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Strong Endurance An aerobic question

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shawnjm23

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I'm wondering if steady state exercise at 60-70% percent of hr max is enough to improve an athletes aerobic capacity. From what I understand MAF pace is most effective.

Thanks!
 
I'm wondering if steady state exercise at 60-70% percent of hr max is enough to improve an athletes aerobic capacity. From what I understand MAF pace is most effective.

Thanks!
It depends.

What sport? What's the athlete's training history? How much 60-70%MHR work have they been doing? How much would be added? Is there a performance issue?

It might also depend on what you mean by aerobic capacity.

To me it means (from Training for the Uphill Athlete) "the ability of the main locomotive muscles' ability to produce ATP via aerobic metabolism." If you mean this, then yes, steady state @ 60-70%MHR will improve aerobic capacity (you will have a bigger and better aerobic engine), depending on the steady state and the athlete's needs. Maffetone's HR estimation generally puts someone in these heart rate range. My personal predilection is to base this off of breathing rather than heart rate, but properly applied you end up in a similar place.

Some people use aerobic capacity to basically refer to VO2 max training, which I would call (again based on TFTUA) aerobic utilization. If you mean this (does slow steady state improve max VO2) I would side step the question and suggest training to improve VO2 max might not be the best use of an athlete's time - working to improve an athlete's VO2 max might not be correlated to improved performance.

For me, in both cases, the question becomes "Does steady state in the 60-70%MHR improve the athlete's performance?" and that is HIGHLY dependent on the sport and athlete in question... Although in general I would recommend including some in training as it has a lot of indirect value (such as health related, but also the ability to recover from training bouts quicker). But again, very athlete and sport dependent, as well as what you are looking to get out of it.

I want to caveat by saying that I have minimal work with athletes and none working with high level athletes.
 
I'm wondering if steady state exercise at 60-70% percent of hr max is enough to improve an athletes aerobic capacity. From what I understand MAF pace is most effective.

Thanks!
Good for building a base and not getting beat up. I like the 80-20 rule here, and many other areas. Roughly, and it depends, 80 percent easy and something left in the tank, 20 percent testing your limits and/or getting smoked.
 
John said it well, but when it comes to VO2max I always like to add the fact that it’s mostly god given. Everyone can improve their aerobic capacity, most people can only increase VO2max by 2-5%. I’ve had great success using MAF over the past 5 months or so.
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone. My MAF pace is about 79% max heart rate. Im really just curious if running at the lower (60-70%), would still be beneficial towards building an aerobic base as I enjoy doing these runs a few times a week between my sport practice and strength training. At the very least they're nice for recovery and relaxation.
 
What are you using as a baseline when you say 2-5% increase?
I’m no expert on vo2 max training at all. That stat just always stuck with me from my exercise physiology class/textbook. I’m guessing it was based off of a meta-analysis.
This was the text I used
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Now that i look at a couple of studies it looks like 5-15% max increase. I think my professor (a physical trainer very involved in athletic performance application and research) believed it was more towards the 5%. Apologies if i misquoted in the first post.
 
Also:

For how long does the athlete need to exert?

2000m men's single sculls is absolutely brutal from an energy and cardio POV, but it only lasts < 7 min.
 
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