Time in Levels - Long Term

Time in Coggan iLevels 2014 to Current Day (click to enlarge)

Time in WKO 4 iLevels Year to Date (click to enlarge)

Time in Classic WKO Levels for 90 Days (click to enlarge)

A couple years ago or maybe three now there was a lot of discussion between polarized type training compared to other forms of cycling or endurance training. I know I came away more confused about it all. I thought at the time I fit more in with those who do the classic submaximal type of sustained intervals to improve functional threshold. After listening to the latest video lecture from Stephen Seiler I wonder if more of us actually fit in with what he has observed in data collected from world class athletes through the years. 

Stephen Seiler lecture - Oxford Brookes University Oct 2017

Anyway I thought some of his graphic bar charts of athletes looking at a year or years of data there is a lot of time in what he calls Zone 1. Stephen discusses in the video how he clumps what he says are five classic zones into three zones. From what I discern at this moment that may be a range from Coggan's classic level 1 to level 3 and possibly include what many call the sweet spot. It seems like Stephen's Zone 2 would include Coggan's level 4 and level 5 and then Stephen's Zone 3 would be L6 and L7 for Coggan's classic levels.

So when I look at my years collected in WKO 4 (in the top image) and add percentage of time in levels 1 through 3 that puts me about 68% of my total training time between 2014 and current day. That is close to what Stephen shows in some of his graphics.

Now this has nothing really to do with the meat of Stephen's lecture. I almost feel as if I am more of what he calls in the lecture as a non-responder. I did well competing in strength sports and I have never really excelled in endurance sports regardless of the type of training. Of course some of it comes back to not being able to stay consistent and not really being able to increase my training hours. I do feel as if I could improve a bit more if I were able to train more on a weekly basis. In other words when my CTL is up my ability to perform on the bike is usually up as well. In order for CTL to be up I did a little better managing the training load over a span of many weeks. For me personally, In order to train more on a weekly basis I have to decrease intensity as he mentions. I have tried to increase intensity many times in the past on a daily basis, but have struggled to maintain the training load for extended periods. This again is what I think Stephen has observed.

This also seems to line up with much of what Lydiard coached in his days where he used a submaximal effort, trained consistently and then used higher intensity when getting closer to the competition day(s). He must have found a balance with training enough to stimulate adaptation, but not so much that the athlete fell apart after a number of weeks.

So was Stephen presenting a whole new training scheme a few years ago? It came off as that when reading various forum discussions, but as I watched this video lecture I get the feeling that those who do sweet spot or submaximal intervals could very well fit into what he is saying in this video. Of course some will not fit into this. Some people are able to train in his Zone 2 on a consistent basis for weeks on end. I can testify I cannot. I can train at L4 maybe 3 days of the week and I might be able to train L5 2 days a week, but then I must back off to L2 if I have hopes to keep training in the next few weeks ahead. This puts me right in what I think is Stephen's point. It seems like it is mostly finding the training load one can handle for not just a week, but for many weeks and then for years. We look for that balance for enough stimulation and yet not so much that we cannot overcome the onset of deep fatigue.

I read a sports science blog about 8 years ago and that blog really goes in deep with world class athlete and the basis was lifetime hours trained more so than finite details of daily training.

Anyway I was interested to see how my past years looked in comparison to this lecture.
I am far from being a competitor, but it is still interesting to me.

Edit 11/30/17: 
I continue to think about Stephen's lecture and lifetime hours trained. I see how that has impacted my years with strength training. Sadly I do not have a precise amount of time spent even though many of those years were carefully kept in hand written logs and many more years after competition that are not logged. I started lifting in college as a freshman in 1982 and have 35 years invested. I reached my prime in competition about the age of 32 and continued to gain strength until about 42. There is when I started having issues from lifting heavy through those years. Even as I write this I am working through some lower back issues that may have stemmed through those years of heavy squats. 

Regardless of the issues I have trained with weights only taking a couple planned weeks off each year with those two weeks spread apart. One week in the summer and one in the winter. Other than that I have trained intentionally and joyfully all these years. But going way back I do distinctly remember focusing in on how to train more. I had this thought that meant a lot to me, but do not take as simple as it sounds. "Train more to train more." With progressing efforts each year and trying to climb the ranks of competition I need to raise the bar of training and yet the body, or at least mine, was a hard gainer. It was a slow process progressing the training load and depending on a number of factors I had to wait patiently for adaptation. This is even more true for me in endurance sports as I seem to favor strength training and struggle less with adaptation than I do in cycling. 

I learned long ago that I could not train with maximum weights all the time. I found that other gifted strength athletes could not handle much more either. My prime training weekly routine was a heavy day and a light day for each body part trained in a week. Even heavy day was submaximal training weight. That was about as much as I could handle for long term training over the span of a year. So there was first a macro vision. What do I want to accomplish this year? What do I want to accomplish in the years ahead as a competitor? When I had that vision figured out the micro vision started to take shape. What can I do on a daily basis and what can I handle on a weekly basis that will get me, as best possible, to that year end goal? If I can handle it for a year than it is likely I can handle it for years and I have depending on how one would want to view it. Yes, I am declining in strength because I am aging. Hormones are changing and the body cannot handle the load structurally. There is a higher probability for injury or strain so I am a little more cautious these days. 

This is still my view in combining strength and endurance training. It has become a great puzzle for me in balancing the training load between the two while getting older. It is a unique goal that I have and yet I now feel it is a very worthy goal as I age. 

The question for me then becomes how to put all this together and it is much more complex to post here. The basic premise is to increase the training load and be progressive in training all while being able to handle the training load for many weeks, months and years. It may not be a bad thing to test out performance now and then like using an all out effort on the bike or at the squat rack just to test oneself, but with caution. Haphazardly and randomly doing crap in training can cause one to overreach and then be forced to take time off and miss workouts. Do enough of this random crap training and things may go backwards. I experienced this in group rides where I tried to train with sanity during the week and then go on a group ride that overextended me to the point where I was forced to miss the next several days. When I was in this routine of not considering how a ride would impact training I watched all my cycling training metrics begin to trend negative. 

Although I do love cycling with friends and want to join them I have to consider what is important to me and group rides can be very unpredictable. Sometimes they do ride easy and sometimes it turns out to be a no-mercy hammerfest so I now tend to ride solo more on the weekend so that I am in control of getting out of the ride what is good to me on an individual level. All of it becomes planned. 

• How does the day impact the days ahead? 
• How do I fit in those higher intensity intervals and get in enough consecutive minutes of them in the week that will stimulate adaptation? 

Well I have to admit that when it comes to cycling training I am still trying to figure it out and how to manage that load along with progressive strength training has made it even more challenging, but I am much further down that path than I was when I picked up cycling in 2004.

Going back little phrases that mean something to me.

• Train more so you can train more.
• Consistency is king.
• If you keep doing what you are doing you'll keep getting what you are getting.

In simple terms these three things speak to me about being consistent with an attempt to being progressive.