Mark Threlfall: Now, what if I told you that to get faster, you actually need to ease off
in a majority of your training? Sounds pretty good, right? Well, that is exactly what the
80/20 training method is all about. Is actually gaining a lot of popularity of late, also
known as polarized training. Simply, the idea is that you do 80% of your training at a low
intensity and 20% at a moderate to high intensity. What is it all about, why do it, and does
it even work? [music]
Now, first off, this 80/20 training method or polarized training isn't actually anything
new. Elite athletes have been using this kind of training method for years, whether they
knew it or not but collective research of recent years has highlighted this. Now, suddenly,
obviously, everyone wants a piece of it. Is actually Dr. Steven Styler of the University
of Agder in Norway that really brought this to light in the early 2000s. For simplicity,
there are two levels to this 80/20 method. We've got low-intensity on one side then we
got moderate or medium to high intensity on the other side.
Styler isolated a cut-off between these two levels as what he calls the ventilatory threshold.
It sits somewhere between 77% to 79% of your maximum heart rate for someone that engages
in regular exercise or activity. For those out there that use zones for this low-intensity,
we're looking at somewhere around zone 1 & 2 and for this moderate to high-intensity, were
looking at zone 3, 4, and above. Now, while science didn't create this 80/20 rule, science
has proven that this intensity balance is almost universally followed by top-level swimmers,
cyclists, runners, triathletes, cross-country skiers, rowers, all around the globe.
You're likely watching this and thinking but I'm not a top-level elite athlete actually.
I certainly don't do the amount of hours or volume per week that a top elite level athlete
does. Does this even apply to me? As a result, naturally, you are probably more inclined
to do more intensity per week to make up for that slightly less training per week that
a top elite level athlete might do but I've got news for you. Actually, their research
has also shown that this 80/20 rule works whether you're doing a handful of hours per
week or 25 hours plus per week that a top-level athlete might do.
So, how does it work? How might you go about adopting this into your training plan, and,
crucially, how does it work across the three sports within triathlon?
[music] A common misconception, particularly with
beginners, is that all training is more or less the same, just high-intensity training.
Is there a more efficient and quicker route to the same result? As I'm sure many of you
know, that really just is not the case. Whether it's low-intensity, moderate, or high intensity,
they all have their own benefits in different ways. Now, low-intensity training can really
help to improve our aerobic capacity, so how well we can extract oxygen from the atmosphere
all the way through to powering our muscle contractions.
There's also other physiological benefits such as increasing your blood cell count,
how well we can burn fat as fuel, also, the fact that because we're going at a low-intensity,
we can actually go further and longer in some of our sessions. As I mentioned before, this
is all around our zone 1 and zone 2. That brings us up to a ventilatory threshold. Above
this, we move into our moderate to high-intensity training around zone 3, 4, and above. These
really help to improve our VO2 max, our power, our speed, and really start to target some
of those race-pace intensities. Obviously, these are quite taxing and put
quite a lot of stress on the body. That is where the 80/20 rule comes in and really starts
to help us target some of those moderate to high-intensity sessions so that we can arrive
feeling recovered, prepared, and get more quality from them.
[music] Well, hopefully, that has you persuaded. Now,
let's look at how you might implement this into your own training. Now, first off, don't
worry about going and grabbing your calculator and precisely dividing it into this 80/20
ratio. I'll just say it's just an approximate guide. It's not a strict rule. After all,
it was taken from averages anyway. We can live with it being 85/15 or 75/15 ratio if
you'd like. He does say though, just try not to stray too far from that.
As triathletes, what we want to do is take a look at our training schedule and the aggregate
of our training across all three disciplines and approximately divide that into the 80/20
split, by time, not distance. It's also worth pointing out that your recoveries within a
moderate to high-intensity session, should still be included within that 20% because
simply, your heart rate is still quite high and that is still stress on your body.
As we all know, we can meticulously plan this all out but it really comes down to our execution.
That's quite often where we fall short. Now how many of you have planned a nice easy ride
with your mates, for example, and it really hasn't ended up a nice easy ride? Perhaps
you've been quite impressed by your average pace after a run and that run was meant to
be nice and slow and easy. Yes, you're definitely not alone. In fact, many age-group athletes
unconsciously swim bike and run, at paces slightly above our ventilatory threshold.
Meaning you're in that medium to high-intensity rather than the low intensity.
If you really do want to adopt this method and do it properly, you've really got to start
being quite strict in your intensities in sessions. You can start monitoring things
better. Start using a heartrate monitor, start monitoring your pace and start even checking
your perceived exertion after sessions to make sure that you're really on it. Now, for
some people out there who are regularly going at paces that are too high, this might feel
really quite challenging. In fact, you might question whether this works at all and you
might think it's absolute madness but try and stick with it and let those hard sessions
do the talking. Now, one final point is with the 80/20 method
is it was really geared towards improving your peak fitness and really gearing up to
the races. It's not really meant or intended for all-year-round. When it comes to the off-season
or months out from races, you probably want to back that 20% down a bit and just focus
on building your fitness up gradually. Well, I hope that has been insightful. Today
is a lot of information. If you have any more questions, please drop them in the comment
section below. It's a method that I've used in my own training over the years, so I'll
be very happy to help with any of those questions. If you have enjoyed today's video, please
hit that thumbs up button and if you'd like to see more from GTN, and make sure that you're
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[00:07:05] [END OF AUDIO]