For all those geting into the polarized concept of training (Page 2)

There will be some give in one, the other or both. Depends on what one wants to work more. Ryan Hall trying to do his 6 & half ft or so race stride length at 9:30 miles would be hilariously awesome to watch.

I think most people just generally gravitate to that z3 area out of habit and think it's an easy effort.  It's not.  If Ryan Hall's easy is 9:00/mile pace then Mr. GMAN's and Ms. Pugpenny's easy pace is gonna be a heck of a lot slower.  I used to think my easy pace was 9:00.  I don't think that anymore.

Running speed is just a simple math equation involving cadence and stride distance.  As for keeping the same cadence but going slower you'd need to change the other variable.  That would be stride distance.  Shorten up your stride and keep the same cadence and you will slow down.  Easier said than done though.

Great topic Ben! I think it fits really well with multisport training but what are your thoughts about single sporters, specifically run only training? Lydiard, Canova, Lagat, Coe, and more have all referenced running at "strong paces" and Canova specifically cautions running too easy for anything but pure recovery. This is where I think it plays well with tri, there's a greater need for recovery day to day because one is usually managing multiple high effort workouts throughout the three disciplines—give some here, take some there. But once one moves away from that then there's an opportunity to move away from purely "easy" all the time (in absence of hard days) and still get some quality work that's a bit more aerobically beneficial without sacrificing the hard efforts. Thoughts? 

I don't disagree with much of the easy/hard though going on here, but it may be misleading to overemphasize Hall's 9:00 easy pace.  He is runnin a LOT more than the average AGer (as are those elite 5k & 10k runners mentioned above).  Early on, training load was mentioned.  It is going to be difficult for a lot of AGers to do enough hard to maintain an adequate overall training load if all they do otherwise is really easy running, for example.  Most people simply don't do enough overall volume to make that work (without doing a relatively high percentage in the hard zone, which carries greater risk).  The reason people gravitate into that high Z2/Z3 area more frequently is partly due to its relative effectiveness against its required recovery and risk.  That said, completely agree that it is worthwhile for most to make sure they don't gravitate to doing all their work in that one zone.  You certainly want to do some very solid hard work.  And if that means you give up some of your 'steady' for 'stuipd-easy', that can be a good trade-off. 

I'll have to find some time to watch the video and what it defines "easy" as. I'm not arguing against it but I think Johnny brings up some very valid points about volume. 

I wasn't using that as we need to model ourselves after Ryan Hall because he's probably running 80-100 miles per week and his base and volume is incomprehensible to an age group athlete.  I just wanted to illustrate that most AG'ers perception of stupid easy running isn't really stupid easy.

I get it.  But if you are only running a fraction of that volume, there may not be much room for stupid easy.  Not if you want to maintain a reasonable training load, at least.

I recall that some of the studies also showed the polarized concept also having the best results in groups that weren't at a high training load.  What was found was that the "less trained" athletes needed twice as much recovery time as "well trained" athletes after the high intensity sessions... but they still responded nicely to the training.  I'm not able to look up anything right now.

Great article Ben, and thanks to everyone for your thoughts in this thread. I don't have anything to add to the science, but having incorporated a polarized model of training since September of 2011 I can offer this one nugget from my own case study. For me perhaps the single biggest paradigm shift in training came from the understanding that training TIME is a significant and appropriate physiological metric (as opposed to distance, speed, etc), since (as the article states) "the body is sensitive to stress duration." Mentally once I got over worrying about how far or fast I was going, and instead just focusing on work duration, rest duration, and intensity, I found it MUCH easier to execute my workouts as prescribed (very easy on easy days, very hard on hard days). And I have made steady improvements since, after having been stagnant for years prior.

There is a subtle point in the article that is more clearly stated in the reviewer's commentary when he states "It is not clear whether low-intensity training is more effective than high intensity training or whether low-intensity work simply allows more rapid recovery and preserves high intensity systems for performance of high-end work." So the idea is that the recovery phase may somehow play as significant role in physiological response as the actual work duration itself. In other words, the recovery is actually part of the work. So performing intervals ( for example: 5 x 10 minutes at 85% VO2, each separated by 2 minutes recovery) is somehow better than adding a single, similar 10 minute interval to each of 5 days of otherwise easy running, implying again that the specific recovery is a key component in eliciting the desired physiological response. Can anyone comment further on that?
 

I think it's of great importance and something I think many athletes and coaches overlook or underestimate.  I know I did.  I pretty much ignored a proactive approach to recovery for years.  It was hammer, hammer, hammer until my body basically said "Go f**k yourself, I'm done!" and I've been digging out of that rut for months (exacerbated by having to have surgery and other non-training related medical issues the past few months).

Agreed.  Which is why I chimed in tio begin with.  Saying Hall runs 9:00 miles helps illustrate your point, but the analogy can only be drawn so far for most AG athletes.  This is a great quite from Stephen Seiler that I lifted from a discussion about this very topic:

Two things I take from that are that, one, recreational athletes are going to spend more time closer to threshold due to less volume and less fitness.  And, two, you definitely want to make sure that you find some time to really push yourself.  You don't want everything to be yellow and pink.  If that means you do some more green, so be it.  There's, of course, nothing new nor earth-shattering about this.  It is based on observing how successful athletes actually train.

It's not the recovery, it's the accumulated stress from the work that drives physiological adaptations.  That said, doing a 10min interval each day for 5 days is NOT the same as doing 5 x 10min on 2min rest in one day.  The reason it's not the same, is because of the recovery you've allowed (or not allowed) to take place.  The reason low intensity training may be important on the other days is that without going easy, next time you do 5x10 you might not be able to create as much training stress because you are not recovered enough to begin with.  So you are certainly correct that recovery is a key component in training.  It's not that it plays an important role in the response, but that it allows for the actual work to be 'better'.  That may be splitting hairs, since you obviously need one to get the other.  But I think it's important to remember that what drives physiological adaptations is stress.

It might be more simple to think of GMAN's 3 hard per week with 1 being in each sport. If he wanted to place a strong emphasis on one of the sports while still operating on a rather polarized theme, what adjustments could/should be made to accomplish this?

Coincidentally, Joe Friel's latest blog post talks about polarized training and low intensity workouts:

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/