ENDURANCE 101 PT. 6 – TRAINING

SOME VERY GENERAL GUIDELINES ON HOW TO TRAIN

 FOR WHAT & HOW:

Recovery: Light effort, RPE 2-3, 20-60 minutes steady/continuous

• You should feel GOOD after these sessions. Walks, yoga, maybe a light jog/bike ride depending on your fitness level. Good for mental health. Not necessary to recover well. You can lay in bed all day after a hard session & you’ll recover just fine.

General Aerobic Conditioning: Easy, RPE 3-4, 30 minutes to several hours steady/continuous

• The foundation! If you can slowly build up your speed at this intensity, you’ll be set up for success. Lots of cellular/metabolic adaptations happening here.

Aerobic Capacity/Movement Economy: Easy-Moderate, RPE 4-5, 30-120 minutes 0r more (depends on level), steady/continuous

• This is your “Zone 2” work – it’s very similar to general aerobic conditioning (see above), but there’s a slightly higher output and more muscle fiber recruitment. Beginners will usually spend most of their aerobic training here, because their pace at this intensity is still slow enough to not accumulate much muscular fatigue and you can really stack up the volume! Higher level athletes may do a mix of the two, with more of the aforementioned “general” aerobic conditioning, because they’ve now reached high enough speeds at this intensity to be taxing their bodies a bit more on a structural level (muscles, joints, etc).

Aerobic Capacity/Anaerobic Capacity, Economy: Moderate, “Fun Fast”, RPE 6-7, 10 – 20 minute intervals or steady/continuous up to 60 minutes

• While technically still “aerobic” training, your muscles are working harder now, so different systems start kicking in to support the aerobic system in producing energy. This is where many people operate when they go for a run without a structured training plan, just trying to wear themselves out for 30 minutes.
• While it’s true that you can train multiple systems at once here, it’s not a substitute for intentional, low intensity aerobic work. It will be more fatiguing and thus not allow you to accumulate the amount of volume that is required for you to continue building aerobic capacity. The great thing about those easier intensities is that your body can handle a lot! And aerobic adaptations respond well to volume. Bottom line, this intensity does have value, but shouldn’t be your meat & potatoes and will be most effective once you’ve developed a strong aerobic base (see above).  

Aerobic Power, Speed Endurance, Economy/Technique: Hard to very hard effort, RPE 8-9, intervals 30 seconds to 10 minutes

• Now training is starting to get sexy. Some people may feel a “burn” at this intensity but not be as fatigued cardiovascularly (I don’t think that’s a word). In this case, you might be better off building your muscular endurance before putting much focus here.

Power, Speed, Technique, Anaerobic Capacity/Endurance: Max effort, RPE 10, unsustainable/exhausting, intervals of 8 – 60 seconds

• This is a full sprint, short duration. All hands on deck. There’s gonna be a lag in HR because of how short the event is… so that’s not a great indicator of intensity here. Again, RPE scale. Start out with shorter bursts, like 10 second sprints and slowly work your way up to 30s sprints, 40s, even 60s. Take long rest periods (start with 3 min & just observe how long it takes to recover enough to sprint the same speed/distance each rep). If you’re noticing a drop in performance despite resting long enough, it’s time to call it. Start with low reps and work your way up.
• It’s important to note that the risk of injury here is high for beginners, so make sure you bake your cake in the right order and have a good foundation of strength (better be lifting!) and aerobic fitness to be able to recover well from / within this type of training.  

Very important:

1. Do the same things for a while and be as consistent as possible. You’ll see minimal results if you never give your body a chance to adapt to your current training. Don’t get impatient & then A. crank up the volume/intensity, or B. Program hop and hop and hop until the end of time.
2. Gradually increase the demands you place on your body (progressive overload). As you become fitter, you’ll need a greater stimulus to see progress.

Frequent small adjustments in the right direction > Beating the shit out of yourself at random.

You can implement progressive overload with several methods, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Most methods fall under A. Volume (do more) or B. Intensity (do harder)

Building aerobic capacity over time requires that you progressively do more (volume). This is easy to do when you’re a beginner, as you have a longer runway to take off from. However, as your fitness improves and you close the gap of your potential, you’ll have less room to “just add volume” and will need to start toying with amount & type of high intensity.

Other things like strength, speed, hypertrophy (muscle growth), power, muscular endurance, etc etc etc.) need more specific methods of progressive overload.

And that is a topic for another time!

Thanks for reading!