Understanding Training Zones 2
Having looked previously at the basis of training zones, let’s look at how we can best understand and use those zones as we put together our training program. I’m going to assume that you are new or at least relatively new to training. I’m also going to assume that running is your initial training focus. Because running is surprisingly complex I would urge you to go to some of my previous posts in the “you want to run?” series.
What should be clear from the “you want to run?” series is that there is more to running than just cardio vascular (CV) conditioning. Fortunately for a person new to running our lack of CV fitness can actually give us a window of opportunity to address issues of structural integrity. So, although we are talking about training zones and CV conditioning it is important not to overlook the other physical aspects of running.
When you start training it is important to beware of some common errors, I call these the 3x2’s or more accurately; three - too’s.
Too fast, Too far and Too soon. In other words; running too fast, running too far and increasing the first two, too soon.
When I speak to clients who come to me wanting to run, the most common statement I hear is; ‘I tried running but I couldn’t do it” when I dig a little deeper the belief in their inability to run is almost always based upon either the fact that they get out of breath and it never got better or every time they try to run they get injured. I think very often these two problems are related, people with naturally better CV function run too fast or too far and put excess load through their muscles and joints and those with poor CV function run too fast and create discomfort for themselves in making themselves short of breath and because running too fast is not a good way of improving CV function they give up.
What Does Getting Fitter Mean?
This is a really important question and the answer will put your training into context. When we talk of getting fitter we tend to focus on the inputs and the outcomes. Inputs being what training we do and outcomes being the resultant improvement in our ability to cover distance; further / faster etc. What is often overlooked is the mechanism, in other words, what is actually physically changing in us when we get fitter? It’s really important to understand this as it helps to make training make sense and to understand why the “no pain no gain” approach is simply wrong and counter productive.
In the “you want to run?” series I mentioned a biological unit called Mitochondria and added that they are known as the power plant of the cell. The number, health and function of Mitochondria are the primary determining factors of CV function. Our respiratory functions (heart / lungs etc) are of course important but they rarely provide a limit to our training especially in the early days. So in one short sentence; getting fitter is primarily about encouraging the creation of additional Mitochondria and training the Mitochondria to work efficiently and enable it to utilise multiple types of fuel (fat, glucose and lactate).
The good news is that LOW exertion, LOW heart rate exercise actually encourages the body to create new additional Mitochondria. More Mitochondria = better energy production. LOW exertion / heart rate is what Zone 1 and 2 relates to.
Finding Zones One and Two
A quick look on the internet could well lead you to think that heart rate is the only option. There is no doubt that having a number appear on a watch can be very useful and indeed I use a heart rate monitor watch for much of my running, but and it’s a big but the heart rate settings need to be based on something verifiable at least to some degree. As I mentioned in part one of this series, Lactate levels are objective and verifiable. Ventilatory effort (often known as the “TalkTest”) while note quite so accurate is, with a little care, good enough for us to start with. At this point we need to take a short diversion and address the question of mathematical formulas.
The most common formula that you will come across is calculating your max heart rate by using the formula 220 minus your age. It’s interesting to note that this formula was never intended to be used by the general population to calculate their personal max heart rate, it was devised by a group of scientists who were doing research with people cardiac health issues or those at future risk of such issues. According to this formula my max heart rate should be 157, whereas I regularly hit 165 and that isn’t quite max effort. In an online interview, the doctor that led the team that created the formula stated that he felt a mix of embarrassment and amusement when he reads oof people using this formula for physical training.
There are a few flaws with this formula or any other formula to base your training on. Firstly and very importantly if you are new to exercise and very possibly out of shape, you don’t want to be going anywhere near your max heart rate, so calculating your max heart rate is unnecessary. Secondly and more relevant for new runners, many running zone formulas use max heart rate and a percentage thereof to calculate the lower training zones. While this might give you a ball park figure, it’s a bit like buying off the peg clothes, sometimes they fit, often they don’t. If you are going to invest time and energy into your training, working on something more specific to you makes sense to me.
The specific problem with using max heart rate (real or calculated via a formula) for training zones is that the two lactate thresholds are bio - chemical in nature and crucially they are trainable. Max heart rate is essentially bio - mechanical (genetic) and is not really trainable, it’s a physical limit that you can’t exceed, you can get used to the discomfort of reaching it, but it won’t actually change as a result of training.
The whole point of aerobic / anaerobic training is to CHANGE where the two lactate thresholds are. A fixed threshold number based on max heart rate might be right occasionally but if your training is successful it will be wrong more than it’s right. Rather like a broken clock that is only right twice a day. The aim of training is to push the curve to the right. In relation to the diagram below that means two vertical LT1 / LT2 lines shift to the right (vertical dotted lines) and with that the low effort zones extend further to the right as does the lactate curve itself (green dotted line), so the kick up that occurs in the middle and to the right of the table also moves further to the right, green dotted line. This results in our Zone 2 / LT1 (easy endurance pace) extending to the right which means we can further faster and our Zone 4 LT2 (hard but sustainable pace) also moving to the right.
The effect of moving the curve to the rights can be seen in the diagram below. This illustrates what is known as the “cross over” point when a person’s body shifts from utilising primarily aerobically consumed fat to aerobically consumed glucose and finally anaerobically consumed glucose. The chart shows three people, A: elite endurance athlete. B: an averagely active person and C: an inactive person. As you can see in turn the cross over point shifts to the left, indicating that the fittest person (top) utilises more fat and les glucose for any given effort.
I’ll finish this section with a short word of caution. You will often find coaches and bloggers / Tubers talking with absolute certainty on all aspects of training, anyone that does that should be treated with a degree of care. The reality is, science in general and sports science physiology in particular still has many unknowns. At the bottom of this blog I’ve put a link to a current academic paper, it is quite heavy on the science and it isn’t essential that you read it or indeed understand all of it, but even a cursory glance will reveal that new information is coming to light all of the time and more importantly the authors acknowledge that there is still much that is uncertain in the area of human metabolism.
In the next post we’ll look at how this knowledge can inform our training and what an early training regime should look like.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383842067_Modern_Perspective_of_Lactate_Metabolism
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