Here’s how the 80/20 training system can make you faster

The 80/20 method is often correlated with spending most of your time doing easy training. In fact, this simplistic approach is a lot more complicated than that.

It is also often associated with another popular bit of training advice. A lot has been said about staying in zone two for the bulk of your training building your aerobic engine to go the distance.

The popular 80/20 approach to training promotes doing 80 per cent of your training at an easy effort and 20 per cent hard. For the 80/20 method, that doesn’t translate to most of your time spent in zone two.

Here’s the catch. The inventor of the 80/20 concept, Dr. Steven Seiler, reinvented the zones when he started advocating his methodology. His concept is based off of a three zone model. In his model, zone one captures a huge range of effort. He doesn’t advocate for much time spent in zone two at all.

Origins of the 80/20 method

He named the methodology polarized training, but it has been popularized more widely as the 80/20 method. Dr. Seiler recommends that athletes spend 80 per cent of their time in zone one. However, zone one in Dr. Seiler’s paradigm includes a very broad scope of different efforts. It does not refer to the classic zone one that most of us understand to mean easy or recovery.

The other 20 per cent Dr. Seiler recommends spent at high intensity. This breaks training into time spent in zones one and three only. Zone two, in his model, is the tiny space between threshold and just below threshold. That means most efforts below threshold fall into zone one. That includes some pretty significant efforts, not just easy or the ‘ride all day’ pace most of us associate with the classic zone two effort in a one-to-five zone model.

Compare that to the advice that athletes should spend most of their time in zone two. In this reference, that’s the ‘ride all day’ steady endurance effort typical of a long run or ride. In Dr. Seiler’s version, zone two is a no go, and zone one includes higher efforts, actually more intense than a ‘ride all day’ effort. Confused yet?

The difference between zone 2 focus and 80/20

Though the two methodologies appear to share the same philosophy, this is not accurate. The 80 per cent concentration in Dr. Seiler’s zone one has athletes training anywhere from recovery effort to just below threshold. The details about what efforts are actually included in Dr. Seiler’s zones seems to slip through the cracks when the information is re-shared online. This is good news for athletes who like do spend more time above their cruisey pace. They can train this way and still adhere to the 80/20 rule as long as they don’t spend more time just below, at or above threshold.

At or above threshold efforts live in Dr. Seiler’s zone three. The line that divides zone three with zone two is drawn at the point in which an athlete starts to accumulate lactic acid, or switch to their anaerobic system. To clearly understand the options you have in zone one, remember that efforts below threshold include what we typically understand as zone three in the classic one-to-five zone model. It would seem that tempo and sweet spot efforts are back on the table as effective ways to build your aerobic capacity.

In fact, even common sense, aside from science, can make the case that training in any zone below your aerobic threshold  (FTP on the bike) is training your aerobic system. If you’re using your aerobic system how can you not be training it?

Zone 3 is where the party’s at

At and above threshold in the 20 per cent of training is where you get to have all the fun. This is zone three, where the really hard efforts live, and in Dr. Seiler’s model. Threshold and speed efforts make up this final tally of your overall training structure in the 80/20, or polarized, method.

The zone two focused training also advocates for spending the rest of your time doing hard things. But because zone two isn’t as broad as Dr. Seiler’s zone one, it omits anything above the cruisey efforts until you get to the hard stuff in zones five and six.

In order to land on a training approach that is right for you, consideration should be given to how much time you have to train.

Spending huge amounts of time at the lower end of the scale will still allow you to get in a significant amount of time in the harder zones if you have a lot of time on your hands, like the pros. If you don’t have over 20 hours a week to train the numbers don’t crunch so well.

On a weekly training schedule of eight hours, spending 80 per cent of your time doing easy sessions leaves you with only two hours to get some hard sessions in. When training for swim, bike and run, that isn’t a lot of time working on the hard stuff, especially if you are training for long distances that often require hard sets longer than an hour for the swim, bike and run each week.

Understanding more deeply what these two methodologies involve can help you adopt one over the other, or reject both. Training availability will have an impact on choice as well since one approach may be great on paper but not in practice for the time-strapped athlete. Any popularized training approach du jour should be closely examined and considered in the context of your individual reality, and the reality that the authors of any new trend stand to benefit from its adoption.