What Is Jon Reading Wednesday?
Lately I’ve been reading Joe Friel’s thoughts on polarized training.
These days, most systematic training plans for most
endurance sports involve periodization
training. You know how it goes: ramp up the training one session, ramp down the
training the next session, ramp up higher, ramp back down. Or more complex
regimes include: Prep, Build, Taper, Peak, and Recovery phases. Rinse and
repeat until race day. It can get silly complex. Lots of voodoo involved. And a
dash of science.
But Friel posted an updated
look at polarized training. With polarized, your training is either short
workouts at high intensity (anything above your anaerobic threshold (AnT)) or
longer workouts at low intensity (anything below aerobic thre
shold (AeT.))
In a 9 week study, the group of subjects that used polarized
training had increased their VO2 max, increased their time to exhaustion on
ramp tests, and increased their peak velocities. The group that used
periodization training experienced “no significant improvements.”
So I’m going to do some more research on polarized training.
See if I can work up a suitable program. And give it a try early in the season.
If it works for shorter distances, maybe I can scale it to longer distances
later in the season.
Only one way to see if it works, is to see if it works. More
notes in the near future!
