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Other/Mixed Steady State Cardio and Aerobics

Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)
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Anna C said:
I would argue that only A is doing truly "zone 2 training". Zone 2 is by definition a steady-state aerobic type of training. The others may have a similar heart rate, but they're stimulating a different adaptation.

As for B, if he never goes above zone 2, his intervals are NOT effective.
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Maybe not. Maffetone describes this, and in a slightly different way, so do Johnston and House of The Uphill Athlete. With well developed aerobic fitness, Zone 2 becomes difficult, from a muscular standpoin,t to maintain. Uphill Athlete then recommends those athletes train primarily Zone 1, and Maffetone recommends Aerobic Intervals,
 
Anna C said:
Let's define this a little better. I'm 52 years old and have been a cyclist for 12+ years, in addition to strength training. My max HR is probably about 180. During a snatch test it's about 172, but I'll see 180 at the end of a 5k running race or a bike sprint or something. My MAF HR is about 130. So my zone 2, depending on whose "zone" method you're using, is probably about 120-135.

When I do high-intensity intervals on an Airdyne, my HR goes up to about 170 with a 20 second effort, then settles back down to 130ish over the next minute and 40 seconds. I might repeat that 4 more times for a HIIT session.

So what if I did intervals on the Airdyne where i brought my HR up to 130? What would I do to do zone 2 intervals -- cruise along at 110, do a really really brief and not so hard effort for 20 seconds or up to a minute or two? I suppose one option would be doing a longer interval... but what's the point? I'm only IN zone 2 at that point. A zone 2 steady state effort still isn't very hard, and there's no lactate accumulation (most people's definition of zone 2), so there's no reason to rest between interval efforts.

Now does that mean I'd be doing nothing effective? No... it's still time well spent -- I've elevated my heart rate for some period of time, and I'm training my heart and the rest of my body to do an aerobic effort. So it's good, and certainly would be stimulating an improvement for someone who was starting from no exercise and doing this. It's just not nearly as effective for improving certain performance (and possibly health) parameters as actual higher intensity intervals would be, particularly in the well-trained athlete.
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I'm going to keep playing devil's advocate; not because I disagree, but because I think there is potential in this discussion.

Do intervals have to be "high intensity" to be beneficial? What if intervals very short? Dare I say...5-10 seconds on, 50-55 off?

A zone 2 steady state isn't very hard....for a trained individual! If we use the traditional Zone 2 as 70-80%, how long is an untrained individual going to do 80% effort? Anecdotally, I will say not long. For an untrained individual, very brief 5 seconds effort at a higher pace will help them adapt to a more intense stimulus. Just because it's not high intensity doesn't mean it isn't beneficial in my books!

Theoretically, if we wanted to stay in Zone 2 for intervals, the "hard" part would be brief. The "not hard" part...could it not be full rest? Once the HR gets back down to say zone 1, do a brief interval again? Consider this as exactly what many did with MAF swings for a while there.
 
I keep coming back to the untrained athlete because all of us generally have literally no idea what it is to be untrained. I only highlight this because I stare it in the face 40 hours a week at my job. It's easy to lose sight of this.
Also - we all care about health, but let's face it - this forum is geared towards performance. As stated above, no one on this forum "exercises" - we train. THIS IS NOT NORMAL hahaha. We are a select group with an atypical mindset compared to general pop.
 
vegpedlr said:
Maybe not. Maffetone describes this, and in a slightly different way, so do Johnston and House of The Uphill Athlete. With well developed aerobic fitness, Zone 2 becomes difficult, from a muscular standpoin,t to maintain. Uphill Athlete then recommends those athletes train primarily Zone 1, and Maffetone recommends Aerobic Intervals,
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Yes, that's a good point... however, the well-trained athlete still needs to do zone 2, and since there is no accumulation of lactate, there's no reason to turn it into interval training. But I could see some argument for programming it that way.
 
wespom9 said:
Do intervals have to be "high intensity" to be beneficial? What if intervals very short? Dare I say...5-10 seconds on, 50-55 off?
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Yes, these can be beneficial for sprints or power intervals -- i.e. zone 5 intervals. But in that case, HR is not a good indicator. It can't react that fast. And these aren't for the cardio adaptations -- they are for improving performance.

wespom9 said:
A zone 2 steady state isn't very hard....for a trained individual! If we use the traditional Zone 2 as 70-80%, how long is an untrained individual going to do 80% effort? Anecdotally, I will say not long. For an untrained individual, very brief 5 seconds effort at a higher pace will help them adapt to a more intense stimulus. Just because it's not high intensity doesn't mean it isn't beneficial in my books!
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It's actually the opposite. As @vegpedlr pointed out, the well-trained athlete can maintain a higher output without accumulating lactate, therefore their zone 2 is a higher effort (maybe or maybe not a higher HR).

I would not say that zone 2 is 80% effort at all. More like 60% on an RPE. Nasal breathing. Conversational.
 
The lactate guy from the mitochondria podcast commented that (paraphrasing) trained peeps need to push their zone 2. I read that as their zone 2 is another's zone 3 or 4, even. And I read that, perhaps oversimplifying what is a bonkers complicated thing with ooddles of different inputs and variables, analogous to Maffetone with the adding of extra bpm to a trained athlete, so their maf number is increased. Compared to someone untrained with their number decreased. You know, broadly speaking. And it's difficult to isolate the mechanics of the "thing' you do, the efficiency of running/swimming/cycling/swinging/snatching and how technique features into the workload and power output. A person with crap technique will expend more energy produce less power doing the thing, so overtime proficiency may be gained at the thing which may appear like increased 'fitness' but maybe isn't - it's specialism.
 
Anna C said:
Yes, that's a good point... however, the well-trained athlete still needs to do zone 2, and since there is no accumulation of lactate, there's no reason to turn it into interval training. But I could see some argument for programming it that way.
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Except that is what Maffetone is recommending. Work intervals done at MAF, everything else well below. That is, if you follow along with Maffetone. Not everyone agrees, of course.
 
vegpedlr said:
Except that is what Maffetone is recommending. Work intervals done at MAF, everything else well below. That is, if you follow along with Maffetone. Not everyone agrees, of course.
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This? The 'Ex-hill-arating' Workout - Dr. Phil Maffetone

That would be a VERY high level of aerobic fitness. Pro/Elite level. But I suppose he trains them also.

Even then, I'm not sure I see the logic -- if you need zone 2 time, why not do it all at one time? Again there's no lactate or H+ ion accumulation, so there's no downside in my view.

And I really don't see, even for Pro/Elite, how this could be true: "it may be difficult or impossible to reach your aerobic maximum heart rate". Those people can still do intervals that take them into zone 4 and 5. Or whatever zones are being calculated.

These "zone" discussions are always confounded by the fact that different methodologies calculate the zones a little differently.
 
wespom9 said:
Would it help if we define the zones?
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Well.... the different zone examples help to show why these discussions can be a bit ambiguous.

Returning to your earlier point, for the untrained, it really doesn't matter that much. The important adaptations such as for the heart will come from just about any cardio activity and intensity, and will probably get them out of "risk factor" and to a decent state of health.

For the highly trained, it's really important to target the correct intensity with their training, but their zones and their percentages may not apply to us recreational athletes. For Elite/Pro it becomes as much about balancing training with recovery, and practicing their sport skill, as anything else.

So for those of us in the middle, we can target the intensity of the effort to elicit the target adaptation most specifically, along with all the other adaptations that come from our chosen activity. Often other constraints come into play before we get there, though -- the amount of time available to train, the weather, illness and injury.

But outside of those constraints, most people (like Phil Maffetone) feel like it's better to put in a lot of time (maybe 80% of training time) at the lower intensity to build an aerobic base. This trains the body to use fatty acids for ATP production in the mitochondria, and use the slow twitch muscle fiber for force production. When you get to the upper end of zone 3 or into zone 4, you're not burning fat for fuel, and you're using fast twitch muscle fiber for muscle contractions, which are mostly glycolytic. So we could go off on those tangents... But it's not all bad -- higher intensity training such as intervals also has benefits, and could account for 20% of training time as a general rule, once one has a decent aerobic base.
 
Thoughtful responses as always Anna, thanks.

If I may offer my unsolicited thoughts after all this:

Improving health in the untrained person (I'll call this "exercise"): Get your cardio time in. Some easy, some hard. There's a dose-response to both volume and intensity (higher volume, better; more intensity you can handle, better). Balance both and achieve benefits
Performance ("training"): Must dial in both high and low toward your chosen goal in the proper amounts with sufficient recovery that allow the desired adaptation.

HOW you get that aerobic work in is of course how this all started, comparing steady state to CV intervals to KB swings. Exercise vs Training will play a role in your choice.

Whether you train your heart or exercise it....do something!!!
 
House | Johnston | Jornet
  • Utilize 5 Zones
  • Zone 2: AeT -10% to AeT / moderate effort for those with high AeT, low effort for those with low AeT / Aerobic Cabicity (economy) building / Maximum fat utilization / Mostly S.T. Fiber recruitment/ typical training method continuous 30-90min
  • Zones 1&2 become extended (and have lower blood lactate concentrations) in well trained individuals
Anyone seriously interested in real endurance should read their work.
 
Why go hard if you don't need to?

Nearly all the benefits of aerobic training happen at low intensity, so unless you have a performance goal, i.e. cover a certain distance in a certain time, why bother?

Go hard in the gym, easy on the roads.
 
vegpedlr said:
Why go hard if you don't need to?

Nearly all the benefits of aerobic training happen at low intensity, so unless you have a performance goal, i.e. cover a certain distance in a certain time, why bother?

Go hard in the gym, easy on the roads.
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For a lot of people, the argument is efficiency. If they're only doing cardio for health and maybe a little bit for general physical preparedness, why spend hours in zone 2 when you can get it done with 20 minutes of intervals a couple of times per week? But whether that "works" is often debated. I am in the zone 2 camp myself.
 
wespom9 said:
As stated above, no one on this forum "exercises" - we train.
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I agree with this, but I would also say that many people in this forum aren’t training for performance but for health, gpp and the ability to age gracefully. That’s where these conversations get really interesting. I think science knows a lot more about exercise for performance and for raising the floor untrained individuals then it does for raising the ceiling for health.
 
Anna C said:
why spend hours in zone 2 when you can get it done with 20 minutes of intervals a couple of times per week?
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The advice to do HIITs for the general population is getting very close to standard now, but as far as I know there is no standard for what qualifies. I remember spending a few months doing the original Tabata protocol in the late 90s and it was brutal on me with a much younger body. 20 seconds of max effort with just 10 seconds of rest for 8 repeats 4 times a week is not a walk in the park. And what it showed to improve was VO2max, which is at best just one part of the puzzle and is largely governed by genetics.

But many authorities I really respect recommend HIIT programs for health. This used to bug me until I realized that S&S, Q&D and very likely A+A all are all high intensity-interval programs, so I am very much covered. :cool:
 
Tim Randolph said:
But many authorities I really respect recommend HIIT programs for health. This used to bug me until I realized that S&S, Q&D and very likely A+A all are all high intensity-interval programs, so I am very much covered. :cool:
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Yes, and as any Strong Endurance attendee learns, there is a world of difference between a 15 second effort and a 20 second effort, and rest periods matter quite a bit for the most effective (and least harmful) dose of lactate, acidity, etc...
 
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