Training Zones

You often hear of training zones and heart rate for endurance athletes, max effort work and dynamic effort work in the weight room for strength athletes. High Intensity days, recovery work, maintenance ect... whats all this mean?

Chances are your not doing high intensity anaerobic threshold work or aerobic base work. You fall in the middle. It's what I refer to as comfortably uncomfortable. Your not pushing yourself hard enough to make improvement in your anaerobic threshold, but your not going easy enough to build up your aerobic base. We can talk about heart rate all you want, but it usually comes down to this. Anaerobic threshold work hurts, it hurts a lot. If you've never been a little nervous about a work out, because of the discomfort your about to push yourself through, you've never done anaerobic work. It usually only last a few minutes at a time. In the end you may only do 3-20 minutes of "total work", but it's total pain. If you've never been bored with your workouts, like this seems so easy, you've never done true aerobic base work. It may be spinning for three hours at a pace that seems "ridiculously slow."

In the weight room, your Max Effort work, whether it's 3 rep or 1 rep, is just that, 3 rep or 1 rep. If your doing a 3 rep deadlift ME work, you're not getting a 4th rep. Your dynamic effort work is fast, read that again, fast! Not a lot of weight, but perfect form explosively.

If your not making improvements on the road, on the bike or in the weight room, look at your training, are you spending most of your time being comfortably uncomfortable?