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Benefits of Polarized training vs Garmin recommendations

bjrmd
over 5 years ago

If you are concerned about the "High aerobic shortage" or other strange training recommendations from Garmin, I wrote a blog post on

Training zone concepts, benefits of polarized, heat and low carb exposure

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  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Great blog post!

    Incidentally I came to the same conclusion through trial and error (and a bit of common sense), ignore the mid range and work the extremes. 
    My numbers worked out to about 72:28 LOW/HIRT (2 high days a week really) which worked out very wellso far.

    Also if in doubt I reduce intensity of the LOW sessions even further to the subjective point of recovery

    great to see this validated by science,

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    In that light, how do you see the training status and load parts from Garmin/Firstbeat (i.e. where it looks at 7 day load and says optimal etc)

    take with a lot of grains of salt also, or valid?

    thanks!

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to claude512

    Thanks for the kind words.

    claude512 said:

    how do you see the training status and load parts from Garmin/Firstbeat (i.e. where it looks at 7 day load and says optimal etc)

    take with a lot of grains of salt also, or valid?

    I have carefully investigated the VO2 max prediction accuracy of the current generation of Garmin watches (I have a Marq athlete), including comparing it to my gas exchange study at a major US center.  At least in my case it is way off (about 15%).

    The performance condition would be sound in theory, but they don't compensate enough for cardiac drift, temperature change and hydration status.

    Therefore if the VO2 and performance condition are not accurate how can they even make a training recommendation?

    So end result are training recommendations that are flawed if not outright counterproductive for fitness improvement and avoiding overtraining.  What I am most concerned about is the potential for master athletes to be lead astray by these "one size fits all" approaches.  Depending on your genetics (type 1:2 muscle ratio for instance), recovery ability, carb to fat fuel selection (RER), and your goals (sprints vs ultra endurance as an example), the type and volume of training should (must) be different.  As we age, the ability to tolerate inappropriate training and recovery declines, making reliance on Garmin's advice even more problematic.

    claude512 said:
    Incidentally I came to the same conclusion through trial and error (and a bit of common sense), ignore the mid range and work the extremes.

    Absolutely.  Also, keeping an eye on the (real) sports literature is time well spent.  You can always go into Pubmed and read abstracts as well as full text.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to bjrmd

    Thanks, that is more or less what I thought, although good in theory it relies on a single sensor to start with (like the Boeing 737MAX and we all know where that went), and also I have not seen much of the underlying assumptions the algorithm makes (of course FirstBeat will protect their IP, fully understandable).

    So as much as I would like to like it, I just ignore the whole performance section more or less.
    I bought the MARQ Aviator for flying and its outdoor capabilities in any case, I’ll forget about the performance stuff and go by feel and the usual tests like critical power, FTP, LT etc (and maybe look at trends for performance but not for decision making)!

    thanks a lot for taking the time to reply and your very thorough blog, appreciated!