Polarized training

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J2R
29 Jan
8:14pm, 29 Jan 2024
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J2R
Perhaps tangentially related to polarised training this, but in the same area, so I hope people don't mind my asking...

One of the primary benefits of PT, as far as I can determine, is that it helps prevent the chronic build-up of cortisol which leads to overtraining syndrome and other issues. This can occur as a result of spending a lot of time time at too high a training intensity, for example doing lots of threshold pace running. With polarised training, there is a big focus on recovery.

What I am wondering is that kind of timescales this applies to. Let's say my easy pace running gives me a heart rate when warmed up of 120bpm. I can do an hour a day, even pace running, at 120bpm without getting to the situation where cortisol is starting to build up. But is it different if I run an easy interval session alternating 1m fast, 1km jog, for an hour where overall my average heart rate, for the session as a whole, is the same 120bpm? Some of that time my HR is going up to 150bpm at the end of a 1km interval at maybe HM pace, before dropping down to 110bpm during the 1km jog recovery. Do the long recoveries (maybe 6:00 as opposed to 4:00 for the reps) mean I avoid the cortisol build-up. My thinking is that they probably do, but I'd love to hear from the knowledgeable people on here.
jda
29 Jan
8:59pm, 29 Jan 2024
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jda
I know you asked for experts but I hope you don't mind an ignorant guess :-)

I would be surprised if cortisol levels responded (dropped) on the time scale of a few minutes. If that was the case it would never build up for long for anyone! I think you should be thinking more on the time scale of hours to a day, any workout with high stress will have a significant effect and doing one such every day would potentially have much more impact than just once or twice a week. AIUI it's the sustained long-term elevation of cortisol that's the problem, which pretty much implies that it doesn't drop rapidly.
29 Jan
10:25pm, 29 Jan 2024
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Canute
Following an acute transient stress, cortisol typically falls to near baseline levels within a period 30 - 60 minutes after cessation of the stress. Therefore during an interval session with fast 1 Km efforts and 6 minute recoveries, I would expect the cortisol level to build-up across the full session.

Although I have not been following your recent training, from what I know of your fitness levels, J2R, I suspect that a 'fast' Km in 4 min will not produce a large build up of cortisol, so the total session will not lead to a very high build up of cortisol. Nonetheless, I think you are likely to lose the benefit of Polarised training of you do frequent sessions of this type
J2R
30 Jan
8:57am, 30 Jan 2024
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J2R
Thanks. Interesting observations. I've been following a training system called the Easy Interval Method for the last 3 years, which I took up out of curiosity rather than out of any need to change what I was already doing, and I've always wondered how it ties in with polarised training. On the face of it it would appear to be in complete conflict with it, but there are commonalities, such as the focus on recovery and avoiding too much time in the top training zones.

To be clear, the 1km reps are not supposed to be flat out at all. I tend to do them at a pace somewhere between half marathon and marathon pace. Similarly 400m reps (with 400m recoveries) are usually somewhere between 10K and HM pace. I suppose the intention (whether realised in practice or not) is that the pace is fast enough to provide stimulation for the running economy without being too stressful on the system.
SPR
30 Jan
3:27pm, 30 Jan 2024
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SPR
I use easy intervals in my training but don't follow the method (so I'd generally run easy the day after, although I've used it as an easier session before a session day). I use it as an easy way to get some pace around threshold into some longer runs as my minimum run with a 6x1000, 800 rec session is 9 miles. I've done 2 13.4 milers with 10 x1000, 800 rec and 6 x 2000, 1000 rec recently.

I did use it pretty fully from Feb 2022 to Mar 2022 when I started using it as varying pace was the only way I could run for some reason due to an injury/ niggle. I saw good HR improvement from where I started and highest VO2 Max ever on my watch and felt pretty fit but I didn't race well, and got injured by overdoing it immediately after the road relays (still my highest mileage week ever 🤦🏿‍♂️) so didn't get a chance to see if I just needed to get sharp for racing.
J2R
30 Jan
7:43pm, 30 Jan 2024
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J2R
Interested to hear of your experiences with it, SPR. I recalled you had dabbled in it. I'm still not sure why I changed, really, as I was running really well in 2019 from polarised training, then got interested in EIM after a Dutch friend introduced me to it. I started off doing a kind of mix-and-match but then adopted it more fully. I haven't had any new PBs since switching to it, but then again I'm 63 now, so that's not unexpected! I think I would probably have given it up and switched back to straightforward polarised training had I not had a couple of results in 2022 which suggested I hadn't actually slowed down as a result of the move.

Having had a heart attack early last year, though, that is more a determinant of my performance now than any niceties of training method, so I think I'm probably just going to keep doing what I do - EIM but with polarised thinking! The training is enjoyable and has not so far led to injury or any sense of overtraining.

Having said that, I have been looking back at my running 'diary' (i.e., the record of my runs in SportTracks, the service I use) for 2019 and can't help noticing that in the period from February to July that year I did my strongest ever running, with quite a few PBs and near PBs, and times on parkruns that I haven't approached before or since - a real 'purple patch'. I am kind of tempted to simply try to replicate the training I did then and see what happens. How far back would I go, though? If I was getting great results in February, this is presumably as a result of great training going back... how long? October? (I'd also like to try to understand why the period from July on was not as successful. It wasn't injury or anything, I just wasn't getting quite such good results although they were perfectly decent).

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About This Thread

Maintained by Canute
Polarised training is a form of training that places emphasis on the two extremes of intensity. There is a large amount of low intensity training (comfortably below lactate threshold) and an appreciable minority of high intensity training (above LT).

Polarised training does also include some training near lactate threshold, but the amount of threshold training is modest, in contrast to the relatively high proportion of threshold running that is popular among some recreational runners.

Polarised training is not new. It has been used for many years by many elites and some recreational runners. However, it has attracted great interest in recent years for two reasons.

First, detailed reviews of the training of many elite endurance athletes confirms that they employ a polarised approach (typically 80% low intensity, 10% threshold and 10% high intensity. )

Secondly, several scientific studies have demonstrated that for well trained athletes who have reached a plateau of performance, polarised training produces greater gains in fitness and performance, than other forms of training such as threshold training on the one hand, or high volume, low intensity training on the other.

Much of the this evidence was reviewed by Stephen Seiler in a lecture delivered in Paris in 2013 .
vimeo.com

In case you cannot access that lecture by Seiler in 2013, here is a link to his more recent TED talk.

ted.com
This has less technical detail than his 2013 talk, but is nonetheless a very good introduction to the topic. It should be noted that from the historical perspective, Seiler shows a US bias.

Here is another useful video by Stephen Seiler in which he discusses the question of the optimum intensity and duration of low intensity sessions. Although the answer ‘depends on circumstances’ he proposes that a low intensity session should be long enough to reach the point where there are detectable indications of rising stress (either the beginning of upwards drift of HR or increased in perceived effort). If longer than this, there is increasing risk of damaging effects. A session shorter than this might not be enough to produce enough stress to achieve a useful training effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GXc474Hu5U


The coach who probably deserves the greatest credit for emphasis on the value of low intensity training was Arthur Lydiard, who coached some of the great New Zealanders in the 1960's and Scandinavians in the 1970’s. One of his catch-phrases was 'train, don't strain'. However Lydiard never made it really clear what he meant by ‘quarter effort’. I have discussed Lydiard’s ideas on several occasions on my Wordpress blog. For example: canute1.wordpress.com

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