80/20 Training to Race Faster, with Dr. Stephen Seiler | Extramilest Show #50

Floris Gierman2021-12-23

193K views|2 years ago

💫 Short Summary

Dr. Stephen Seiler discusses the 80/20 training approach in endurance sports, highlighting the importance of balancing high and low-intensity training. He emphasizes that the approach of elite athletes is to train at a low intensity for the majority of the time, focusing on the physiological benefits of such training. Dr. Seiler also explores the evolution of exercise science and the principles of training intensity and distribution, ultimately suggesting that the 80/20 approach works even better for high-performance athletes.Dr. Stephen Seiler discusses the importance of sustainable training, using his daughter's experience and the concept of polarized training to illustrate that training should be challenging but manageable, and the body's health is a priority for effective training. He also emphasizes the need for open communication and trust in the coach-athlete relationship.In the analyzed video, Dr. Stephen Seiler discusses the importance of the overall training process and the myth of the perfect workout structure. He emphasizes the role of breathing in exercise and the potential for new technology to measure and scale breathing. Dr. Seiler also stresses the need to focus on the bigger picture in training and the evolving landscape of training evaluation through technology.

✨ Highlights

📊 Transcript

✦

Dr. Stephen Seiler discusses the training approach of elite athletes, highlighting the balance between high and low intensity training.

00:00

Training with high intensity builds the “cake,” but racing is “eating the cake,” so it's important to balance high and low intensity training.

The 80/20 approach, where 80 percent of the training is at a lower intensity and 20 percent at a higher intensity, is widely accepted for endurance training.

Dr. Seiler emphasizes that most of the training for elite performers, regardless of the duration of the event, is done at an intensity below the first lactate turn point.

He also mentions the importance of long, fairly easy training for generating adaptive changes in the body.

✦

Dr. Stephen Seiler, an exercise physiologist, discusses his background and interest in exercise science, highlighting the integrated nature of the discipline.

04:02

Dr. Seiler's interest in exercise science stemmed from his love of sports and science as a child.

Exercise science is an integrated discipline that includes biomechanics, psychology, and physiology to understand the human body and movement.

The field of exercise science has evolved over the years, with a focus on both health and performance.

Dr. Seiler's emphasis in his work has been on sport science and the performance development process.

✦

The guest explains the early days of exercise science and the focus on studying untrained individuals, highlighting the gradual understanding of the training and adaptation process.

09:53

Exercise science began as an academic discipline in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with a focus on studying untrained individuals.

Early studies on the training process and adaptation were conducted on untrained people, showing that training at 75-80% of their maximum heart rate for 45 minutes a day led to improvements in their VO2 max.

The research was based on short time frames and mostly untrained individuals, leading to the belief that “harder is better” in training.

✦

Dr. Seiler discusses the emergence of training principles from the observation of athletes' real-world training, emphasizing the role of the coach-athlete relationship and institutional knowledge in the development of training methods.

14:00

Training principles often emerge from the real-world training of athletes, with scientists later attempting to explain and understand these principles.

The coach-athlete relationship and the institutional knowledge in sports play a significant role in the development of training methods.

Dr. Seiler emphasizes that he did not invent the polarized training or the training distribution concept, but rather observed it in athletes and sought to understand it through measurement.

The majority of the training for elite athletes across different endurance sports is at a relatively easy intensity, below the first lactate turn point.

✦

The speaker explains the breakdown of training intensity for endurance athletes, highlighting the focus on easier training sessions with occasional high-intensity workouts.

19:02

The fundamental commonality in the training of best performers in endurance sports is that most of their training intensity is below the first lactate turn point.

Training at a comfortable pace for a long time is very adaptive and generates heart and musculature adaptations.

Endurance athletes also do some high-intensity work, but the focus is on manipulating it and there is more variability in the intensity.

The training process for endurance athletes is a balance between easy and hard training, similar to the yin and yang principle.

✦

Dr. Seiler emphasizes the importance of finding a balance between training intensity and recovery, and mentions that the 80/20 approach works even better for high performance athletes.

24:33

High performance athletes are forced into a certain training pattern due to the limits of their body, and the 80/20 approach works even better for them.

Recreational athletes often make the mistake of training in the medium-hard intensity zone, leading to stagnation.

Many people have experienced improved performance by learning to ease up on their easy training days and by understanding the true meaning of easy training.

The 80/20 approach focuses on finding the right balance between training and recovery, and great endurance athletes demonstrate discipline and understanding of when to push hard and when to take it easy.

✦

The term 'polarized training' may be misleading as it suggests that easy days are very easy and hard days are extremely hard, but in reality, it's about finding a sustainable level of loading.