I came across this one:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sms.14220?s=03
The study found that a bit of strength training every day leads to higher improvements in strength than the same training volume (reps) concentrated on one day per week.
See to the abstract for the figures.
As usual, this study was performed on young adults and not the trained athletes.
As some of you may remember i posted something similar before using the term COPID (compressed polarized intensity distribution) → 80/20 in every session). Great discussions emerged whether that was actually sweet spot, but the idea was similar to the presented study: what happens if you add some intensity in every session, from which you can recover before the next session (24h).
I am currently running a N=1 study on myself to see if i can perform better this year when switching from COPID to classic polarised. Thereby i try to go for zone 1 bike rides when i feel sore from speed skating (either because it was a high intensity session or the accumulated session load (including z2 sessions)
So, with classic polarised i am addressing better/more complete recovery of IIX fibers.
Up until now, week 31, results are quite similar compared to last year. It seems that the longer z1 rides compensate quite well for the reduced number of skating sessions.
For now i would conclude: total volume on the required muscles is key and it doesn’t matter if you go 80/20 per cycle, or per session, as long as you allow your IIA/IIX to recover before you stimulate them again.
I would love to hear about your own experience / experiments with these approaches.