172 - Stephen Seiler - Sports Scientist - Polarised Training

Dr Stephen Seiler is an American Sports Scientist who now resides in Norway. Stephen has been the past Dean of Faculty of Health and Sports Sciences at the University of Agder in Norway, a former Research and Senior Consultant for the Norwegian Olympic Federation and an Executive Board Member of Directus for the European College of Sports Science. Stephen is acclaimed worldwide amongst Coaches, Researchers, Athletes and Health Professionals for his work into Optimising Endurance Training. Stephen is perhaps best known for his work on Polarised Training. Over 2 decades of Research, Stephen and his team discovered that most endurance athletes spent the majority of their training time at very low intensities. And intensity Stephen claims as Zone 1. The majority of the remaining training time is spent at High Intensity or Zone 3 and quite surprisingly, the world’s best endurance athletes, Cyclists, Rowers, Cross Country Skiers and Distant Runners may spend only 4% at threshold level. Yet as recreational athletes, myself included it is so tempting to feel like we need to make our training sessions harder than likely what is required. And it is this training intensity distribution that has become popularised largely by Dr. Stephen Seiler and known worldwide as the Polarised Training Method. In other terms it has been referred to as 80:20 Training.

During this episode, Stephen covers some fascinating topics including why we are wise to avoid what Stephen refers to as the training intensity blackhole. Why we should be confident in ourself and stick to our plan? Why it maybe wise to do hard workouts with others and easy workouts by ourselves, why simply training at a higher intensity may not get the results we are after as opposed to lengthening out some of our training sessions. The concept of heart rate max and how to calculate this as opposed to heart rate peak, how to determine what training zone you are in, Zone 1, 2 or 3 without lactate testing equipment. Tune in now to hear the many decades of scientific forefront thinking for the acclaimed Sports Scientist Dr. Stephen Seiler on all things optimising training for peak performance and the Polarised Training Approach.

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