Heard the term ‘polarised training’? It’s a phrase that is used often with reference to endurance training. It’s a training method that is used by many elite endurance athletes including world-class marathon runner, Eliud Kipchoge.

Polarised training is a way of training that results in a polarised distribution of training intensities. That is, most of the training is done at either a low intensity or a high intensity, and not much in between. With reference to endurance athletes, this has a more specific definition in which polarised training consists of a high percentage of exercise time at low exercise intensity accompanied by little time at moderate intensity with the remainder spent at high intensity. Typically this consists of 80-90% of low-intensity training and 10-20% of high intensity training. With potentially just a very small fraction of moderate-intensity training thrown in.

Polarised training is not a new training method. It’s an approach that emerged from analysis of the real-world training data of elite endurance athletes led by Dr. Stephen Seiler, an American sport scientist based at the University of Agder in Norway. Subsequent studies have shown that polarised training is also optimal for recreational endurance athletes, and not just world-class athletes. However, typically recreational endurance athletes only 50-70 percent of their training time at low intensity. This so-called “moderate-intensity rut” is by far the most common and costly training mistake that endurance athletes make.

Implementing polarised training into your own training starts by monitoring your training intensities, so you become aware of what you're currently doing. Then you can start making gradual changes, to shift your intensity distribution towards greater polarisation. Pace, heart rate, perceived exertion, and power are all ways to measure intensity.

At DD Triathlon Coaching, we work with all our athletes to establish the correct training zones using a variety of metrics. We encourage our athletes to get confident at using perceived effort (RPE) alongside pace, heart rate and power to monitor their training intensity during sessions. Having a good feel for RPE helps you start workout, particularly those at higher intensities at the right effort level; execute workouts when devices are unavailable or not working; and most important, perform your best in races, when perceived effort is the ultimate determinant of how fast you can go.

At DD Triathlon Coaching, we adopt a polarised approach when developing training plans for our athletes. It allows us to balance volume and intensity ensuring athletes are able to adapt to the stimulus of training with sufficient recovery, which is what leads to gains in performance.

Do you feel stuck in a “moderate-intensity rut”? Or would like to find out more about how polarised training could help you? Drop us a message or book in for a chat. We’d love to hear from you!