion because we are specifically working on neuromuscular training and extensive anaerobic power capabilities. So although many of us hate going hard, I don’t think it’s too intense to make adaptations. I’ll be curious to see where the research goes with this.

Absorb The Aerobic Training For Cycling

A great point brought up is the lack of the aerobic energy system that so many athletes encounter these days. They get into cycling and immediately purchase a Suffer Fest plan and just hit it hard week in and week out. There is no rest, and therefore no way to absorb the training stimulus. See my video on the need for continual rest weeks! I was lucky to have mentors that drilled in the fact that October through December was easy base miles, but lots of them. I truly believe that is why I have such a massive endurance engine for an amateur cyclist.

Polarization asks you to do the easy rides, and do them longer. Believe in the system. I like this accentuation on aerobic fitness, because so many people lack it. They never ride at a consistent aerobic pace. I honestly am not sure why, as this is my favorite type of riding, but it is not common for many.

I never really focused so much on the concept of us being sponges. It’s great, and I think an easy reminder for us all to ask, “Am I absorbing this?” If you have a crazy week of training, you need time to recover from that, absorb it, and get stronger. You get STRONGER when you rest, when your body GROWS from the stimulus. You do not get stronger the minute you finish the really intense session; it’s after it has been absorbed that you see true growth.

Related Post: Cycling Recovery Week Guide

Hire a Coach to help make you faster

Max Watts Vs. Repeatability

They interviewed Larry Warbasse, and this is what he had to say:

Biologic durability is more important than peak numbers. All the World Tour Pros set their best numbers in January in camp; blowing the roof off the numbers! This, however, doesn’t mean that’s the strongest that they’ll get. They’re fresher, so they’re setting high numbers, but it’s not repeatable. Is the max power test the best fitness; no? It’s what you can do over and over. No one at the same skill level gets dropped on the first attack; it’s the fourth or fifth or end of the race move! This is why we have athletes hit 95% 6-8 times! It’s so much more effective for becoming a stronger cyclist."

Cadel Evans never did intervals during the camps, and Larry asked him, how the hell is he so good without doing intervals? Cadel knew that it doesn’t take a long time to get really fit, and he can only hold it for a certain amount of time….so wait until you get close to the objectives, and then rip it. I think it’s best to keep in mind though, this is coming from a pro cyclist who is riding 20 hours a week. Of course if he starts ripping it too early, it won’t be sustainable. He needs to just ride to keep fit and will be sporting a very high Chronic Training Load (CTL), and then when he adds the intensity on top of that, he’ll see his true race form come out.

We adapt pretty quickly to things, even as athletes. We adapt and can hit our higher levels of fitness within a short amount of time, especially if we are trained athletes. The ceiling effects are clearly there for high intensity work, so hold back in duration of intensity and level of intensity. You don’t need to burn the candle too early. If you go too hard too early, there’s nowhere else to go. To the guy on the group ride explaining to me that he’s doing a Sufferfest plan right now with 4 Sweet Spot workouts a week; please reread this section!

A lot of this is trial and error; you need to fiddle with things and see what balance of training works for you. This is the artistry side of coaching and being an endurance athlete. It’s hard to make the right call when you are tired and questioning things; get a coach and have them optimize your performance! Winning, and crushing goals, is the best feeling ever.

Aerobic Vs. Anaerobic Contributions In Cycling

Another great topic that they bring up is Aerobic vs. Anaerobic contributions. We overestimate the anaerobic and underestimate the aerobic portion.

In a 2 minutes race, about 65-70% involves oxygen, so it’s aerobic! That really surprised me. I would have thought it would be 30 seconds aerobic, and 90 seconds anaerobic power.

I decided to google “how aerobic is cycling”, and found an article from 2013 that talks about just how important the aerobic energy system is after only 10 seconds of cycling! Wow. That’s awesome (since I love aerobic workouts).

How Important is Anaerobic Energy in Cycling? Part 1

Many time athletes start talking about the need to work on their top end, but really it is always about the last sprint that they should be worried about. If you’re just under your cycling threshold heart rate for the whole race, which can happen if you’re racing much faster people, no wonder you have nothing at the end!

If everyone is nose-breathing and you’re dying, it’s game over. Is your issue truly top end or basic endurance? Build a huge foundation, and you can do this with those tempo and sweet spot workouts that polarized training doesn’t want you to do. The key is making sure you recover from those fully before doing your main intensity workout of the week. The hard has to be hard!

Polarized Training Zones Calculator

With the boom of Steven Seiler’s Polarized Training for Cycling and athletes asking about Polarized Training Plans for Cycling, we wanted to create the calculator for those zones, because they aren’t always as clear cut as one might think.

You can calculate your polarized training zones for cycling two ways. Both are in the excel sheet that you can download below.

Calculation 1:

The boundary between zone 1 and 2 is: 0.77 multiplied by your 60 minute max average watts.
The boundary between zone 2 and 3: your 60 minute average max.
The upper end of zone 3 is your 6min power.

Other blogs have FTP set as the upper limit of zone 2, which often times splits the difference between the method above, and the method below, which utilizes VO2Max to calculate your polarized training zones.

Polarized Training Zones Based On VO2Max

Calculation 2:

They also use percentages of cycling power zones at VO2Max, and use the following calculation: the boundary between zone 1 and 2 is 65% VO2Max power, and the boundary between zone 2 and 3 is 85-90% of VO2Max power.

In order to use your Polarized Training Zones Calculator, use this link to go to the worksheet and use either tab for Traditional Power Zones or Polarized Training Power Zones. You can then DOWNLOAD the worksheet to your own Google Sheets or desktop in different formats. The Training Zones Calculator is not functional on this webpage just yet.

Polarized Cycling 4 x 8 Minute Intervals

After the extremely popular VeloNews Podcasts with Dr. Stephen Seiler from Norway, we wrote up our thoughts on Polarized Training in Cycling. A lot of listeners started Googling this doctor’s work, and this is where you can find the main study that he references in the slide presentation.

The biggest takeaway that I’ve heard riders making is his proof that 4 x 8 minute training for cycling was the best way to improve one’s Functional Threshold Power (FTP). Of course, with this being one of the main metric’s based around cycling performance, as well as one that can be tested relatively easily, you’ll often hear athletes talking about their FTP and how they can improve it.

When you look at the study from Dr. Stephen Seiler, the 3 main groups of riders perform 4 x 4m, 4 x 8m, and 4 x 16m intervals sessions, aiming to hit the highest average wattages possible. The results show that the riders who performed 4 x 8m intervals had the largest change at VO2peak (l/min), power at VO2peak (W), and Power at 4mM blood lactate concentration (W).

With results like these, should we just ride some 4 x 8m intervals over and over again and we’ll reap all of the greatest benefit for our Zone 4 and 5 performance? After all, isn’t this what everyone needs to excel at in order to be at their best for cycling? Keep reading.

Athletes Going All In On 4 x 8 Minute Intervals

Luckily I ran into an athlete who had been doing these intervals over and over again but didn’t really seem to have much of a game plan for his training for cycling.

“Why are you doing just these interval durations?”
“Well, I listened to that podcast and it said that they had the biggest results.”
“How often are you doing them?”
“Twice a week. And then easy rides.”
“What’s the plan after here?”
“Well, I’m not really sure.”

So, it’s very polarized in nature. One thing that you must take note of: everything at Zone 4 and above is Use It or Lose It, and an athlete can only maintain the results for a finite amount of time, whereas Zone 2 riding can be done over and over and over and you just continue to build massive aerobic energy system efficiencies.

Are we saying that you should just ride Zone 2? Definitely not; read on.

If you train at 100% FTP cycling power zones or above and aren’t using that training for a specific event coming up, you will make gains, not use the results (since you don’t have an event), come off a higher level of fitness (or peak), and then be back to where you started, but slightly more tired.

Yes, training FTP is important because you also learn how to dig deeper each time and there are not only mental gains to be made, but also the physiological growth. That said, these training blocks take a month or two to see results, so realistically you only have 3 (maybe 4) opportunities to go through these cycles when you consider the following:

October through January is base building and preparation for the upcoming spring and summer, leaving eight months left to work with, and this is when you are racing and resting for the next events on your schedule.

So, back to this athlete. While he may make some gains in January, it’s too early, as he won’t be wanting to use this fitness until April or so. He’d be much better off working on his aerobic efficiencies and system with Zone 2 and 3, start incorporating some burst efforts, and THEN hitting these 4 x 8m intervals before the race season.

Should We Forget About 4 x 4 And 4 x 16 Minute Intervals?

Definitely not.

All three of these durations are in the Functional Reserve Capacity and FTP System, and in order to avoid stagnation by only doing 4 x 8 minute intervals, you want to work the edges of that, as well as the other systems that you will be utilizing as a competitive cyclist! While Max Aerobic work will be improved, don’t forget to lengthen out your intervals beyond 16 minutes...WAY BEYOND...like to 40, 60, and 90 minutes, with decreasing intensity, to develop Intensive Aerobic and Extensive Aerobic capabilities.

What Wattage Do I Do My Intervals At?

When you look at Stephen Seiler’s study, the athletes were supposed to give 100%. If you have accurate data, you can shoot for 95% of your 8 minute best, as this is most likely the most repeatable wattage that you can hit. If you’re hitting 100% four times in a row, there’s a good chance that your max wattage number is just a little low. It won’t ruin your training, but it’s not optimized.

Check out our training plans

What Happens To Fitness When I Do 4 x 8 Minute Intervals?

This was interesting. I was curious what the athletes Chronic Training Load (CTL) and Acute Training Load (ATL) looked like on the Performance Manager Chart (PMC). While I think the importance of this chart is overrated due to people’s obsession with CTL, it still can have some importance. Take a look at this graph below. The first red arrow is really the last time the athlete fully rested (like 12/31 or 1/1), and then went until 1/20. 3 weeks on is normal, but it was so much intensity at 95% of hard watts. In this example it was 95% of his 8 minute max twice a week...too much intensity all at once, especially because he didn’t have a large base of aerobic training before.

The athlete mentioned that he had been feeling tired, and wasn’t sure why. This one snuck up on him, but luckily we held an #EvolveOurIQ Mastermind and the conversations there led him to reconsidering this repetitive 4 x 8 routine. Follow Us On Facebook to learn about this Live events coming to your town as we train and race around the country.

One thing this athlete needs now is rest. An easy way to "view rest" on the PMC Chart is when your CTL (blue line) dips below your ATL (pink line)...imagine it as "coming up for air". Said differently, this is actually when you are getting stronger.

His ATL almost trends like a build phase, but because of the intensity of the workouts and polarized nature of the following easy rides, it’s more mountainous and doesn’t build fitness (his CTL only moves from 33 to 36 points). He does build from 8 minute effort adaptations after he rests, but don’t forget, if he doesn’t use it, he’ll lose it. Therefore, the timing is off on this training block in terms of what intensities he is doing and the dosage.

Should I Do 4 x 8 Minute Intervals At 95-100% FTP?

Yes. Just make sure of the following rules:

Have accurate data at that duration and around the edges of it. Test it before you start this protocol with relatively fresh legs
Do this 4-6 weeks before an event that requires this type of training. This will be beneficial for almost ALL types of cycling, but don’t do it so much that you ignore Event Specific Training
Don’t substitute this training for Aerobic Building Rides, like long endurance rides on the weekends
Don’t hyper focus on just one duration for too long; your body gets used to that stimulus and stops responding with growth. Change things up, but make sure you are fresh enough for the new stimulus as well.

Polarized Training Zones: Which Zone Model Is Best?

There has been a TON of talk about training zones and possibly going backwards to 3 zones because of the craze with polarized training. While I have never been a fan of polarized cycling training, there were a few good things about it, the main one being, “don’t make the easy workouts too hard, and the hard workouts not hard enough.”

You can’t always be out smashing, or you’ll never TRULY BE SMASHING.

It was amazing to hear the creator, Steven Seiler, tell us that he created this new paradigm because he’s talked to so many amateurs that are doing just that: riding too hard when they shouldn’t be, and not understanding the basics of training and getting faster.

In order to help cyclists take a step back and hone in their training, he broke the zones down to just 3, so people would go really easy or really hard. This is extremely oversimplified in our eyes, and we were left scratching our heads when we read on blogs that this was the “new thing to do” and “a bunch of pros are doing it”.

No they aren’t. While I’m sure there are random cases where this works, it’s a step backwards for many, and not something we’d recommend.

I found it to be a really interesting podcast and there are some fantastic, easily digestible points, that are key to training properly. There’s a lot of basic information in this podcast with some of the biggest hitters when it comes to training with power: Dr. Andy Coggan, Dr. Stephen McGregor, and Hunter Allen.

Check out our training plans

Why Are There Seven Training Zones

What are the anchor points? Metabolic fitness is at the heart of these zones/ranges/regions/levels.

If there were 15 levels, it better reflects the physiological continuum, but this is not really useable, as it would be extremely difficult to hit the right zones and there would be too many of them.

On the other end of the spectrum, polarized training only has three zones. Do you believe that everything should be 65% of VO2Max and below, or really hard? If so, 3 zones will work for you. Do we think polarized training would work? If you’ve made it this far in the article, you’ll probably see why we don’t agree with polarization as the main paradigm for your training.

It’s too simple.

The seven zone system was the minimum number that Coggan felt like could be used to separate everything out and really accomplish the goal of creating zones that could be used to indicate what intensity riders should be riding at.

Connor likes the polarized zone model because it is all based on physiological thresholds, but points out that there really are 4 zones in polarization which was skimmed over in a previous podcast. Polarization stops at VO2Max, but there are intensities with power beyond that. Polarization’s 3 zone approach ignores that.

The seven zones have names and not just level numbers.

Active Recovery

Endurance

Tempo

Lactate Threshold Power

VO2Max

Anaerobic Capacity

Neuromuscular Power

The names of the seven zone system really aid in communication: why are you training at this intensity?

Is Polarized Training Based On Physiology?

Seiler says that’s the entire point of it: using “the two” physiological breakpoints with lactate.

Coggan pushes back on the claim that a three zone model is entirely grounded in physiology. The whole notion of a lactate threshold is as arbitrary as the creation of zones. The blood lactate response to exercise happens on a continuum, and it’s a mental convenience for us to say that there is a breakpoint, so perhaps the seven zone system is better.

There is no way to sum up a person in one breakpoint.

You need to look at all the points on the curve, so polarization has gray areas as well.

There is a close correlation across the data for a large number of individuals that shows that the exercise intensity that elicits a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol/L, will correlate with the exercise intensity that elicits 2.5mmol, or 3, or 6, or whatever number you are looking to compare

To say that there are two thresholds is a mental convenience. There is a continuum and the effect of exercise is to shift that entire curve around.

Coach Trevor Connor brings up this study from 2009 where Faude and Meyer look at the validity of threshold concepts. They detail the two breakpoint model and even say that it’s an old model; there is no distinct shift from aerobic to anaerobic!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19453206

Let’s back up and realize there are over 30 definitions from threshold. They’re all varied. There is a lack of communication on this front.

The Reason For Functional Threshold Power

Taking the physiology out of everything, FTP was created so that we could all talk about the science in a way that we apply it: riding a bike. Threshold: when does the gorilla start to climb on our back?

Right now, everyone knows what you’re talking about when you mention threshold power, or FTP. With Lactate Threshold power, the meaning was not standardized.

Coaches don’t need to know a ton about exercise physiology unless they are trying to make ground breaking discoveries. Coggan stresses the number of hats that a coach wears in order to get their athletes to reach their goals: motivation, tactics, bike handling, race experience, nutrition, a focused plan, etc. etc., the list goes on and on depending on the athlete’s needs.

The whole point of FTP is to take the science out of it and make it something that we can all understand and discuss; it makes communication possible.

What is the exercise intensity that you can sustain without the gorilla jumping on your back? If you go a little harder than that, he comes even sooner! This is how athletes pace themselves in time trials; respond to your own sensations, and this is what FTP accomplishes.

Know the feel of the watts. Learn what tempo feels like; learn what VO2Max feels like, learn what Active Recovery feels like. Know thyself and know how to ride.

Connor brings up the importance that FTP is more than just 1 hour power or a 20 minute test. More on that in a future post!

Why 3 Zones For Polarization - Steven Seiler

For an in-depth explanation of the 3-Zone model, check out this video on our YouTube channel. If you like our content, please like and subscribe, it really helps!

To finally recap, the few things I like about Polarization are:

1) The training regimen has a massive emphasis on cyclists improving their aerobic capacity.

2) Highlighting that athletes make the easy too hard, and the hard not hard enough

3) The training highlights the downside of group rides, and how it doesn’t move your training forward.

Seiler goes on to discuss that he wants to help athletes avoid scenarios that have high probability of happen with significant consequences, and the most common is that they train too hard on the easy days. This is where the zones come into play.

While this is a great idea and thing that you want to achieve, to set out a whole paradigm of training zones to make that one point seems a bit ridiculous to me. If you can’t expect an athlete to grasp the concept, and you can’t convince them, that going too hard on the easy days is a sure fire way to hamper your training, creating a whole other training paradigm will not change that either!

Polarization is just a band aid.

Instead, show them how to ride in the proper manner, they will see the results, and make the change themselves. I’ve seen this time and time again, even with some athletes that I only point in the right direction with a free Power File Analysis. I get a message two months down the road: “Holy crap, the rest, and less intensity, WORKS!”

Cyclists that truly want to boost their performance need to understand WHY the easy days need to be easy, and why the hard days need to get the respect they deserve and TRULY be hard days. The hard days are days that you don’t want to do because they will hurt.

Seiler goes back to physiology, while Coggan disputed that before.

So, end of the day, cyclists: Don’t overestimate your FTP if you want to get as fast as you possibly can, and don’t make the easy days too hard.

One last shocker: Seiler doesn’t have a power meter on his outdoor bikes.

Seiler agrees that a 5, 7 or 9 zone model is the way to go once we graduate past the 3 zone model.

I like his good heartedness, but I feel like he misled cyclists that are mentally beyond a 3 zone model. Educating and disciplining athletes doesn’t mean making a whole new, but inferior, model to the current standard.

VO2Max vs Threshold Based Levels

Without getting into the nitty gritty of this conversation (listen to the full podcast if you like), Sebastian Weber makes some great points about VO2Max workouts if you base all the levels off of FTP: since athletes may have VO2Max power at different percentages of FTP, each cyclist may be incurring different intensities at “125% FTP”. This standardization is doing the cyclist a disservice.

This tilts a nod to what Pearce said earlier, doing this off perceived exertion then. Just go really hard for the duration.

Coggan says that it is clear since the 1980s that muscular metabolic fitness, and not VO2Max, is the biggest determinant and therefore makes the most sense to base levels off of FTP.

Since there isn’t a unique fingerprint of VO2Max on exercise intensity-duration relationship, we should utilize FTP, since as many assumptions don’t need to be made.

Once you get out of the lab, VO2Max isn’t tested and known, so it’s not very applicable.

This tees up the new idea of WKO5 iLevels. When do we differentiate time durations and zones above threshold?

WKO5 iLevels

There is a big difference amongst athletes when it comes to suprathreshold efforts.

We can say that 120% FTP is VO2Max, but for those that are exceptional at suprathreshold efforts, they can hammer 150%. The diesels, or those that don’t train above FTP might struggle to do 6 x 5m at 110% FTP. So it was these suprathreshold variabilities that iLevels was intended to address by leveraging the Power Duration Model.

Coggan even thinks that these power levels could be an issue because now there are 9 levels, and that is getting to be a lot! It’s getting complex, and to be honest, we don’t even lay this out to 95% of our athletes; it’s too much. Even Coggan forgot how many levels there were now!

Let’s keep things simple to help athletes work the energy systems that they need to work in order to get faster and reach their goals.

The great thing about the new levels is that they have the updated names to include FRC and PMax, and they blend the levels so that we aren’t visually seeing such a hard breakpoint between levels like FTP and VO2Max, but now we can see a blended FTP/FRC; a great reminder that the training is happening on a continuum.

Colby Pearce added some great feedback that his endurance track athletes don’t have great crossover between the classic zones to the new iLevels. Coggan is very FTP based, and this model works really well for the bell curve of athletes, and the track athletes’ power curve may fall outside of these limits.

Conclusion

Three Zones is too simple
Training happens on a continuum
There aren’t hard stopped physiological breakpoints; those are a mental convenience for our own understanding
Use Functional Threshold Power: it allows us all to communicate effectively
iLevels is a great help to hone our Suprathreshold efforts
Work All The Energy Systems!

Learn about hiring a professional coach

If you enjoy these posts, will you please share with one cycling friend? We greatly appreciate it!

Thank you to everyone for your comments and questions, let’s continue to foster a constructive conversation about cycling; let’s #EvolveOurIQ Together.

Are you ready to become a stronger and faster version of your current self? Contact me if that sounds like a transformation you want to see happen.

I was overweight and feeling like a blob before I found cycling. Things have changed in my life and I am so grateful for that; I’d love to help you with a cycling training plan to reach as many of your goals as possible, no matter how small or grandiose you think they are.

We are helping a vast array of cyclists train for their next big goal, join the EVOQ.ARMY! We have a wide range of cycling workouts to help you, all customized to your needs.

No better time that today to GET STARTED!

Let’s Crush,
Brendan

Email me with questions or comment below! Please share with one friend if you like this post!

Brendan@EVOQ.BIKE

Interval Training / Season PlanningBrendan HouslerMarch 19, 2021