How to Build Your Aerobic Engine Properly
One of the big lessons I learnt in the last few years was simply to slow down on easy days so I could have the energy to go hard on hard days.
And there was an underlying benefit I hadn’t seen. Read on.
This simple lesson helped me break 3 hours for the marathon and I’m convinced will help me sustain and hopefully improve my performance. I see no reason why not, even as I approach 50.
Following extensive research over the last 20 years Dr Steven Seiler has categorically proven more intensity is not better. In fact, consistency over time pays back in much bigger ways.
Do you ever find yourself increasing your speed when you see another runner ahead, unleashing your inner competitive animal?
Of course, right!
It’s human nature to compete – we do it because we can – the problem is we end up falling into an intensity black hole – we go too hard on easy days because we can which leads to, too slow on hard days because we’re fatigued.
The best endurance athletes in the world avoid this like the plague!
If you are constantly at threshold – you break. Accumulated stress builds and all of a sudden, we have ITB syndrome or knee pain or something else seemingly coming out of nowhere. Or so we think?
Working for the Norwegian Olympic team Dr Seiler observed the X-Country Coaches do very little threshold training they consider it too much pain for too little gain.
What they do exceptionally well is the ‘slow grind’ and the research showed this is where the real difference is made.
It comes down to understanding the importance of intensity.
Sustainability is the game. How well we perform over time, not over one hard session. It’s about maximising our constraints, those regular low intensity runs are an important part of the success recipe.
Think like this; “every session is a building block”, stop looking at sessions in isolation. The goal is to build a body to tolerate the stresses of high intensity endurance performance - over time.
The key equation is to focus on the total training we have done.
We should be concerned with staying healthy first and then getting the volume in – “bake the cake” so you can “eat the cake” when you compete.
A good starting point is to ask yourself this question;
How many times will you train this year? Because you want to think about the individual impact of each training session on your average performance improvement.
The evidence is categoric. It is not the epic workouts that drive development – they are a consequence. If you want to sustain your performance and get faster the science says long term gains are driven by sustainable development.
This is why what really matters is sustainability, because it creates an environment for positive development. Now we’ve thought about the question of how many times will you train this year the next question is;
Do I Intensify or Extend?
When Dr Seiler and his team looked across different endurance sports they found whilst there were different training volumes, they all followed the same basic intensity distribution.
Most amateur endurance athletes are well versed in the training zone philosophy, most use too many zones for their ability and this tends to drive them towards spending too much time at a medium to hard intensity.
A better model is to simplify down to a three-zone model:
Z1 – Low Int – 60-120mins HR 68%
Z2 – Threshold – HR 88%
Z3 – Above VT ex. 6 x 3mins HR 95%
An important understanding of Dr Seiler’s Polarised training model is this; “you are training when you’re at 68% HRR (Heart Rate Reserve) adaptations are occurring”.
Extending duration at the low intensity level is a very important part of the adaptive stimuli.
It’s important to get the balance right between stimulus and stress. So ask yourself; Is what I'm doing sustainable? If it’s not sustainable the consequence is an inflammatory response which can get out of control fast!
Here are some common indicators of stress;
• Bone-muscle-tendon damage at the cellular level
• Repetitive sympathetic stress (nervous system)
• Immuno – suppression (immune system)
• Psychological fatigue
They might not sound familiar, in isolation they’re probably not catastrophic but when added up they can tip the balance contributing to an amplified stress response.
Now you understand why you keep getting niggling injuries, feel tired more often than you should or perhaps get sick more times than is normal.
I’ve struggled with all of these at one time or another. Now I don’t because I play in the Green Zone (1) a lot.
When putting together a training plan we need to factor for 3 important mechanisms;
Intensity x Duration – so we can optimise for adaptive signal (actually improve!)
Energy availability management – fats, carbs etc – daily glycogen load (You can’t outrun a poor diet)
Systemic stress load management – How are we managing the above factors including family, work and biggest issue, lack of sleep)
We can do this by making sure we get the balance right between the adaptive signal and stress response.
Intensity by itself means very little until we factor in duration i.e. how many minutes are you at a relevant intensity – only then does it have meaning as an adaptive signal.
This is why we need to be good at intensity discipline, can you control your instinct? Will you hold back and not go faster when your prescription is taking it easy?
The way to over-train is doing medium hard work too often.
If you’re a full-time worker trying to squeeze in sessions, you’ll get a far better endurance benefits if you reduce your number of sessions and instead make a couple of them longer.
Key point: Every session is a product of duration x intensity.
Our goal therefore is to increase our durability. The total amount of minutes you accumulate is more relevant than the intensity at which you’re doing them.
Endurance = Speed -> Keep it simple.