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General Training Theory: Training Zones and How to Use Them
9.7k Plays3 months ago
In the latest Uphill Athlete episode, Alyssa and Chantelle discuss the most commonly asked questions from Uphill Athletes. The topic of their discussion revolves around training zones, what they are, how to use them, and how to set them up for your training. They break down the procedures of establishing aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and why you might need training zones. Lastly, they touch on Rate of Perceived Exertion and Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome in regards to the evolution of training principles and guidance. If you’ve ever wondered about training zones, this episode will answer all your questions.
Useful articles: https://uphillathlete.com/aerobic-training/aerobic-anaerobic-threshold-self-assessment/
https://uphillathlete.com/aerobic-training/heart-rate-drift/
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Transcript
Introductions and Familiar Voices
00:00:11
Speaker
My name is Chantel Robitai, and I will be co-hosting with Alyssa Clark today, who is, of course, our most familiar voice on Upbell Athletes podcast. Hello, Alyssa. Hi, Chantel. Thanks for joining me for this episode. I think that this episode in many ways has been a long time coming, and it's something we've touched on many times in other podcasts and many conversations, but the other day we were discussing our most frequently asked question and points of confusion that we see for our athletes.
00:00:52
Speaker
you in particular answer these questions, I'm sure, multiple times a day. And so I'm hoping that we can use this podcast as a way that our athletes can have a reference point and maybe we can lessen a few of those questions for you and just have a handy podcast to to be ready for people. Yeah, I'm excited to dig in. Yes.
Understanding Training Zones
00:01:19
Speaker
Our real main topic today is training zones and how to use them. So Chantel, I'd love to hear a little bit of like how this topic came up as we were discussing, I mentioned it, that it comes up a lot of questions, but what do you see just in the everyday conversations? So I think Alyssa, this topic came up ah when you and I were talking about some of the frequently asked questions that we get um in a couple of ways, you know, frequently asked questions we get from athletes that we coach one on one.
00:01:54
Speaker
It's a question questions that we get coming up in our daily um inquiry list. um When we do one-on-one consultations with people who have questions, the number one thing, hands down, far above the rest, um it's maybe a little bit of a two-parter. One, did I test and analyze my zones, test, analyze, and determine my zones correctly?
00:02:22
Speaker
kind of part one, right? And then part two, how the heck do I use these zones in my training? And so I will say that I spend a lot of time talking with people one on one about this, looking at their data. And um maybe a theme that will come through today is a little bit of brain deprogramming um with people where they've sort of internalized things that they've heard or done or read about and thinking about like what actually is going to work better in reality. Love it. Yeah, I think it's funny when I i first started working for uphill athlete and
00:03:01
Speaker
I remember getting these questions initially, and I was so nervous to answer them. And now it's like second nature. Yeah, definitely. But I think that one of the things you say all the time is that i it's not good or bad. It's just more information, which is one of my favorite sayings from you. And I feel like one of the things that we can say about trading zones is There's not good or bad. Again, it's just more information. So let's dive into this
Effort Levels and Zone Descriptions
00:03:33
Speaker
topic. First off, what are trading zones? And then how do we use them in our actual trading?
00:03:40
Speaker
Yes, I think the simplest way is to think about training zones as different levels of effort that you put out in while you're doing physical activity. And we have these zones in terms of like delineated by levels of intensity. So at uphill athlete, we typically use four zones. We have some coaches who like to use five zones.
00:04:06
Speaker
seven zones, 12 zones. I think I've even seen up to 17. I can't imagine why you would want to have that many. However, wow ah like most things at uphill athlete, we try to keep things you know as simple as possible to make it easier for people. So if we think about the fact that we use four zones, and those are typically sort of from a lower intensity lower intensity to highest intensity. So from one being lowest and four being the highest.
00:04:34
Speaker
So if we think about zone one, that is typically a recovery sort of zone that might be walking the dog. Alyssa and I, if we wanted to, we could actually probably report record this podcast walking outside, which we probably would like to do sometime. And still stay in zone one, right? we' We're breathing nice and easy. It's really comfortable.
00:04:58
Speaker
Then when we get to zone two, that's where we are, zone one, I should ah start with also, that's an aerobic zone. So we are working still working on our basic endurance um at that level of effort. ah Predominantly, we're burning fat also at that effort. If you're thinking about what's happening within the body from a metabolic perspective.
00:05:24
Speaker
Zone two, we're still working on our endurance and our our aerobic fitness. um Still, for the most part, we are burning fat for fuel and for energy. um And in terms of the effort that we're putting out, it should still feel pretty comfortable. um And that's also an effort that we can sustain for a really long time. So for a lot of mountain athletes who are ah doing very you know long distance activities over a couple of hours. this is These are really the two um zones of effort that we use the most, zone one and two. That's something that we could sustain all day um for or for quite a long time. you know We're talking a number of hours.
00:06:11
Speaker
And so those that's where we're going to spend a lot of our time because that's really what we're focused on doing. Then when we get into zone three, now we're talking about ah we are in rather than training our aerobic fitness or aerobic capabilities, now we're training our anaerobic capabilities. So another word for this ah could be a threshold or anaerobic threshold, threshold pace or threshold heart rate, lots of different thresholds that we bandy around. But let's think about this in the simple terms of like your anaerobic threshold or your lactate threshold is the hardest you could work for one hour. So pretty hard, you know, not even really comfortably hard, like kind of uncomfortably hard, but you can do it by the end of the hour. You're really glad that it's done.
00:06:58
Speaker
pretty hard stuff. So this is something that we're we're's still very useful to bring into our training because our anaerobic threshold or a lactate threshold is still very trainable throughout our lives. um Doesn't matter if we're north of 50, we still have a chance to improve it. um We can also, with targeted work, we can improve our lactate threshold in a pretty short time. um So it's a really effective place to work um in a strategic way.
00:07:26
Speaker
Compared to zones one and two, that's our um aerobic work. And that's something that we're going to that takes a long time to build, it takes a long time to change, takes a long time to and move the needle there. So again, we want to think about how we use these zones strategically. And then once we get um Oh, I want to come back to one more thing. If you're kind of testing how that feels ah pretty uncomfortable and you would be able to say instead of like ah zone two where you could say a couple of sentences between breaths, you would be able to say maybe one sentence and then need to take a breath. um If you say a four-letter word and that's all you can say, you're beyond zone three, right? So that's moving us into
00:08:11
Speaker
you know, above our lactate threshold, we're heading towards our maximum capability, potentially even VO2 max. And that is not an effort level that we can sustain for very long at all, you know, we can we got a few minutes at that level of intensity. VO2 max is about 80% genetic and about 20% trainable. So we want to spend a little time there sometimes, but not too much. So thinking about the zones and how we use them, one, it gives us a way to kind of delineate the types of intensity that we should be working at. It also kind of reminds us how much time we need to spend in our training to be the best that we can be. And so since we need the most time,
00:08:55
Speaker
to develop and continue improving our aerobic capacity, we want to spend most of our time in those lower levels of effort. We want to spend a little bit of time in zone three, which is lactate threshold, because we still have the potential to um improve our efficiency there.
00:09:14
Speaker
And the better we can train our bodies to process lactate, it actually helps our aerobic metabolism. So we can you know we can improve our aerobic fitness while still working on improving our lactate threshold. um So it doesn't mean like if you You know, sometimes get into zone three in a workout, but it's going to throw the whole workout out of the window and you failed. No, it didn't. They work together. Um, but we want to use that strategically. And then at the higher end, the VO two max work, we want to use, you know, we, it's still 20% trainable. We want to spend a little bit of time there, but just a little bit overall, we want to be probably 80% of the time in zones one and two at that easier efforts. And we want to spend about 20% of our time.
00:10:01
Speaker
at the higher efforts like zone three and zone four. Wonderful.
Determining Training Zones
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great explanation of that. And it's hopefully hopeful for our our athletes out there. So getting into actually setting up these training zones, how do we go about doing that? And what are the procedures we can use to get this aerobic threshold and anaerobic threshold that you were talking about?
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, good question, Alyssa. And it's a little tricky to maybe explain that process. And actually, that would probably be a whole process, right? Or whole podcast, walking someone through that. um We do have a couple of great articles on our website, and we'll link those in the show notes about how to set your training zones, and also how to do the aerobic and anaerobic threshold tests.
00:10:52
Speaker
um But in a nutshell, we, as I explained at Apple Athlete, we typically use four training zones. And we delineate those training zones with two benchmarks. One is doing an aerobic threshold test.
00:11:07
Speaker
And so that's seeing like, what is the upper limit from a heart rate perspective and effort perspective? What does that look like? And so typically you'll go out and you know do a little bit of a warmup and run a jog or a hike for an hour. And then we're gonna see the difference between how the heart rate responds in the first half of that workout compared to the second half of the workout.
00:11:34
Speaker
um So we have that number and that kind of gives us one of those benchmarks. It gives us the aerobic threshold. Then if someone is capable, they can also do an anaerobic threshold test. And so remember that the anaerobic threshold is equivalent to lactate threshold. That's the hardest we can work for an hour. Pretty tough test. So if someone is capable of doing it,
00:11:58
Speaker
They could do that and they can get that number. ah We have a great little calculator on our website where you can plug in your your um aerobic threshold and your anaerobic threshold, and then it's going to give you um the four different zones. And then that way you'll see what the heart rate range ah is likely to be. And we'll get back to why I'm saying likely.
00:12:22
Speaker
um to be within those four zones to give you some good guidance in your workouts. But for those who are curious about that, I would say like take the time to go to read those articles and check out the videos on the website to read through how to do those. But it's a pretty simple process, but it's not something that everyone can do. Not everyone who's starting training is even able to do an aerobic threshold test.
00:12:48
Speaker
because they may not be able to sustain one hour of exercise at ah at a stable heart rate just yet. And again, it's not good or bad. It's just information. It's just that you're not ready yet. It doesn't mean that you're not ready to train. It means you got work to do. Excellent. And I want to throw a bit of a twist in Do you, so say, hey, you've done the aerobic threshold test and the anaerobic threshold test, and you might have time, a lab accessible. What test within a lab would you recommend for someone who is looking to kind of take things a to another step or just have more information?
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. um And ah I want to start with the fact that lab tests are absolutely not necessary. But for some people, um maybe they work in a university. Exciting. Yeah, maybe so you know for a lot of us, like looking at data is fun. And um looking using data to um quantify our improvement for some people is very motivating. So there are different lab tests that people can get that could be helpful.
00:14:01
Speaker
um I would say one of the more common ones that people are getting, even some gyms are offering now even VO2 max test. So VO2 max test would be helpful to tell you in that, I'm going to put this in big bold letters. um In under those specific settings, it's going to tell you what your maximum capacity is. So that's useful for telling you what your VO2 max is. And the the test facility can look at that data and give you some approximations
00:14:35
Speaker
of your other ah training zones based on what they see from the VO2MAX test. During the VO2MAX test, depending on how the data is collected, they may also be able to identify um what's called the ventilly ventilatory threshold 1 or VT1 and ventilatory threshold 2. And again, it depends on how they're collecting the data and how the data is coming back. But but typically speaking, VT1 and VT2 correspond with the aerobic and anaerobic threshold. So that also can be helpful to set your your training zones
00:15:14
Speaker
ah Remember that in a lab, it's very controlled conditions. You're going to be on, for the most part, a treadmill. Some people are doing it on a bike, um but it's a very controlled situation. So if you are you know you get these training zones and you are in a lab and it was 65 degrees in that lab and you're going to go with these brand new shiny training zones and you're going to go train outside tomorrow and it's 85 degrees,
00:15:43
Speaker
Guess what? Those heart and numbers aren't going to mean anything because now your environmental conditions are different. So it's useful to test. It's useful to give you some guidance. It's useful for you to understand um how hard different intensities feel. um But it might only be useful in terms of doing one test now and doing one test later. It might not be that helpful for giving you training zones.
00:16:11
Speaker
um Especially the aerobic threshold is a little bit tricky. You might need a little bit longer warm-up time. And when people are taking a VO2 max test, the goal is getting to the end as quickly as possible. So the warm-up period may not be long enough to accurately give you an aerobic threshold.
00:16:32
Speaker
And then another one people often get could be a lactate threshold test. Sometimes a lactate threshold test is done at the same time as a VO2 max test. So they are gathering, when you do a VO2 max test, they are measuring how much oxygen you are taking in, how much carbon dioxide you are putting out. um They're also monitoring your heart rate throughout the test. um They might be also um poking your finger or your ear to get lactate values as well and see where where the lactate values fall. And sometimes that can be helpful for trying to correlate um if the data isn't entirely conclusive for those um different thresholds. The lactate information might give some additional context or some additional cues. But again, it's going to tell you like where that lactate threshold is, which is where your
00:17:26
Speaker
um your and anaerobic threshold is under those conditions, you know, at that particular heart rate under those conditions. um And keep in mind another reason why sometimes these values are not very well correlated to our training training efforts or training zones is that how does it feel when you're taking any kind of test?
00:17:48
Speaker
It's a little bit stressful. Yeah, it's a little bit stressful, especially if you're doing a VO2 max test. You have a mask on your face that covers your nose and your mouth. For some people, that's really uncomfortable. You're on a treadmill. Maybe you're not used to being on a treadmill, particularly for like trail runners who are used to having their arms out on the side, they're banging the bars. and you know it It feels really funny. For some people, maybe maybe you're not a runner.
00:18:15
Speaker
um So all these different confounding factors right can apply. So again, I think it's useful if you're planning to test again, to test and compare lab data to lab data, rather than this being helpful to um set your training zones to actually use out in the wild. Excellent. Yeah, I think that just gives people a bit of an idea because I I'm sure you do. I often get asked like, Oh, do I need to get in the lab? It's like, well, you know, if you're excited about that, awesome. I can say in I had a lactate test done about maybe two a month and a half
Personal Experiences with Testing
00:18:56
Speaker
ago. And that was the first time I'd had one done since I was 15.
00:19:01
Speaker
yeah And it really just confirmed most of the, or all the information I already had. And it was cool to see, I'm glad that I had the opportunity to do it, but it did not reveal particularly incredible information that I already wasn't pretty well aware of. And so I think it was interesting to get that confirmation, but it certainly was not telling me something that I had already figured out through training and just kind of recognizing effort levels. So yeah, that's a good point, Alyssa, because I think a lot of people are very, you know, for people who are interested in data, they love the fact that there's this number for this and that number for that. And oh, this, I want the test because I want the number I want absolutes.
00:19:52
Speaker
And I think some people are are really resistant to listening to body cues, to doing some kind of talk test, to training according to rate of perceived exertion, which we'll get into. But actually, when it all gets down to it, as you say, um it's not an either or, right? It's it's a good way to like every now and again, maybe correlate, see how the data ah looks together. It allows you to calibrate it for yourself in another way. And maybe sometimes it's annoying that the simple stuff is the right stuff. You don't need a fancy gadget, actually. You just need to pay attention. Listen to what your body's trying to tell you. And sometimes it seems just too simple to do that, right?
00:20:37
Speaker
Totally. Yeah, I mean, I can give just a brief example. I've been coming back from, I think at this point, it was neuro virus after doing five days. And I was trying to do some intervals today. And I just, I i'd feel better than I had been, but still felt like I was moving through the glasses just couldn't couldn't get it going. And I was supposed to do a long run tomorrow and just went, Nope, I need another day before I can do it. And my coach,
00:21:06
Speaker
looked at my hurry and goes, and but were you using a strap or your wrist? I said, Oh, I was using a strap. And he was like, Yeah, you couldn't you could barely get into zone two on your intervals. And he yeah, another day. So you know, it wasn't that information was brought just like, Oh, yeah, that confirmed exactly as I felt. And it's just an indication of cool these all of these pieces of line.
00:21:35
Speaker
to say I need another day of taking it easy. But it wasn't like I was sitting there staring at my heart rate trying to get ah up to zone three or anything I was really just going off the field and that information about I can barely you know, get into the top of zone two is Yeah, just just yeah, that's the information you needed to pay attention to totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. And to be fair, that does come from a decade plus of of paying attention to that. So I will say I think as people are learning to understand and trust themselves, I understand that can take some time. I think really the trust part takes a while if people just don't trust themselves.
00:22:21
Speaker
Well, that's a big one, right? I feel like in coaching, a big part of our job is deprogramming people from past patterns of training, especially for people who have been collegiate athletes, right? they're They're on a team. They're always being compared. There's not a lot of individuality in the training, and it's just a matter of like,
00:22:42
Speaker
you know you And you can get away with a lot of dumb stuff when you're 20, right? But as you get older, you you have to get better. But the problem is we we have gotten really good at ignoring the signals. we get We're used to ignoring the alarm bells.
00:22:58
Speaker
and we'll just push ourselves harder. you know And if it isn't hard, it wasn't effective. So a lot of what we have to end up doing as coaches is deprogramming people because people have really lost the connection between their brain and their body, which maybe in their younger years, they kind of had to do. But as you get older, it gets much more important to be able to really know the difference between what is easy and what is hard because if we just Collected 20 random people right and put them on a track and told everyone to go run easy Everyone would run medium hard
00:23:34
Speaker
It's 100% correct. but Right? that's That's the go-to. That's what feels good. That's what's rewarding. And it's a no man's land. you know Talking about our training zones, it's not low enough to improve their aerobic capacity. It's not hard enough to improve their lactate threshold or their VO2 mats. So just running around in circles, literally, getting tired and wondering why they're not getting faster.
00:23:58
Speaker
And so that's why I think training understanding training zones and understanding the different metrics, you know heart rate and others to use this information to make good decisions for your training, but also even sometimes making the right decision to not train or to you know dial it back a little bit when when you're getting the signals um that you know something is a little bit off.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. So do you think that everyone needs training zones?
Training Plans and Goals
00:24:33
Speaker
a That's a good question. I think it's important that, I think it's important to, um you know, when you're, when you're training for most people, if you're training and you have a training program or you have a training plan, you should go out and have an intention. You have an intention, right? You look at what's the, what's the goal today. So um Even if you don't have it, for the most part, you're going to have some kind of goal, right? It's something that you want to be able to do or something that you want to be able to achieve. And you have to have some sort of plan to get there. If you're just out and you don't have any specific thing, maybe not. But if you are having some having some goals on something that you want to improve or something that you want to get good at or you want to prepare for, then you're going to want to have a training plan.
00:25:20
Speaker
And your training plan should be properly organized so that it it's going to help you get to your goal, right? You want to look at that goal. What do I need to achieve that goal? And then you kind of work backwards, right, to figure out the different steps in between to lead you to being successful.
00:25:38
Speaker
That means that each workout, you should have an intention for that workout. So you know like I said in the beginning, probably 80% of the time you're going to be doing things in a zone one, zone two, kind of easier effort, maybe 20% of the time you're going to be doing things at a harder effort, not all the time. You might have stretches of time where it is 100% all easy work.
00:26:00
Speaker
um You're rarely going to have 100% of the time that is hard work, but maybe you'll have you know maybe it's three short weeks while you're focusing on something. um so That being said, I think it's important to have a plan if you're working towards something. you you know if you How does that thing go? and I'm French Canadian, so I often get things backwards. so It might take me a minute to get it in my brain, but if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Got it. You should have a plan, right? to get to your end goal, and that way you're probably going to need to have um some training zones to get there. And that doesn't necessarily mean zone one, two, three, four. It might mean you know easy run, easy hike, a little bit harder hike, hike with weight. It doesn't have to be zone one, two, three, four, right? It just has to be be mindful of the effort that you're extending and make sure that 80% of the time it's done at a lower intensity.
00:27:00
Speaker
Perfect. Yeah, I think it doesn't necessarily have to be named training zones. But yes, that intention behind what you're doing. And I think that that's the real differenti differentiation. I'm a native English speaker, and I have a degree in English. and Here we are. ah I think that that is the piece that is really key.
00:27:28
Speaker
um and Do I think the difference between someone who is going out and just doing exercise? Yeah, that's kind of vibe. It's like, oh, you're exercising versus training. Is that intention behind the decision making and the the workout itself?
00:27:45
Speaker
um Yeah. And I think it's always fun when you have people are like, yeah, I just do a lot of working out, but I want to actually train. I think that's kind of a fun, fun moment of like, oh, cool, we can help.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, let's put some intention behind that. Exactly.
Transition to Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)
00:28:03
Speaker
So here at uphill athlete, we have emphasized pretty strongly heart rate training. And I would say within the last or something like two years around there, we are moving away from heart rate training as the only method by which to train. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about these three little letters, R-P-E, and how that has come into our vocabulary a lot more. Well, I might be a little bit responsible for that.
00:28:40
Speaker
I'm super happy about it. I might feel a little bit responsible for that. So I think heart rate training with heart rate and understanding how your heart rate performs and having some general idea about heart rate zones for your training is really helpful. But I don't think um only focusing on heart rate is helpful for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of things that influence our heart rates.
00:29:06
Speaker
So, I'll start with some. How well did you sleep last night? How much did you sleep last night? Did you have coffee before your workout? How much coffee? Did you eat? What did you eat? Is there something on your mind? Are you stressed about something? if ah What time of the day is it?
00:29:27
Speaker
What's the temperature? What's the humidity? What elevation are you at? If you're a woman, where are you at in your cycle? um you know For women, women's bodies are much more sensitive um to different things. So at different times in the cycle, our body temperature shifts. Our temperature body temperature might be up or down. um That's stressful. Menstruation, that's that's a stressful time on the on the body. Natural process.
00:29:54
Speaker
It's a stressful situation. Exercise, stress. Your body doesn't know the difference between all these different stressors, and um even being a little bit dehydrated. So I could keep going. There are lots of things. So how often do you think any of those things impact you on a daily basis, Alyssa?
00:30:13
Speaker
Yes, I'll just say yes to the whole list. Yes, right? All of them. So we have to be aware that our bodies are a little bit different every day. Our bodies are different at different times of the day. um So we have to be aware of that. And if we're only, if we're overly focused on heart rate, we're not really giving ourselves a chance to work within our bodies daily variability because there are going to be some days that naturally we feel really awesome. We're going out and we're training and it's 40 degrees Fahrenheit and we had an amazing sleep and we didn't overdo it on the caffeine and we feel like a rock star. and we We go and we do our six mile run around the neighborhood and we realize like, whoa, that wasn't even an hour.
00:31:00
Speaker
Usually that takes me an hour. Weird. I felt totally comfortable. And that's the way it would be, right? If you were trying to stick within that narrow heart rate zone all the time, if you do have a day where you're feeling particularly great, you're not going to get the most out of yourself.
00:31:16
Speaker
and you're not going to ah you know be able to account for that shift. On the other side, if you are really stressed about something or something's bothering you and you're already starting at a higher heart rate, just you know starting your activity, you're going to have a very narrow band for how much you're going to be able to perform in that day. so I think that's why it's important to use um Take think about both so if you think about the rate of perceived exertion how am I feeling and how am I feeling you know how am I feeling in general and how hard am I actually working right now that's always gonna be true.
00:31:52
Speaker
Because think about someone that lives in Florida, and they're training in Florida under those particular conditions, and then they go to Colorado on a hike. If they're trying to stay within the same heart rate zone, well, their zone two heart rate might be the same as them sitting at their campsite in a chair.
00:32:11
Speaker
right So we have to think about how am I feeling in the moment? And that's why we like to share about rate of perceived exertion or RPE as another method to calibrate your effort. So how hard are you working? And again, a lot of people don't know the difference right between easy and hard. So we give we give people cues in terms of um how you're breathing and how many words you could say. So, zone one, we're like now, Alyssa and I were probably zone one. We could probably be walking a little bit.
00:32:44
Speaker
still stay in zone one. Zone two, we're conversational. So practice this, talk out loud, talk to the tree, talk to your buddy, your dog, or or yourself um at the risk of looking funny to others, passerby. And make sure that that is conversational. That means you're saying two to three sentences before you need to take a breath. And then if you are getting into If it's a zone two workout and you do the talk test and you find that you can say maybe four or five words before you need to take a breath, slow your bleep down, right? Slow down. You're going too hard. That's, again, what's the intention of the workout? You're going too hard. And it's very easy to drift, right? um Drift ahead. And then you know if it is something, um you know zone three workout, we do have sometimes some zone three workouts
00:33:36
Speaker
you can test yourself during that workout to make sure that you're not slowing down or speeding up. So try to come up with a phrase. Mine is usually, I'm like a dog, I'm very food motivated. So mine is always, how many were could be like, what am I gonna eat after this workout? If I can then start naming foods, I know that I'm still in zone two. If I take a breath after my question, then I know I'm properly in zone three. And if I'm at four letter words,
00:34:05
Speaker
Then I know that I'm beyond that So you can calibrate that and I sometimes ask people to you know for some people that are really becoming slaves to the heart rate I say Turn your change your watch screen so that all you see is the time go out and do your workout Practice the talk test then come back and look at your heart rate and see how that calibrates with the heart rate zones that you've determined for yourself. And you might start learning that your zones change according to time of day, um weather temperature, weather conditions, elevation, time of the month if you are a menstruating person, um all of those things. So you might start to learn what those are. And if it might sound silly to you, I will say that this has been, there are many scientific studies
00:34:54
Speaker
um It's quite fascinating and in a lot of the studies they actually use the Pledge of Allegiance. um And they found that it was it was spot on with with correlating those those important zones. And so it's it's scientifically validated. It might sound like a little bit too woo or too loose, but it is actually scientifically validated.
00:35:16
Speaker
It's a great way to try and um calibrate your zones. It's also really useful in the field because when you go to a higher elevation, those zones that you know by heart rate, they're not gonna matter. Also, you're probably not gonna be able to even look at your watch, right? It's probably gonna be buried under stuff um and it's moving around. You might not even wanna wear a watch. So it's actually really good to learn to learn about your body and understand the differences between how these different zones feel instead of always relying on your watch. and so Also, that could be dangerous. If you're only looking at your watch to know what zone you're in, you're going to be on your face, on the ground. right so It's a distraction as well. Yeah. There's there's definitely people along the way that want to be like, could we throw your watch off a cliff?
00:36:13
Speaker
Would that be acceptable? So we have the talk test. How then does the rate of perceived exertion, we have a ah number from one to 10, what does that, what are those numbers correlate with say the talk tests and zones? Yeah, good question, Alyssa. um So if we think about the RPE, it's on a scale of one to 10. One is really like nothing.
00:36:42
Speaker
You're just like a potato. You're a potato on the couch. you know So typically we're starting around like sort of two, three would be, ah two to three would be your zone one, like nice and easy.
00:36:55
Speaker
then we think about like maybe even four, actually, four, you know up to four. When we get into five, six, that's when we're more of our endurance or aerobic style workouts. At the upper end of zone two, now we're kind of getting up to about a seven on that i'm not higher end. That's kind of just before the the crossover happens from predominantly using our aerobic system to our anaerobic system. Once we get to about an eight, nine, that's pretty much where our zone three is. So that's our, you know, one word sentence. And then beyond that, we're talking about the 10, you know, that's the hardest we could work. So it's like scale of one to 10.
00:37:43
Speaker
So again, thinking most of the time we're working between four and seven, that's our zones one and two, some of the time we're working between eight and 10. Gotcha. And with that being said, there's always a slight bit of deviation of how people use those numbers. Like I know Trading Peaks has a very different Yeah, perception of those numbers, I generally say like seven to eight is like seven is borderline zone three. Yeah. and Yeah, so it's just, yeah, cuz seven is about our crossover point. Right? and So it's like, it's kind of the tipping point right there. Yeah. But I will say that I think sometimes, um like, I know, ah train peaks has put in an RPA chart, which I think is awesome. um But
00:38:35
Speaker
And a lot of different people have just slightly different numbers as people have different zones. So exactly, it kind of is like, use it as it's useful to you, whatever those numbers, like if you have a sense of what those numbers are, and they correlate to what makes sense to you. Fantastic. But there is also Not as much of a universal agreement on that spectrum as I would expect so just as a as a warning And I think that's because Alyssa there are different um Like you think about the original training peaks when training peaks first came out. They were using a seven zone system So if they're starting with a seven zone system and they're building their RPE schedule on top of that that makes sense right that it's gonna vary because they have more
00:39:24
Speaker
or Delineated zones. We're using four. So that means that that's going to condense what our zones look like. I think the most important thing is it's not like that. the None of this is rocket science or new, right? It's just a different system, different numbering system in a sense. So if you're following one system versus another, just be consistent with what you're using so that you are comparing apples to apples day after day and know apples to bananas.
00:39:52
Speaker
yeah And now I want an apple, but here we are. Yeah, same. So I think the book has scared more than one person into thinking they need to go to the hospital for aerobic deficiency syndrome.
Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome Explained
00:40:08
Speaker
But we are here to tell you that you are safe. You're safe. You're not. You're good. Don't worry. With that being said, ADS, which is short term for aerobic deficiency syndrome,
00:40:20
Speaker
comes up pretty frequently for athletes. It was pretty prominently featured ah in both books. So Chantel, can you break down what does ADS mean? And why are we kind of rethinking using that term specifically?
00:40:39
Speaker
you are all marked safe from aerobic deficiency syndrome. We need it on Facebook. Let me say it again. Yeah. So aerobic deficiency syndrome, first of all, syndrome. This is nothing. This is not a medical term. There's actually no existing scientific study on aerobic deficiency syndrome. I think this hearkens back to some of the philosophies of of Phil Maffetone from his coaching career and things that he was noticing and observing with some of his athletes. um and He was a coach and chiropractor and um I think you know over time working with people, he was making certain types of observations. um The use of syndrome is kind of deceiving for people because then it seems like, oh my gosh, something is wrong with me.
00:41:30
Speaker
So ah let's think about just let's just get rid of that word. um However, if there is if there is more than a 10% difference between your aerobic and anaerobic deficiency, you might be aerobically deficient. five You mean anaerobic and aerobic threshold.
00:41:52
Speaker
yeah sorry did you so quick inner yeah Yeah, sorry. Sorry about that. You're good. See, it's messing with my brain. All right. Let me try that again. If you have more than a 10% difference between your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds,
00:42:06
Speaker
What you might see in our book is that you have aerobic deficiency syndrome. So let's just scratch the syndrome part. And if you do have a 10% difference between those um those two thresholds, it may mean that you are aerobically deficient.
00:42:23
Speaker
And again, it's not good or bad. It's just information. It just tells you where you have room to work. And that's a good thing, right? If I know that I can improve, that I'm going to get the best results by improving my aerobic engine as a starting point, that's given me a starting point. Like that's really powerful. That's a good thing. so I think I see so many questions coming into our inbox about this, or people worried about this, and how can they how can they get over this? And you know a biggest big part of of me is like trying to reassure folks that it's just giving us a starting point. It's actually really good information because it tells us where you have room to work and where you have room to improve. And so that's why we are
00:43:08
Speaker
you might even see on our website in some places rather than saying aerobic deficiency syndrome. It's just aerobic deficiency um and you know not something that anyone has to worry about and certainly you know ah good information on what kind of training is going to help you and where to start. and what To go right into that, what kind of training does help with someone who has greater than a 10% gap?
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, so it could be like, um where we see this quite often is someone who comes from um a very, ah like a non-endurance sport. So like a powerful sport, maybe it could be powerlifting, Olympic lifting, it could be crosswind.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah, CrossFit, tennis, quick movements, fast twitch muscle fibers. not you know Think about sports where running was a punishment. um That's the best way I could think about it. For a lot of those sports, running was a punishment um if the coach wasn't happy with how you were training or what you were doing.
00:44:13
Speaker
For those who don't have a long history of doing endurance sport and longer, slower efforts, naturally, right they're naturally they're they're not going to their aerobic system is not going to be as developed as someone who has always been running or doing some other form of endurance sport, right Nordic skiing, um you name it.
00:44:38
Speaker
so For those people, that is probably the best place for them to start is to build an aerobic base. um And that just comes with a lot of time doing the, as we like to say, um the the slow and sexy stuff, you know, the slow and unsexy stuff. That's really what it takes um to to get there. On the other hand, you might get someone who has a long history of endurance sport, but they've never done any high intensity work.
00:45:08
Speaker
And for those people, they are really gonna get a a nice boost by spending some time doing some higher intensity work. um So it doesn't mean like you're doomed forever to be doing the the slow slower intensity stuff, but it does mean that it will be impactful for you to spend a little bit of time there. Yeah, that's very helpful. And I think one of the pieces I always like to remind people is that It's not something that's going to change in a week or two. it's No. Months.
00:45:46
Speaker
yes months I always say that building your aerobic base is both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that it takes a really long time. The blessing is that once you've built it, it lasts a really long time too.
00:46:01
Speaker
h so it It's a double edged sword of it is not something that's going to change in a month. It's just not. But if you do that consistent study work, that's probably way easier than you think it should be. Yeah, you will get to have that for the rest of your life. I mean, if you keep it up to a certain extent and stay consistent. And that's pretty awesome.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And and again, like try to find, you know for some people, they they just don't find it mentally rewarding. And I think especially for someone who comes from ah like one of the faster Twitch sports, um mentally, you're not getting the same reward, right? And so you're goingnna it is going to take a mind shift. So how can you prepare your brain to slow the heck down? you know that Maybe that means taking more photos. Maybe that means eating more snacks. Maybe that means actually seeing and taking in your surroundings. Think about how good it is to slow down because in life, we are doing so many things all the time that are fast, fast, fast. Try to see this as an opportunity to connect more with the surroundings
00:47:23
Speaker
that you're running or or playing in. Maybe that's you're recruiting a friend to come along and you're taking the time to have a conversation. You can have a conversation while you're out there because you're not, you know, breathing so hard that you might pass out if you try to say something. So try to find ways to actually make it fun and enjoy the process. Absolutely. And I will say that it might not feel hard now, but when you're out there for three, four,
00:47:53
Speaker
five, six, seven hours. And beyond, it'll feel plenty hard. Don't worry. I always say, don't worry, it'll get hard plenty soon. Yeah, that's right. It's just, it's just a different kind of hard than that, like, covered in sweat, you know, puking in a trashcan feeling, which I really hate.
00:48:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i I don't really know why some people are motivated by that level of difficulty. I think those days are way behind me, personally. I think so too, for me as well. Well, Chantel, any last pieces of advice you'd like to give our athletes and listeners?
Intentional Training and Resources
00:48:40
Speaker
Yeah, I would say maybe the biggest one is you know with your training, have some intention. no you know Know what your training is all about. Make sure that it matches your objective. And if you are training without a particular objective, try to also balance it out in your regular life. um you know In terms of like most of the time, you're going pretty easy. Sometimes you're going a little harder. It's the same as like the approach to a healthy diet, right?
00:49:08
Speaker
um Most, you know, the the typical good instructions are like eating mostly plants, right? Eating mostly plants and then having some good sources of protein mixed in there. um Same kind of thing. And you you don't have to be perfect, you know, but if you can be 100% consistent, 80% of the time, you're going to probably get the result that you're looking for. Love it. Consistency is my favorite word when it comes to training.
00:49:41
Speaker
Well, Chantel, if ah people want to learn more about coaching or training plans or our training groups, can you tell us a little bit about how they can find out how they might be able to inquire about coaching?
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah, thanks Alyssa. I will say, don't forget to check the notes um to find some links to some of the things we talked about with our aerobic and anaerobic threshold tests. I will say that a lot of our training plans have been updated so that you can, ah some of them have an option to choose a heart rate based or rate of perceived exertion based plan. All of our running plans are all rate of perceived exertion based.
00:50:25
Speaker
um which I think is really great. If you have questions about how to be coached or you want to join a training group, we have lots of great updated information on the website. But if you feel like you don't really know what you need and you want to talk to a live human being about it, um you're welcome to either fill up a contact form on our website or reach out to coach at uphillathlete.com. And we'll be happy to help give you some guidance along your way.
00:50:55
Speaker
Excellent. Well, thank you, Chantel. Thank you for all of our listeners for tuning in. If you can rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform that helps us help more athletes. It's not just one, but a community. We are uphill athletes.