POLARIZED TRAINING MADE EASY
(excerpt from RaceDay Ready, the book I'm working on)
I WOKE UP SEVERAL TIMES LAST NIGHT WITH THE SAME DREAM. I knew it was about polarized training and that I needed to share it with you.
But, I didn’t understand it.
There was a hill about a quarter of a mile high. At the top was a grayish granite boulder. Pristine. Clean. No dirt. The path to the boulder was smooth and straight.
About 50 yards to the right was another boulder. This boulder was the same size and color, the same boulder really, but it was covered in dirt and dust. The path leading up to it was rutted and rocky and would be a real challenge to ascend.
Polarized training kept bouncing around my thoughts each time I woke up.
What did the dream mean?
Then it hit me.
The clean rock on the left with the straight and smooth path represented polarized training. The dirty rock with the rutted route represented what most of us do before figuring it out.
On the left side representing polarized training the ground below and the rock above were bathed in sunlight. The meaning here is either train in Zone 2, the bottom, or train very hard, the top of our efforts. Spend no time in between.
What most of us do, is the right side. We quickly leave Zone 2 and train the middle area between the bottom and the top. We stay there too long. Consequently, we do not have the power to reach the top. Instead, we are left to struggle in various ruts. The rock, rather than a shine beacon of hope and power becomes tarnished, dirty. Eventually, we cannot even see the rock. Our vision vanishes and, stuck in our ruts, we fail to reach the top and fall over.
Here is what is happening physiologically when we practice polarized training:
- Our cardiovascular system becomes very robust and our endurance increases.
- Our max power increases.
The result is:
- We can go faster in Zone 2 because we have more power.
- We can go longer during max efforts because we have better endurance.
The dream, I hope, illustrates our options.
- Be powerful and able to endure.
- Struggle and never reach the top.
Bringing back to the title: 80% of our training is fun, enjoyable miles and time; 20%, more or less, is extremely hard.
Since the hard efforts are spaced out with lots of Zone 2 in between they aren’t mentally draining. In fact, we look forward to unleashing all the holding back we’ve been doing during the balance of our riding.
Polarized training is training made easy.
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164.2
8 hrs Sleep
1 RaceDay Ready Strength Circuit
20 minutes recovery
60 minutes reading + Journaling
https://www.strava.com/athletes/10248
