Transcript 0:00 Welcome back to the Iron Sights podcast. In this episode, CC and I got together to talk about heart rate zone training. 0:06 This is gonna be the first podcast of a multi-podcast series that we'll release over time, specifically centered around building endurance through m- more specifically endurance type training. 0:16 It's often overlooked and often misunderstood. So today, we're gonna kind of break down the basics. We'll get into a little bit of physiology. It does get a little science-y. 0:23 We do talk about numbers, but I think that's important because again, of what I said, it's often, uh, misunderstood. So for those folks that, uh, that don't have a huge background in this, hang in there. 0:33 We will get to the quick and dirty, how do you figure out your numbers for yourself as we go through. But we want you to have a, a solid understanding so you know why. 0:40 So we try to keep it fun, try to make it as least science-y as possible, keep it moving, uh, to give you some practical information to help you with your training going forward. 0:48 [whooshing] Whether you need it or not, I'm gonna remind you, all these episodes are brought to you by Red Dot Fitness Training Products and Programs. 0:55 If you wanna find out more about what we do here at Red Dot Fitness, go to rdftrainonline.com. There you can find out about our one-on-one training programs, our self-guided programs, and even our online membership. 1:07 If you have questions when you get there, you can reach out to us in a couple of different ways. You can simply email us using the contact page that's located there, or you can call us. 408-242-9442 is the number. 1:17 Somebody'll be here to pick up to answer any of the questions you might have and get you on your way. Again, that's rdftrainonline.com, rdftrainonline.com. [rock music] Welcome to Iron Sights. 1:34 This podcast candidly seeks to create opportunities and deliver impact by sharing the experiences and wisdom of successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders who unapologetically aim to win in health, fitness, business, and life. 1:48 I'm your host, Scott Howell. Welcome to old school meets new school, tradition meets innovation, and imperfection meets excellence. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the show. It's gonna be one of those podcasts. 2:01 With notes? With notes. Okay. Uh, it's gonna get kind of science-y. I hope people are sort of ready for this. All right. I- Ready? Let's go... I don't, uh- Ready to go... 2:11 I don't like giving people science lessons, but I also don't like having a lot of conversation about stuff without giving some, like, context or background to it and try and help people understand the, 2:24 some of the goings on. Mm-hmm. A- and, and I, I think that's kind of what's happened with exercise, the exercise industry, is we've worked so hard for so long to kind of make it, uh, palatable- Mm-hmm... 2:37 and, like, digestible for the general consumer that two things have happened. One, it's very easy to confuse people just as much when you dumb it down that much as when you science it up. 2:50 Um, but two, it also makes for lowering the barrier of entry for somebody talking about it or, and/or somebody consuming, say, a fitness program or something like that, that much lower. 3:04 For them to be able to get in and understand it? Or- No, I just mean like for a coach to come in and say, "Here's the things you need to do in order-" Mm-hmm... "to be successful. 3:11 Here's what we're doing in your workout program," with no basis of knowledge or understanding, or very little, let's say, to be prescribing certain exercise programs or modalities in order to get somebody a specific result. 3:22 And in this case, I think we're, we're specifically talking about performance- Mm-hmm... when we're looking on our triangle of awareness, aesthetics, performance, or longevity. 3:30 Where are we kind of in our, in our, what we're trying to obtain from a goals perspective. So there is some level of physiology we have to talk about here, but I... 3:39 And I also understand for people that it can get, it can just get really boring and go right over their head if they're not in the, kind of in the, in the scene at all. 3:48 At the same time, they have no problem going out or spending hours and hours researching online for the latest and greatest tech to tell them what their heart rate is, to tell them how many calories they've burned, to tell them what their sleep situation looks like, recovery, and everything else. 4:04 But if you don't understand this basic physiology, what does that even mean? Mm-hmm. You're taking the device's word for it, and there's really no customization or personalization to any of that. 4:13 Um, it really is all based on actuated values and al- algorithms and sort of a collection of data. And while the devices continue to get smarter, it will kind of learn you ag- Over time. Yeah... 4:23 that gets dumped into an algorithm, it is still, uh, again, n- not based on the individual. Mm-hmm. Um, now, that doesn't make those devices bad, or it doesn't, you know, any l- any less valuable. 4:36 Uh, but at the same, my point is, is like people will spend hours and hours and hours trying to learn what the best, reading reviews, shopping, doing all this stuff, listening to their friends, getting into chat rooms w- again, with very little basis of understanding kind of what they're doing. 4:50 Moreover, they'll go purchase fitness programs or join fitness, fitness programs that tout, "Well, while you're doing this, then we, we apply the s- the quote-unquote science to our workouts that will yield the maximum or greatest benefits you could possibly get because we use tech and because we use science," and that science being based on any number, number of things. 5:16 Uh, and people are just, are all too willing to kind of eat it up. Mm-hmm. 5:19 And if you don't have a, a, an understanding, a, a base-level understanding, it's really easy to kind of get sucked into, "Well, fuck, that sounds good." Yeah. 5:26 Remember the whole gamifying fitness several years ago when that first came out? We're still doing it. Yeah. And yeah, you wanted to be in that certain colored zone. [laughs] Color zone. 5:36 There's a fucking, uh, y- a huge franchise called Orange Theory that made money on this. I wasn't going there, but [laughs] okay. No, I'll go. I'll go there. 5:43 I mean, again, like I, I think the success people had in Orange Theory had way less to do with anything that had to do with their fucking heart rate zones, which was being pitched. Mm-hmm. 5:52 Um, it just had to do with the fact that they were moving more, and, um, some people figured it out, and some people didn't. 5:57 But yeah, that's a really great point is, like, people need to have their, their, their fitness, uh, bas-... uh, sort of cross over into entertainment at some level. We have the, quote-unquote, "party on the bike." 6:08 Mm-hmm. Right? The cy- cycle studios. Exertainment. Uh, yeah, we, they, they go to studios to get on rowers with disco balls on the ceiling and a DJ in the corner and whatever and get their workout in. 6:19 Now, I don't wanna take anything away from that. I'm just gonna go back to the original statement I, statement I was making about dumbing down fitness and turning it into something in order to get people to consume it. 6:29 Mm-hmm. Uh, I found that a little challenging at times. 6:33 At other times, I was like, "This is great," because people are going to get entertained and their fitness gets good for a while until it doesn't, and then they start asking questions, and I found myself particularly or particularly our business in a really good position to answer those questions. 6:47 Um, not over-science it and, like, trip people out to where they're like, "Oh, these guys clearly know more than I know, so I should hire them." 6:53 No, it's like, let's educate you on why that worked for a while, why it didn't- And why it's not now... why it's not now. Mm-hmm. 7:00 Uh, and why trying to combine all of this, um, these, let's just say different training modalities, intensities, call it heart rate zones, uh, let's just... 7:13 So formulations to try to achieve a level of fitness can be good, but you really need to peel back the layers and go, "What am I really trying to achieve right now, and how does that help me down the line in my long-term plan?" 7:23 100%. Yeah. It goes back to the question of why. What are you doing and why are you doing it? Yeah, so I, I, th- this c- this conversation opens up... 7:31 Well, today we're gonna talk about, just I guess inform the listener now, we've kind of gone off on a little- [laughs]... 7:36 little tangent there, but inform, inform the listeners that today we're gonna be talking about heart rate training zones. Um, and we're gonna, we're gonna have to talk a little bit about science in order for... 7:47 Those, those people that really know this stuff, I hope that they really appreciate this conversation. 7:51 Like, the people that, that have kind of dug into this and really understand, um, maybe they, they understand physiology at a little deeper level, um, energy systems, which we'll be talking about a little bit. 8:01 Um, they, they like science. They like data. 8:04 They like applying that, and they also have maybe even dabbled in the endurance training, uh, arena at some level, m- multi-sport or whether it be running, cycling, swimming, a combination of those. There's lots of them. 8:16 Mm-hmm. Right? Lots of things. That they listen to this and they go, "Okay, cool, this is a smart conversation." Mm-hmm. Like, "And I needed to maybe be reminded about that stuff," or, "You know what? 8:23 I should go back and revisit my lactate heart rate thresholds," right? Or, "My lactate threshold and heart rate." Mm-hmm. 8:30 Sorry, and maybe recalculate some numbers a little bit here too, because if I'm truly trying to maximize the time that I'm putting into my training and my recovery and all the things in between, um, maybe, maybe I've left something out. 8:42 I should go revisit this. 8:43 For those people that have zero clue about this, my hope is that they don't get too overwhelmed, but they walk away from the conversation with a little bit better understanding of how heart rate zones actually work. 8:55 Mm-hmm. 8:55 Um, and that there's no perfect formula for figuring out your own, but we're gonna give you some tools, uh, and some knowledge, I think, to help kind of figure that out so that you can maybe be thinking about a little bit differently or just thinking about it period and how you're applying this to your own exercise, entertainment, whatever it happens to be. 9:15 And then for those people in the middle that are like, "Yeah, I've heard this stuff. I kind of played around with it. 9:20 Um, I read this thing or I got this device and it gave me some formulas and I worked those out," you know, or, "I've been online and I've done some research or listened to this other, you know, the, the, uh, these other people in the industry or whatever talk about this," that this starts to bring things together maybe a little bit more for you. 9:34 So that's, that, that, that was the goal. The other, the other part of the goal I think is, is that we spent a lot of time talking about the importance of resistance training. Mm-hmm. 9:42 And that resist- and how important resistance training is to longevi- longevity, performance and, and aesthetics obviously. 9:50 More than ever we know that, that, you know, most training programs for most people should be rooted heavily in a strong resistance training program. 9:57 Maybe more than, I, I would, I would venture to say more than cardiovascular fitness for the majority of people. 10:03 However, for those people that are trying to really achieve a higher level of fitness, y- the, the cardiovascular or endurance component starts to, starts to work its way in there. 10:11 And we've seen things like CrossFit come along where they're trying to cross over, uh, no pun intended- Yeah... 10:18 into these different, uh, a- again, into these different fitness domains to try to produce an athlete that can kind of do everything. 10:26 And while I think CrossFit did a really good job with that as it specifically, uh, applies to the sport of CrossFit, I think there's a lot of things that get, they get left out there, and even CrossFit itself went, you know, came up with CrossFit Endurance- Mm-hmm... 10:42 uh, to maybe address these components a little bit more. 10:45 And I think the people that really competed at the highest level and, and have won at the highest level and been very, let's just say, com- competitive and successful at the highest level, had to at some level get out of what was just the WOD for the day, periodize their programs or- Mm-hmm... 11:01 let's just say WOD for the week or workout program for the week and WOD for the day, periodize their programs to be addressing the different energy systems, the different domains of fitness throughout the course of the year in order to be as competitive as they were. 11:13 So again, this is, this is, uh, this is a little bit of a, a s- a t- uh, different take than some of the typical episodes that we do where we kind of keep things a little higher level. 11:22 We are gonna dig, dig down a little bit, but we're gonna try to keep it moving. Mm-hmm. Right? Uh, and so the, by the end, uh, we'll give you the... We, we'll move through this. 11:30 By the end, we've given you some tools to go, "Okay, here's how I calculate my heart rate zones. This is really, this is..." 11:35 We'll give you a simple formula for doing this, uh, so that if you want, you can go to the gym literally today, you know- And try it... and try it. Mm-hmm. 11:42 Uh, if you'd like, or at least get yourself prepared to do it in the future so that you can get the most out of that $800 wristwatch. 11:50 [laughs] Or, you know, you know, the app that you're paying for or the program that you're paying for or whatever else, and get, get a, maybe a different result than you're currently getting. Mm-hmm. 11:59 Uh, better or worse for that matter, [laughs] you know, depending on how you apply these things. So ready, set, go? Ready, set, go. All right. 12:06 So [inhales] let's, again, I- so just to kind of start off, I think this is often talking about, talked about, but I think it's often misunderstood. Mm-hmm. 12:13 My introduction to heart rate zones was when I first walked into the gym as a young guy. Mm-hmm. Right? 12:21 And I went to, like, the treadmill or the, uh, stair- StairMaster was what we had at the time, or the bike, or bike ergometer or the, let's just say the stationary bike. 12:32 Um, and there was a chart there, and it, it talked a- very briefly about heart rate. It was this little graph. Mm-hmm. 12:38 And it told you if your heart rate was at this, then you were y- you know, you were at, like, this percentage of effort. If it... And what, and, and- It was color-coded too, right? It was color-coded. 12:49 This is your intensity level, this is the, your effort level. And if you moved into here, let's say, so that was called, like, the green zone. 12:55 Then there was the yellow zone, and the yellow zone was the fat burning zone, right? Mm-hmm. 13:01 Which was sort of a, a, I guess like a medium to high in- medium to, you know, low or high intensity, but not quite dipping over into the red zone, which was high intensity, which was, you know, like, that, that was gonna hurt. 13:14 Like it- 90% plus of your heart rate, right? Yeah, 90% plus- Yeah... of your heart rate or whatever. So the big thing that I think that, you know, the gyms were trying to sell were, was this is the fat burning zone. 13:22 So when you get on here and the, you know, you're, you, you, you grab the electrodes on the, on the bike- Mm-hmm... on the handles of whatever the piece of equipment you're using, you can monitor your heart rate. 13:32 Uh, we al- we already know about the bioimpedance there and how inaccurate those things were for a long time. But if you're in this zone, you're burning the most amount of fat. Boom, sign me up. I'm in. 13:42 That was my sort of introduction, and then I started getting into a little bit more of the science as I started to work out a little harder and whatever, and then you start to hear about heart rate zones. 13:51 And there was anything from three zones, like I just- Mm-hmm... sort of mentioned, up to, like, 10 zones. Uh, and you start buying books from guys like Joe Friel, the, the Triathlete Training Bible. Bible. 14:02 Any, any old-timers will know about that one. Triathlete Bible. 14:05 Then there's all kinds of folks out there after that that are, you know, because triathlon got really big for, for a time there, where they were talking about these heart rate zones and how to train them, and so it got really confusing. 14:14 Mm-hmm. Um, but it was generally based on, uh, uh, a calculation rather than, or a calculation based on heart rate, age, sex- Mm-hmm... um, activity level, those kind of things. Was, it was a very big estimation. 14:30 Or you had to go and get, like, a maximally or sub-maximally, maximally graded test, either on a treadmill or on a- Bike... on a bike. Mm-hmm. Right? 14:39 And then there were things like the VO2, like for, for, for, full VO2 max, which we'll talk about a little bit here. 14:44 So there's a lot going into this and, and I think, you know, for a lot of people, uh, again, when I was younger and the triathlon game was very popular, I think it's less popular now. 14:53 It's still popular, but not as popular as it was, uh, these, this was a big deal. One, because there was money to be made off of it. Mm-hmm. Uh, Polar, the- Mm-hmm... 15:03 heart rate monitor company, uh, made a shit ton of money off of, uh, people training with heart rate monitors, and they still do to this day, and now there's many other companies. Obviously Garmin. Timex. Time, yeah. 15:15 They all started to come out with them 'cause there's a market there for this, as people were concerned about this. The other part of it was is back then, 15:22 what was coming out of the medical community from, with regard to exercise recommendations, was solely centered around cardiovascular fitness. 15:31 So people, you know, the more analytical type or the person that was taking their fitness a little bit more seriously, this is the direction they were going. Like they're, like, "I gotta do my cardio." 15:41 Uh, weightlift or lifting weights was solely for the bodybuilder. Definitely not for women- Mm-hmm... 'cause we don't wanna get, we don't wanna make women bulky. Mm-hmm. Right? 15:50 They don't, we don't want them to look like the males that lift weights. So that wasn't a thing. 15:55 And, you know, and I think, uh, the science wasn't well understood in terms of, uh, the benefits of the anabolic response that lifting weights can give you versus the anabol- or the catabolic response that, uh, a, you know, a long bouts of cardiovascular exercise could get you. 16:12 And my point of this is, is somewhere in there, it was probably more understood than it is now, and I think, I think people have kind of lost their way around it. 16:22 Uh, they don't really understand it maybe the same way they did, say, 20, 25 years ago. And I only bring that up is to come back and say, I think it's a little misunderstood. 16:31 Uh, and again, it's been dumbed down a lot, and I think a lot of people, in order to understand this, you really have to do- Some work, right?... some work. Yeah. Yeah. 16:41 You really have to do some work, and there's some personalization to it. So anyhow. Definitely personalization. 16:46 I think that's one of the things that gets lost with this because, you know, when it comes to the heart rate training zone, people are like, "Oh, you know, I just take 220 minus my age, and there we go." 16:55 And it, and taking that formula, so mu- so there are so many more variables that go into it than, than that, you know? Yeah. 17:03 And where, you know, in the resistance training programs, it's v- it, there's a framework there that generally works for most people. 17:11 Uh, but you can talk about things like perceived rate of exertion and reps in reserve, and, uh, from an intensity level, like, perspective. 17:23 And again, that's very generalized, but you're, it's, it's very, um, subjec- or subjective- Subjective... right? 17:30 Versus when we're starting to talk about heart rates, right, and it, and it being as individual as it is, it really means you have to dig, dig in a little bit and, and, and really do some testing, if you will. 17:41 I'll just say some evaluation. It's not a, it, it, it starts to become less subjective. 17:46 You can, you can make it less subjective because we have these devices, right, or monitors to kind of figure it out, so we can kind of dial things in. I think it's important that we r- uh, re- 17:58 remind everybody that there is never a perfect formula for this. There's never a perfect device. 18:04 Um, but I think with cardiovascular training, in particular with endurance training- Uh, particularly if you're trying to improve your performance and- Mm-hmm... 18:11 through endurance training, there is a lot more, it g- it gets a little bit more scientific and a little bit more numbery- Mm-hmm... right, and data-driven than when you're doing your, your weight training. Yes. 18:22 Uh, mostly because you get more immediate feedback. Mm-hmm. 18:25 Uh- Yeah, 'cause we're talking about what's happening from a physiological response in the body as far as what's happening with your oxygen and your, um, carbon dioxide- Yeah... 18:36 as well as then what's happening at a blood level, you know, with your lactate- Mm-hmm... uh, levels and your body's ability to utilize oxygen- [laughs]... to go longer, harder. So let's do a quick review on this. 18:48 So we did a pretty in-depth, uh, episode on cardiovascular training, uh, more than a year ago now. Uh, and we actually got some really good feedback on it, 'cause we really covered the basics. 18:59 Like, what are the benefits of it? Why shouldn't you leave it out? Uh, you know, the, regardless of what your goals are, you should be getting some cardio- resp- uh, cardiovascular training in there somehow. 19:08 But this one's specific to performance. Let's cover a couple of things. So, like, let's talk about, like, the, I, I guess we could break it down to sort of three primary variables- Mm-hmm... 19:18 in, uh, or two, increasing cardiovascular endurance- Endurance... cardiovascular capacity and endurance. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 19:24 So let's kinda go through those, and I think for, again, for those people that have been around this may be like, "Yeah, yeah. This is a review. Get to the juicy stuff." Mm-hmm. 19:30 For those that haven't, these are important concepts to understand, so let's ta- let's talk about those. 19:34 Yeah, they're important concepts to understand, but I think it's gonna come full circle at the end as far as, oh, I see how this then impacts my capacity, uh, to be able to do work and how it's going to then affect your heart rate training zones. 19:49 So, um, the pre- the three primary variables, one of them is heart rate. So that's the number of beats per minute that your heart pumps blood. Mm-hmm. 20:01 The next one is your stroke volume, and your stroke volume is the amount of blood that's pumped with a heartbeat. And then the third variable is the contractility, so that's the amount of force used per heartbeat. 20:15 And so all of those things together, um, having like a decreased heart rate and a higher stroke volume and a strong contractility, that's all going to impact the flow of blood through your body. 20:29 And then when we have that on top of with, you know, a, a good strength training program and having strong muscles, the strong muscles are going to help, one, push the blood through the body to the extremities, but then also the venous return of the blood back to the heart for then that heart and for the body to utilize the oxygen to go back through the body again. 20:52 And it's that oxygen then that's being uptaked by the body, and the release of the carbon dioxide for us to be able to utilize energy systems and for us to be able to do work. Yeah, so that was a lot. 21:06 So three things are the heart rate, right? Mm-hmm. And again, people can think, "Oh, I've heard of resting heart rate. That makes sense." Not your blood pressure, your heart rate, how many beats, right? 21:14 The next thing, again, the stroke volume, how much volume of blood per each beat. Mm-hmm. Right? And then lastly, the contractility, like the strength, right? The work that actually gets done- Right... 21:23 per each one of those beats that contributes to the stroke volume. 21:27 Now, I th- you know, I think if you thought about it going, "Okay, so if my b- my heart had to beat less to get the same amount of blood or more blood through my system- Mm-hmm... 21:34 right, then it doesn't have to work as hard." Right. Right? So that, that's one benefit to this. Secondly, when I do start working really hard, my b- m- we're talking about efficiency here. Mm-hmm. 21:44 So my heart, my heart doesn't have to work as hard in order to get that oxygen, but there's things that we're also talking about here, and that would be other nutrients and waste products to the places they need to get to and out of the places we want them out of in order to do the things that the body needs to do metabolically- Without fatiguing... 22:01 without fatiguing, and to recover, uh, either both during the session, the exercise bout of, the bout of exercise, and after in order to be recovered to, again, giving that dose of stimulus to the system so that ultimately it gets better and we come back a stronger, better, faster athlete- Mm-hmm... 22:21 if you will. In this case, again, talking specifically about performance. But increasing your cardiovascular capacity means doing all of those things. And no matter if you're an athlete or not, that is beneficial. 22:32 And I think there's another thing to add here in that there is such thing as overdoing it, right? Just like with anything. 22:38 And, and it is d- there is a lot of science around people that do heavy, heavy cardiovascular training or endurance training all the time. Actually, there is, it could be a point of diminishing returns with all of this. 22:52 And so we're not gonna get into that today. 22:54 We can talk about that actually on a different podcast, and I think that's one thing I missed maybe at the beginning, and that is, my hope is, like, we can build sort of a little series over time of podcasts that speak specifically to this and people can reference or go back to what we're saying here. 23:08 That's why we're just giving that base level today. Mm-hmm. 'Cause we wanna talk about how this stuff impacts them later. But that's important, important to know too. 23:15 Too much, uh, could, could not nec- or could be- Isn't necessarily a good thing... isn't necessarily a good thing. Mm-hmm. So again, the more is better principle, you know, doesn't apply here all the time. 23:26 Um, so you mentioned, like, the, that contraction, and the most important thing to understand here, I think, is, is this, like, we gotta get blood, ox- so which carries the, the oxygen and the nutrients and the waste products through the body- Mm-hmm... 23:39 particularly when we're working at higher intensities, right? 23:43 So because with that stuff in our body, if it's not moving efficiently, or we don't have enough oxygen, or we have too much waste product, then our body's ability to perform breaks down. Mm-hmm. 23:53 Uh, and fatigue sets in, and then that is the difference between winning or losing or performing or not performing or what-whatever have you. So I think that's a really good place to kind of start. 24:02 I think most people probably get that. But, um, let's get into the next thing, which is- 24:09 W- what's going on specifically with, you know, when we look physiol- physiologically, okay, it makes sense, it's cardiovascular exercise. Um, we're talking about O2 consumption or oxygen consumption. Mm-hmm. 24:20 Uh, I think people kind of understand this, and one of the things they- they've definitely heard a lot about at this point, going back to some of those brands we mentioned and, and, uh, the- the fad that exists around HIIT training- Mm-hmm... 24:31 is EPOC. Mm-hmm. Excess post oxygen consumption, uh, post exercise oxygen- post oxygen consumption. Mm-hmm. 24:38 So how much oxygen is your body having to utilize after your bout of exercise, and how that increases calorie burning, thereby increasing the metabolism- Mm-hmm... 24:48 of fat as well, or, or metabolism of fat so that it can help you be, help you lose weight with less activity because you've increased the intensity. Mm-hmm. 24:58 That term EPOC, I think, has come up and people kind of understand that. But how does that all play in? Like, why, what's going on at a cellular level, without getting too deep into the weeds- Mm-hmm... 25:09 with, with that oxygen in your cells? If I'm oversimplifying it, then tell me I'm oversimplifying it. But, you know, our skeletal muscle, we have mitochondria. And when we talk about, uh, 25:22 energy systems in the body, we're talking about how that mitochondria utilizes energy, fats, and carbohydrates to be able to, um, power that muscle. And so, um, 25:37 there are a couple pathways in which your body can utilize the mitochondria and impact then our ability to, um, have capacity, whether that's the endurance, uh, your, your typical aerobic endurance, or whether that's through high-intensity interval exercise. 25:58 Both of those types of exercise modalities can increase one's mitochondrial density and increase endurance. However, research has shown over time that HIIT training 26:13 takes that, uh, ability to have... build on your capacity to a greater level than your standard steady state aerobic- Mm-hmm... um, 26:26 exercise when it comes to how the body utilizes oxygen and how it utilizes its energy from fats and carbohydrates. And, um, where was I going with this? 26:44 The oxid- the, the oxidative enzymes that are produced from oxygen, and then carbohydrates and fats. So I don't think you, you oversimplified that. 26:54 I think that was, that got a little deep, and I think for people listening, they probably lost you a little bit. Okay. 26:58 But with the, with regard to the, with regard to your body's efficiency in order to utilize different fuel systems. Mm-hmm. 27:06 So, and we, we talked about this HIIT training, and, uh, we're bringing that up because it's important that we understand energy systems. I, I synonymously use that with fuel systems. 27:15 It's not really the right way to, to put it, but it's energy systems. 27:19 And it's really important, and I think this is where people start to get confused, that they think there's like, at any given time, you're using one energy system. 27:27 What you just explained was that there's this constant influx of how the body is utilizing fuel cellular- cellularlo- Cellularly [laughs] Cel- Thank you. I'm having a tough time with that one today. 27:41 Uh, the, how your body is using that, and it, it's gonna be using multiple energy systems at any point- Mm-hmm... right, during your, your ex- your bout of exercise. 27:50 And it's also important to note that you can get cardiovascular benefit by doing simply resistance training, depending on the, the intensities that you're, you're working at and the duration that you're working at, y- you're working at during that time. 28:01 So without getting, again, trying not to get too far into the weeds here, what we're, what we're gonna be getting into is the energy systems, and that's really what the, that's really where the heart rate zones come in. 28:13 Right now, you mentioned, like, what we know about the HIIT training is, is that you can get a increased benefit in a shorter bout of exercise. Shorter intensity. Shorter intensity. 28:23 Yeah, shorter, uh, duration and intensity of exer- size, or with a little greater intensity of exercise in order to reap the benefits of how the system works. Mm-hmm. 28:33 But if your goal is to perform for long periods of time, right? That, the HIIT training works until it doesn't work- Mm-hmm... 28:43 a- anymore because you are not training your, your, your body to utilize these different energy systems over a longer- Yeah... period of time. 28:50 And this is, this is the challenge with, um, like if you wanna run a marathon, don't go do CrossFit, right? It's, it, you, it makes perfect sense. And if you wanna be a CrossFit champion, don't train- Run marathons... 29:02 don't marathon training. Right. Right? There, there's, it's the SAID principle, right? Specific adaptations to imposed demands. 29:09 And going back to the HIIT training, yes, high-intensity training is, es- especially if you're an endurance athlete and you're trying to improve your, your capacity, power, things like that, you will need to do some level of high intensity, you could call it HIIT training- Mm-hmm... 29:23 uh, in your, in your programming, but it often looks ver- very much different. It's part of a longer training session that includes low-intensity training within there or recovery periods. Mm-hmm. 29:36 They're not 20-minute w- workouts. Right. 29:38 You know, these, these are much longer workouts that include some things like hill repe- repeats or sprints or, uh, you could look at things like fartleks, where you go out, you know, and come back faster. 29:49 There's all k- types of things and, and, uh, ways to train this stuff. 29:54 But getting into the energy systems, that's where we start to kind of get into like, okay, yeah, so now here's where the heart rate zones come in, and I think at some point we can talk about what those energy systems are kind of briefly and how they kinda work. 30:04 But to clear up a couple of things. One, EPOC... Or EPOC. HIIT training is not superior- To any other kind of training. It is just one way to, uh, to, to get to the end of something. 30:16 But, and again, it works until it doesn't, and there are, there are points of diminishing returns. Uh, anytime you add intensity, you are starting to run into now a, a time where you need to increase your recovery time. 30:30 Now, HIIT training specifically diminishes the amount of time you need for recovery because you're only doing this for this short period of time. It's 15 minutes. Mm-hmm. Cool. Now you're done. 30:40 You don't do anything else. 30:41 But if you're doing that every single day, and trying to weight train, and trying to endurance train, now you're cutting into your recovery period and there, and there could be a, a, a diminishing return on investment there. 30:54 So you might not get the, the RI- ROI you're looking for. Couple other things. 31:00 Like, when we start and get into these heart rate zones, for those people that know about it, there's this myth around the junk zone, which we'll call zone three- Mm... 31:06 uh, that there's really no benefit to that, and we should stay out of that because, you know, for certain reasons. 31:12 It's important to understand that this, there, that we shouldn't think of it as like a gray zone or a junk zone. We should think of it, we, we can leverage that zone, and we'll talk about how to do that. 31:21 I just wanna say, you're talking about zone three, and you're talking about zone three out of a five- Yeah... zone. Great point. Yeah. Yeah. 31:27 We talked about earlier about how you can look from anything from like one to 10 or w- you know, one to three, to one to 10, then there's like one. 31:34 Then you can look at, you'll, you'll see it's like this five, 5A, 5B, 5C. [laughs] It ke- it gets really, really convoluted in there. 31:42 And there are, you know, plenty of, uh, training systems and professionals, you know, athletes that, that use these things, and they get really into the finer details, right on down to blood testing. Mm-hmm. You know, 31:54 testing lactate, blood lactate during a, an exercise session s- where you're, where you're pinpricking. 31:59 For the sake of today's conversation, and I believe that most people are listening here, we're gonna talk about a one through five training zone. That is it. 32:05 We will also, we'll, we'll kind of talk about like the zone beyond that. You can call it zone six if you want. We'll just say anything beyond zone five is also a training zone. 32:14 Well, and we'll, we'll get there when we come there. But yes, thank you for, for bringing that up. So we're talking for t- for purposes of today, we're talking about five training zones. 32:22 And so going back to that myth about zone three, uh, zone three is not, shouldn't be referred to as a junk zone. However, it's w- uh, a zone to sort of be aware of, and we'll, we'll talk about that. 32:33 The other thing, thing is, is like there is no one size fits all to this. 32:37 You will see folks that are like, again, we talked about like the high intensity camp, and we, we, we, you'll also hear and, and maybe hear folks talk about the, the long slow distance camp. 32:47 Um, and where the majority of your training should be weighted in order to get benefit. Uh, it, it's half, it's- It depends [laughs]... six in one, half dozen in the other. It depends on the- Yeah... 32:59 athlete, depends on their training age, depends on, uh- What the event is... what the event is, all of these things. So don't get your head wrapped around, "Well, so and so said." Mm-hmm. It, it absolutely 100% depends. 33:09 And there is no... Th- this is the other one. 33:11 So this goes back to what I was saying before about the fat burning zones and, and, and things like that, where you're only burning carbohydrate here, or you're burning oxygen here, you're burning carbohydrate here, you're burning fat here, and you're burning protein here. 33:22 That is not how it works. There is no magic of sort of transferring these substrates across the different zones. It's very dynamic at all times. 33:31 So at no point is there a little dude in there with a switch- Switching [laughs]... y- in your energy systems going, "We're switching carbohydrate to fat." Like we're, we're... 33:39 It does not, it absolutely does not work like that. So to call something a quote unquote fat burning zone is a misnomer, and it shouldn't be talked about, and hopefully that's kind of going away. 33:49 But again, people are looking at their watches going, "Am I in the orange zone, where I'm burning the most amount of fat and burning the most amount of calories?" That's absolutely fucking ridiculous science. Mm-hmm. 34:00 It's not science. It's made up shit. Um, and you gotta be really careful about that, and that's why we're talking about this today, 'cause I think people are confused. 34:10 So there is no magic in the using these different substrate proteins, carbohydrates, fat, and then you can even break it down to pyruvate, oxygen, all, all that stuff. So we're not doing that today. 34:21 Um, so one of the ways to kind of look at this is, you know, if the, to make, make this make more sense is like imagine you had a... I've used this analogy before. Before you have a car, right? 34:31 And you're driving it at the same speed. Mm-hmm. And it uses a particular gas tank, say under 40 miles an hour, right? 34:39 Um, but as soon as you hit 41 miles an hour, it has to switch to another gas tank, which has- Is this like a hybrid? Yeah, which has a richer [laughs]... 34:45 That's a, that's actually a good way of looking at it, um, sort of. 34:49 [laughs] But, but when you reach 41 miles an hour, it then has to switch to another gas tank that has a richer source of fuel because the f- the source of fuel that's in there doesn't, doesn't work for it as, as well, right? 35:03 Or isn't efficient enough. And then when you hit 50 miles an hour, th- that 40, let's say it's 41 to 50 miles an hour, it uses gas tank number two. Mm-hmm. 35:11 And then as soon as you hit 51 miles an hour, it's like, "Oh, well, that, that's not rich enough. I have to move over to the other fuel." And you're, you're completely not using, you know, any of the same gas. 35:19 That is not how it works. Mm-hmm. Right? There's this constant mixture, fuel mixture that's going oxygen, fuel, oxygen, fuel, oxygen, fuel as we go through there. 35:27 So we will kind of try to make some sense of that as we go through here. So you're never at any time burning one thing. You're burning many things at all times within the same minute your me- your, of your exercise. 35:40 Your... Depending wherever your intensity might be, you could be burning a number of things. So get that out of your head. Uh, I think that's a, that's an important thing to understand. So 35:51 we talked a little about energy. Mm-hmm. Talked about kind of where it comes from at a very base level. Our base currency is, well, we put it in as food, energy in as food. Base currency is ATP. 36:01 Remember, you know, people reme- remember back to life science and the cell and all that stuff we had to learn when we were in junior high or high school. 36:09 Uh, you know, the, the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell and, uh, what has to happen in terms of energy conversion, and they made us do a bunch of weird math and You know, break molecules up and things like that, that's what we're talking about, right? 36:22 And that gets broken down into ADP. So that food gets broken down to adenosine triphosphate, that's the TP, and then it gets broken down into ADP diphosphate, and then it- some other things happen after that. 36:34 So when looking at energy systems, we talked about this, the, the theme being, look, it's a mixed fuel system. There's lots of things working here. 36:42 And the, the way you can kind of look at this is in thr- in kind of three components. One is the, like, the oxidative aerobic- Mm-hmm... 36:51 state, which really is, like, anything kind of over, like, two minutes of exercise, you're gonna be working in this zone. Um, or, it, sorry, in this energy system. 37:01 And that's, it's a combination of carbs and fats- Mm-hmm... you know, that are, that are being utilized. Those are really, really efficient sources of fuel. 37:09 Um, then if you stay there long enough, you go long enough, that is duration, as your body starts to be depleted of carbohydrates specifically, and then as you start, it b- and it cannot burn fat, or, uh, convert fat quite fast enough, it'll start to move into protein. 37:23 Uh, so those are over longer, longer periods of time. So the longer you exercise and the state of your fitness, your training age, uh, your hormones, there's a lot of factors there. Mm-hmm. 37:35 The greater, uh, percentage of protein might actually get utilized, uh, alongside, again, the glucose and the fatty acids. 37:42 So when we're talking about carbs and fats, we're talking about glucose that's already been broken down into its base form, and then fatty acids w- or triglycerides that have been, again, those are fats that are broken down into their basic forms in order for your body to actually metabolize and use it. 37:57 Always a mix of fuels. Mm-hmm. But again, that's kind of your oxidative aerobic, two-plus minutes. The next one is your glycolytic anaerobic system. Mm-hmm. 38:05 Um, and that is, like, uh, uh, that's gonna be greater than two minutes. Um- Less than two minutes... less, sorry, less than two minutes, let's say when, uh, your, your O2 supply becomes compromised, right? 38:18 You, you don't have much left, right? Um, these are like your power phases in a, in a race, right? Where you have to surge- Mm-hmm... with some energy. Like all of a sudden go up a hill. Yeah. Yeah. 38:28 Or you sprint, you know, have to pass somebody on the trail or on a run, or in, you're in the swimming pool and you, you know, you're, you're into that final lap. You make that... 38:37 You kick turn, you make that final lap, and you're starting to turn it up a little bit. You're in this glycolytic anaerobic system. Uh, it doesn't last very long, right? It's, it's, you're on the clock. Mm-hmm. 38:47 Uh, and, uh, basically very, very simply, glucose, which is the dominant fuel there, kind of it will, it converts to the substance called pyruvate, which, um, is a different form of energy, and then ultimately into lactate. 39:02 And, uh, people will hear that word and they go, "Oh, is that like- Oh, mm-hmm... lactic acid?" Yes, that's what we're talking about is it, it's just going, the... 39:09 The important thing to understand about what's going on with the glucose and the, and the pyruvate, or the, excuse me, the pyruvate energy and the lactate, is that it can be converted back- Mm-hmm... into usable energy. 39:19 Mm-hmm. This becomes very important when we're looking at the zones that we're training in and how we're training our body to be able to deal with that- Mm-hmm... process in and of itself. 39:28 Those athletes that can deal with that really well are gonna be your, those are your podium people. 39:33 Those are generally the people that are winning consistently because they're very, very good at dealing with this- Managing their body. Mm-hmm... managing the buffering of this- Okay... and the reutilization of it. 39:42 So that's the important thing, I think the, the, the taking or the takeaway here. Um, again, lots of mixed fuels that are go- that are going on here. Uh, the last one is the phosphagenic system. 39:53 That's like a three to maybe 30 second kind of interval or, or output. Uh, yes, when we talk about phosphagenic system, people are already thinking, "Oh, is that like phos- is that like the creatine thing? 40:05 'Cause that's what I'm, that's why I'm taking the creatine, aside from, from my brain health." [laughs] Yes. Yeah. Um- The ability to get that extra repetition when you're starting to get fatigued. Yeah. 40:15 Again, stick with me here. We talked about the AD- ATP gets converted to ADP, so it drops a phosphate. So it goes from triphosphate to diphosphate, then to AMP. 40:26 So now we're, we're down to one, and then ultimately into phosphate, and then if you add a creatine to it or a, a creatine mole- molecule to it, then, or f- phosphate back into it, it goes back to ADP, and then it can ultimately be converted back to ATP. 40:41 So that's that energy conversion cycle. And if y- i- it, it, that takes time. Mm-hmm. 40:47 So again, going back to the three to 30 seconds, it happens very fast when we're really ex- when we're really being explosive or we're really trying to power through something. 40:56 Think more like your- In a little bit, yeah... weightlifting session or your sprint or, again, your, your very, very, uh, quick surge, uh, for a very sh- short period of time. 41:05 Um, we used to think it was only good for, like, 10 to 30 seconds, that creatine s- or that phosphate system, but more s- more specifically creatine itself and how that, that conversion happens. 41:15 Um, it used to be, you know, kind of thought about, like, again, like with weightlifters, you know, or sprinters, somebody that had very, very short- Duration of... duration of exercise. Mm-hmm. 41:26 But the research shows that the large muscle fibers store some creatine, and then that can actually be supplied to the smaller muscle fibers when that fatigue starts to set in. 41:38 So, um, when you're, when you're in a, when you're in a racing event, so, like, you could be drawing from what's stored in those muscle fibers in order to push you through. 41:45 So it's not just for the weightlifter or the power athlete. 41:49 Uh, yeah, so you endurance athletes, again, if you're not just taking it, if you're not taking it for the brain health stuff that, that comes along with creatine, take it for the power, uh, benefit that you can get out of it. 41:59 So again, just to be, to be clear, if we, if we're looking through there, you got your oxidative aerobic, glycolytic anaerobic, and your phosphagenic systems. Mm-hmm. 42:07 Those are the three systems we're kind of playing with, and it all started with food, right? [laughs] Yep. Um, very much based, again, on training age, fitness level, hormonal levels- Mm-hmm... 42:19 and that constantly varies. So, uh, again, there is no perfect formula. There is no one size fits all because of those factors. All right. Have we, do you think we've lost them yet? I don't think so. 42:32 [laughs] I'm with you. [laughs] Okay. Um, we talked a little bit about, a- again, how many zones we're gonna be talking about, which is five. Mm-hmm. So let's start with zone one. Mm-hmm. Uh, which is often, uh, 42:45 referred to as the re- like a recovery zone. Mm-hmm. Let's talk about it. Like, what do you have to say about zone one? Zone one, it's generally a lower heart rate. 42:53 So if you know, if you've done the calculation or you've done the testing to figure out what your, uh, maximal heart rate is, zone one is the bottom [laughs] of the zone. 43:04 So we're talking, like, 55, 65% of your maximal heart rate. 43:10 So it's, again, it's, um, you know, being able to exercise and converse, or exercise and if you're one of those individuals that tries to breathe more through your nose and not through your mouth, being able to do that very, uh, comfortably. 43:29 Yeah, so depending on your fitness level, right, and where you are, again, hormonally from a recovery- Mm-hmm... perspective, training age, uh, what have you, this could look different. 43:39 But it could be anything from, like, a walk- Mm-hmm... uh, to keep you in zone one, maybe a light swim for the swimmers or an easy hike for, you know, the more, the more advanced, uh, athlete. 43:51 You know, again, we're not hiking Mount Everest. We're, you know, going out for, like, a nice little rolling hike or something like that. Mm-hmm. Quick spin on the bike. 43:57 We're keeping the heart rate or the, the cadence up on a very sort of flat, uh, type of course that we're, we're riding. Uh, again, it could be any of those things, but we're keeping the heart rate fairly low- Mm-hmm... 44:09 and we will talk about what that is, again, at the end. But to wrap your head around this, this is, it won't feel like a workout. Yeah, no, it's very conversational. 44:17 Yeah, and it can be really frustrating for the athlete to have to train in zone one or have to go to a recovery, but those smart ones, or the ones who have been doing this a while, actually, you know, they get it and they understand it. 44:27 Like, for me, it's that walk I take every night at the end of the day. I get multiple benefits out of that, and here's some of the ones that you get. First off, it stimulates the blood circulation, obviously, right? 44:37 We get that heart rate up just a little bit above where our resting heart rate would be, gets, gets the blood moving. 44:43 It moves nu- nutrients and waste, waste products through the system, again, to the places they need to be and out of the places we don't want them. 44:50 Uh, after exercise or in between exercise bouts, um, in, it increases, it can increase the, the production or stimulate the increase of, uh, in production of, of growth hormone. 45:00 Uh, that's important, uh, obviously for recover and, recovery longevity, anesthetics. Um, it aids in the inflammatory response. 45:08 That is, again, when we're starting to get this, this circulation going, in- inflammation is good. We're driving blood, nutrients, things into certain areas, and this, uh, this can aid in that, in that process. 45:19 So, uh, inflammation can be your friend as long as it's not a, sort of a, a chronic and, uh, you know, just ongoing systemic inflammation. So, and obviously we don't have an acute injury, but those things can be helpful. 45:33 It takes very little energy to do, uh, and it's, and it, it, it, and it won't v- you know, deplete your fluids. 45:41 So for, again, for an endurance athlete or any athlete that's trying to maintain, like, we're not out there sweating. We're not, we're not having to, to manage our hydration- Hydration, yeah... during this time. 45:50 So those are all benefits that you can get from this zone one. Uh, and again, can be a tough one if it's in your program to go do something in zone one. 45:58 It's, for those people that are, you know, very, very rigid about their workout program or almost neurotic, like, where they have to be kicking their ass all the time, they, they, if they don't get into the pain cave- [laughs]... 46:08 they think they're a loser. This, this can be a tough one. [laughs] Um, almost as tough, if not tougher, than zone two. Uh, which is- Mm-hmm... which is, which is aerobic, right? 46:20 Zone one being that oxidative aerobic system, and we've talked about what those things are. Mm-hmm. 46:25 It's, you're still, uh, uh, uh, aerobic, but we're s- it's a slight higher intensity, slightly higher than that zone one, that zone one training. Um, here's a couple things to, to, to understand about this. 46:36 We talked about sort of the benefits that that zone one training will give you. Here's, as we're getting into zone two, it doesn't significantly overload the slow- Slow twitch fibers, yeah... 46:47 twitch fibers, the slow twitch muscle fibers. So when we think about fast twitch, slow twitch, without getting, again, too far in the weeds, think of slow twitch being more of your endurance-based- Mm-hmm... 46:54 fibers and your fast twitch being more of your power-based fi- fibers. So, uh, the ones that keep you going longer. And there's, there, again, going back to the different types of zones and the in-betweens. 47:03 There are in-betweens. Tissue can convert in some level. Uh, you know, when we look at fibers. But let's not get, let's not get into that. 47:12 Just- When you say convert, you mean, like, from slow twitch to fast twitch- More-... fast twitch to slow... I would say from slow twitch to- Mm-hmm... more fast twitch, or- Mm-hmm... from fast twitch to- Yeah... 47:19 more slow twitch, not maybe a complete conversion, but that, that's up for debate- Yeah... and I'm not getting into that. We'll, we'll lose people real fast. 47:27 Um, but the, the point of that being is it doesn't, it, we're not overloading the tissue. Mm-hmm. We're not overloading the system. 47:32 Um, this is extraordinarily valuable for the longer distance type training as it relates to recovery, uh, when we get into zone two. Uh, a, these, these are longer workouts generally spent in zone two. 47:46 That could be considered, like, your low, long, slow distance. Mm-hmm. When we went back to the two different camps. This is gonna help build that capacity to be able to go longer for the event. Correct. Right? 47:56 Yeah, and again, it's, it, it's hugely important because it takes us above whatever our base is in terms of our heart rate and our ability to convert and move energy and those kinds of things, use those energy systems. 48:06 But it's also, it's also helping, again, with that blood-carrying capacity or oxygen-carrying capacity within the blood, uh, and all these other factors that, that, uh, that, you know, come into, again, being a better, uh, more highly equipped endurance athlete. 48:21 I will tell you this. For me, when these showed up on my programs when I was doing, you know, the, the multi-sport events- Mm-hmm... 48:27 the zone two was the hardest thing for me to do, uh, because- Yeah, my heart rate's up, and I wanted to go faster. Mm-hmm. It was just easier to go faster. Yep. Agree. Um, I wanted to feel the feeling- Mm-hmm... 48:40 of working a little harder, and zone 2 was not quite there. It was a struggle. It's... It- Of all the workouts, it's the one where I was probably checking my heart rate monitor the most. It, it takes patience. A lot. 48:52 And you, you, you really have to know yourself, and you'd be really surprised, like, "Oh, shit, I'm working too hard," which again, being married to the device, that's one of the reasons I got rid of devices for so long, is because everything was data-driven. 49:05 Mm-hmm. I was constantly looking at my, my device. It w- It can be a double-edged sword. You know, you're out there running with your buddy, right? 49:11 And, you know, like, you're looking over at him going, and you're having this conversation, and you're both not working, don't feel like you're, don't feel like you're working very hard at all, and you're, the alarm goes off 'cause you've set your zone in your, in your watch- Uh-huh... 49:23 or it's beeping at you. Vibrating. Vibrating. [laughs] And I'd be like, I'd be like, I'd be like, "CC, we gotta slow down. We gotta slow down. 49:28 I'm just overworking here," which sounds ridiculous given how, the perception of how hard you're working, but it plays into what we're talking about later. So, um, that's, that's, that's zone 2. Very important zone. 49:41 You'll see that one a lot pick up. And p- And again, the difficult part was is it's so easy to bleed over into zone 3. Mm-hmm. Uh, zone three, uh, being it's where that effort starts to pick up. 49:54 And for that person that trains a lot, this zone feels good. Mm-hmm. Like, you feel super strong here. You feel like you can keep going. Uh, like you're, you're, like you're, the pace is up. Heart rate's elevating. 50:05 Yeah, I'm like 22 miles an hour on the bike. Respiratory's elevating. This is fun. Yeah. We're moving along. Yeah. We're, we're in the draft. 50:10 Like, we're still able to have a little bit of a conversation, but I'm working, I'm sweating. Like, I feel my heart rate up. 50:15 I'm getting sort of the endorphins, you know, of the, of the I'm out working out today, like all the work I'm putting in and I feel pretty good. 50:22 We're zooming past, you know, the less, uh, advanced athlete on the road, you know, or on the trail or whatever else, and we're feeling great. Uh, 50:31 this is the zone we referred to earlier as the, the one to be aware of or beware of as that, and/or it's been myth as the, as the junk zone. Junk. 50:38 Um, so again, this is where the effort's beginning to show, the, like the, there's, you get that slight muscle burning. Mm-hmm. That feels good. Mm-hmm. It gives you that, uh, that subjective feedback. It's working. 50:48 I am working hard. I'm doing a good job. Got that elevated respiratory rate. Have to take a couple deep breaths in between that conversation, and that feels good. 50:55 Like, I know because I'm breathing heavy, I'm working harder, and that's why I'm here today. Yeah. And I feel great about that. Um, I feel a little bit tired, but it's good 'cause I know that no pain, no gain. Oh, boy. 51:07 But it's also very sustainable. Mm-hmm. Like, I can keep doing this. Like, you feel, you feel fulfilled kind of thing. Again, these are all things that can kind of get- This... Yeah... get in the way. The feelings. 51:16 [laughs] Yeah, the feeling. The feelings start to show up. 51:18 But again, if you're, if you're maintaining zones or if you're looking at your, your zones and, you know, again, you may have this programmed into your device or whatever else, there's a couple things to, to understand here. 51:28 This is where oxygen debt becomes a little bit greater. That's why you're feeling the way you're feeling. Mm-hmm. Um, and as a result, the fat burning begins to decrease. 51:38 Because we have less oxygen available to use aerobically- Mm-hmm... 51:42 fat burning begins to decrease and carb utilization increases, uh, because it's easier, your, your body's more efficient at, it's easier to utilize the carb for fuel than it is the fat. Fat. 51:54 That's the easiest way to kind of, kind of look at it when we look at how those cycles work from an energy system perspective. Um, 52:01 so again, thinking about that and how you're fueling yourself and whether or not you're in zone 3 or not. 52:07 Uh, like if you are going, let's go back to c- maybe the orange theory workout, maybe the F45 workout, maybe the CrossFit workout. If you are wearing a monitor during that time, 52:19 and you are also trying to eat keto- Uh-huh... or you're also eating very low carb, uh, understand how that could impact your performance if you're not more fat adapted, which we've talked about on another fat- Mm-hmm... 52:28 on another podcast or whatever. Like, uh, you, you will be us- When you start working into the zone, you will be using more carbohydrate. It's just the way, the way the body works. 52:36 Obviously, the more fit you are, the more a- adapted you are. Maybe you're utilizing more oxygen for a period of time, but eventually it starts to bleed over. Mm-hmm. So, uh, just understand that. 52:47 The, uh, couple other things, like we mentioned zone 2, not overloading, you know, the muscle tissue. Tissue. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The, the, the, those, or those, those different fibers. Zone 3 52:58 isn't overloading the slow twitch fibers, so there's not like a, um, typically a marked increase in strength. Like you're not, or in endurance. 53:06 So when people call this the junk zone, because you're not overloading it, you're not, you're not necessarily getting a ton of benefit from a endurance perspective. You're challenging yourself- Mm-hmm... right? 53:18 And you're, again, you're, you're challenging yourself to a certain level, but the return on investment in terms of exponential gains that you can gain in this area are lower than some of the other zones which we'll, which we'll talk about. 53:30 So, um, it, it, it can be very helpful for your body's ability to be able to buffer those things. 53:38 So again, like what I mentioned about the, the, the different athletes and how more fit they, they are, I'm not saying don't train in zone 3 or training in zone 3 is bad. 53:46 I'm saying you can get benefit there, but you're not necessarily getting an endurance benefit there, um, from a muscular perspective. Mm-hmm. 53:53 Um, and, uh, you don't necessarily need to be spending a ton of time there if you're managing your program a little bit differently- Mm-hmm... which we're obviously getting into. Um, so a couple of notes here. 54:05 Just some of those, uh, aforementioned metabolites that we talked about, you know, when we got, we, uh, went through the ATP, ADB- Mm-hmm... 54:12 creatine, all that stuff, uh, you know, pyruvate, they can be reconverted into a usable, usable fuel here. Mm-hmm. So your body's getting used to that system of, "Oh, I've got this waste product- Mm-hmm... 54:24 and now I can turn it back into usable fuel." Waste product, us- usable f- usable- Usable fuel... usable fuel. Man, I'm really struggling today. Yeah. 54:32 And when the body isn't able to do that buffering of that lactate and it starts to then bleed over, um, i- into your, your body becoming more acidic, then that's where you're starting to feel the heaviness in the legs, the burning in the legs. 54:45 Yeah. Those hydrogen ions start building up, and you start feeling like shit. You're like, "Oh, boy." Now you, you realize you're on the clock. 54:51 Um- So, it, you can, a good place to train this, and again, we'll talk about that a little bit, but a good place to train this would be, like, interval training or, like, hill climbs. 55:00 We've mentioned that one a c- a bunch of times, or maybe it's short sprints or, or whatever else. But these are, these would be, like, eight to 20-minute intervals. 55:07 Um, again, we've only talked about recovery zones at this point, so that's, that, that time is much longer. We're starting to shorten up the time now because the intensity's starting to go up. 55:16 Eight to 20-minute, minute intervals can be very beneficial for, like, race-type fitness. So I mentioned leveraging zone three. This is where you will probably be racing, right? At, at a lot, a lot of times. 55:28 Like, you're, you're pushing beyond, you're pushing, but you make sure you're not dipping into zone four- Too much. Yep... uh, zone four too long. 55:36 You wanna be really good at maintaining zone three, but you don't necessarily get there by training in zone three all the time. Maybe that's the, that's the differentiation- That's a good point... 55:45 we, we're, we're trying to make here. So again, prolonged periods in this, in this, in this zone can have a point of diminishing returns because we're not necessarily getting that benefit of increased endurance. Mm-hmm. 55:57 Um, like we can- Understood... by working into the next couple of zones by, by balancing all of the zones together, but working the next couple of zones, that being obviously zone number four, which is an anaerobic zone. 56:11 Um, and again, we're always using a, a combination of, of fuels here, but this is a combo of aerobic, the aerobic stuff, uh, oxidative, and then glycolytic. Mm-hmm. 56:22 Uh, and so when we get into this, we're talking about lactate, uh, and lactate threshold- Mm-hmm... or anaerobic threshold, and this is where things start to get, for me, fun. I like to nerd out on this stuff. 56:33 [laughs] And this is where people really start to feel that they're working hard. Mm-hmm. Uh, and this is not a place for, like, the novice person to be spending a lot of time. Mm-hmm. 56:41 So if you're one of those people and you're new to this, this one's real uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Um- And it might take some time to figure out where that zone is for you. 56:48 It might take a couple attempts at doing what we're gonna talk about later or what you're gonna share later as far as how to figure out what that, that lactate, uh, zone is. So. 56:57 Yeah, but if you're the, if you're the CrossFitter who's been really competitive, you love this place. Mm-hmm. This is where the pain cave starts. [laughs] Right? 57:04 This is where it ends up, and the, and those that can stay in this zone longer are the, are the, the podium winners. Those are the ones that can manage this upper 80% of threshold, uh, and they can just keep going. 57:17 This is when the, the term the engine, you know, those with the bigger engine, these are the ones that- Winning... can maintain, you know, and stay in this zone longer are the ones that ultimately win. 57:26 These are the guys, you know, in the Tour de France that are winning, the ones that have higher power-to-weight ratios, and they can maintain this stuff longer. 57:35 All of them are important, but this is where I, I think it starts to get fun and most people kind of are aware, like, "Oh, shit." Like, now we're working hard, right? Now we're working hard. 57:43 So, um, what, what else in the o- in sort of this oh shit zone? 57:48 Um, you're feeling the buildup of lactic acid, um, and it's happening, but it's not necessarily happening faster than your body can utilize that lactic acid for energy. So going back to the conversion. The lactate, yeah. 58:01 Yeah. So it's, or the lactate. So again, inter- inter- interchangeable terms here for today's, the purposes of today's c- conversation. So the lactic acid is building up. 58:10 Your body's able to convert it still into usable energy. The better athlete, the, the person that's more equipped to do that, is the person that's gonna be able to go harder for longer. Yep. Right? Um, 58:22 pushing beyond this, uh, the, the, the, your body's ability to buffer this in that way, again, it's releasing and re- and converting, uh, can cause more rapid lactic acid buildup, which you're gonna feel, and it comes in the form of fatigue, uh, also comes in the form of delayed recovery. 58:40 So the p- further we push, the longer it will take to recover or buffer that out of there, both during your session and, and after your session, and this is the other thing as we go thinking back to zone three, we are rapidly eating up our carbohydrate stores. 58:57 So if you have an event where you're going long, let's say greater than 90 minutes, let's just use that as a, as a time. You're going hours. 59:06 Your carbohydrate is, is, uh, a commodity, and it's very, very important you maintain that for as long as you can. So managing how often you're getting into zone four- Mm-hmm... 59:16 and how long you're staying there for is very, very important. So that's where this stuff starts, the nuance starts to come in, right? Mm-hmm. 59:23 Like, in the more advanced athletes who understand their body, where they are at particular points of competition or of stress or whatever, how much longer they have to go, course layouts- Yep... 59:33 you know, all that stuff. All of that. This is- Then nutrition on top of it- Correct... which we won't get into, but- Yeah. That's another conversation... mm-hmm. 59:39 But yes, this is where this stuff starts to, uh, the, the, the, the, the deeper the understanding that you have, uh, the more you can leverage, uh, your, your certain posi- your situation. 59:50 Um, so I think I would say this. Ideally, an athlete would be very good at both decreasing lactic as- lactic acid buildup, that again, within the fast twitch fibers- Mm-hmm... and, uh, 1:00:03 that, and, and, and good at increasing lactic, lactic acid removal or, and utilization in the slow twitch fibers. So again, like, it's building up, it's releasing. 1:00:13 In the fast twitch fibers, the low- little twitch fibers are going, "That's cool. I'm cool at, at utilizing that and, and being able to go longer," says the endurance fibers that are going. 1:00:24 You can do this through interval training, and that's what we call increasing your lactate threshold- Mm-hmm... 1:00:28 which, and that's where the heart rate zones come in, and that's what we're going to be measuring, uh, when we, uh, test for your zones, which is an easy, there's a couple easy tests we're gonna give you here at the end. 1:00:39 So the goal here being increasing lactate threshold, your body's ability to produce and reutilize- Mm-hmm... that lactate or lactic acid. Um, I think that's kind of the, um- 1:00:53 That's kind of the, the, the science behind that. But, uh, another important note is it's just, because this isn't an, like, an all-out intensity zone, we are not going full speed ahead. 1:01:01 That's gonna be zone five and beyond. We'll, we'll talk about that. Um, recovery from zone four training can occur more rapidly, and the overall training effect can be very high. 1:01:10 You can get a very high r- uh, return on investment there. Um, this can have, but it, it can have significant recovery implications if we don't manage this- Mm-hmm... correctly. 1:01:21 So going back to, like, how tough it is sometimes to stay in zone two- Mm... 1:01:26 that zone four's gonna give us a larger return on investment in terms of that buffering system and conditioning that buffering system than zone three. Mm-hmm. 1:01:37 That's why it's important to understand where you are and know when to and when not to- Yeah... train in those, train in those zones. Mm-hmm. Is there something you want to say? 1:01:46 No, uh, just going back to when to and when not to train in those zones or, or when you are training, when to throttle up and when to throttle back. Mm-hmm. 1:01:53 So being aware of w- of where your heart rate is during those times. Yeah, these things, you know, in terms of the interval training and how to train this stuff, like, again, you're on the clock a little bit here. 1:02:02 We don't have to spend a ton of time there, but they're, the intervals are usually somewhere between, like, one and 10 minutes, uh, depending, again, on- Mm-hmm... 1:02:09 what you're training, who you are, where you're at, you know, what the modality is, with, uh, a work-to-rest res- ratio of somewhere, like, two to one or three to one. Mm-hmm. 1:02:18 So for every f- five minutes, uh, or two minutes of, of, uh, let's say the interval, I'll rest a minute. Mm-hmm. Um, if it was 10, I'd rest five. So, um, or recover, excuse me, for five. That could be an active recovery. 1:02:33 So h- when I'm programming these things in, it's, again, it's a, it's like a, it's a two to one or three to one work-to-rest ratio, and those are, those are things that are important to understand. 1:02:42 Again, you can't just go- Yeah... all the time- All out. Mm-hmm... and then expe- and without giving yourself proper recovery time because, again, you've spilt- Mm-hmm... 1:02:50 for lack of a better term, you've spilled into, you've, you've overwhelmed the buffering- Extended yourself. Mm-hmm... the buffering system. It will take longer time for y- you to recover out of that. 1:02:59 So start small, and you can work your way up. This is where the, um, overtraining comes in- Yeah... people. 1:03:08 100% because and, and what, is it really overtraining, or is it overreaching and then being under-recovered, which equals, and you could call it overra- o- overtraining as well because, uh, maybe it's, like I said before, six s- uh, you know, six in one, half dozen in the other. 1:03:25 Because at the end, what you have is recovery debt. Mm-hmm. 1:03:27 And if you're continually entering into your workouts or to your life for that matter constantly in this state of recovery debt, that starts to impact all the things that we said were very important in terms of your body's efficiency with regard to your fluid levels, your hormone levels- Mm-hmm... 1:03:42 y- your, again, your state of recovery and your fitness level. Stress levels are, are, obviously play into that. 1:03:47 So doing this too much or doing it in an organized fashion can, uh, extend or can create and extend recovery debt, which is what we're trying to, trying to avoid. Manage. Yep. Or, or at least... Exactly. 1:03:59 You're gonna be there if you're training hard. You're gonna have those, tho- those times, but y- yeah, that's probably a more appropriate word, which is manage it and understand it. All right, let's move into zone five. 1:04:09 Zone five, uh, your ana- it's a very anaerobic zone. This is glycolytic and phosphogenic, uh, zone. So that, that is going back to that ATP CP system, where we're looking at, you know, again, the creatine- Mm-hmm... 1:04:21 piece. 1:04:21 It's very short-lived, and this exceeds, again, that lactate threshold, your body's ability to convert the lactate that you're, uh, that you're, you're producing back into energy in order to continue the exercise, uh, interval or, you know, bout that you're, you're intensity zone that you're, you're currently in. 1:04:42 It's not going to be sustainable. Mm-hmm. Uh, it won't be. Um, it could last as long as five minutes, but really that's gonna be for a very, very advanced athlete likely- Mm-hmm... 1:04:53 or somebody that's just a fucking freak. Um- [laughs]... taking extra creatine doesn't- Yes... doesn't push this for you. Help with that. Yeah. Uh, but one to five minutes, uh, one to five minutes surges. 1:05:02 Again, the, the, the steep hill, you know, on the mountain bike or on the road bike or the, the sprint past somebody on the trail or that last, um, you know, sprint to the finish line or whatever else, that's where we're really dipping into the system. 1:05:16 And, and here's the deal: once you've dipped into there, right, the recovery time to get out of there, it- It's, like, three times as long... expon- exp- yeah... if not more. Yeah... exponentially increases. Yeah. 1:05:26 Exactly. So it's, like, one to one or one to three. So if, like, if you're sprinting for a minute, expect you're gonna have to... If you could last the- If you could last a [laughs]... all out. 1:05:33 If you could last all out for 60 seconds, it's gonna be- Yeah... at least that long to, to recover. You're gonna have those wobbly legs. They're gonna be burning. Um, you're gonna be breath- you're, you're- Mm-hmm... 1:05:43 gonna have, feel like you have fire in your lungs. Um, uh, y- it's important to note, again, going back to the mixture of fuel systems or energy systems, you will be using some of your aerobic system here. 1:05:52 It's not just purely, you know, what's happening. Anaerobic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, anaerobic. Um, things to note. When you're doing this, the muscle and joint impacts are generally higher. 1:06:01 I mean, we are really working the system. You'd think, again, sprints- Mm-hmm... plyometrics, uh, 1:06:09 those are, those are, those are, um, costly from a fuel systems perspective, but also from when we start looking at, uh, s- soft tissue- Mm-hmm... uh, and the skeleton and the, and the stresses we're putting on there. 1:06:21 The more stress, uh, the more recovery we're going to need. So, uh, this has to be managed appropriately. 1:06:27 Uh, it, it requires longer recovery periods both during and then obviously after, and then, again, if you're a beginner, this is likely not appropriate for you to be spending a lot of time here. 1:06:38 I'm not saying don't ever go to zone five. You might be doing that just in the course of your other regular workout because you're that deconditioned. We see that happen- Yeah... frequently. 1:06:45 And these things will change over time for people, right? 100%. Yeah. 100%. Hopefully, they change- Mm-hmm... 1:06:50 you know, for the better, but sometimes depending on how you've been training or not training, you, you're gonna be shifting, you know, kind of all over the place in terms of your efficiency. Um- 1:07:00 It, you know, in training here, you, you should expect it's, it can increase your, your speed, explosiveness, neuromuscular recruitment. I mean, those, that's the sexy shit. Uh, you're gonna, you know... 1:07:11 It, it is a very, very common, uh, c- um, sort of cause for over-training. We were just talking about that. And again, being in that recovery debt, people just spend too much time here. 1:07:20 Uh, a- again, there's some level of it feeling good if you're chasing that quarterb- cortisol response, like getting that PR, uh, whatever it is, your fastest time on the bike or your fastest, or your, your biggest lift in the gym. 1:07:31 This is, these are the, these are your, the biggest lifts in the gym, a really big day in the gym, like leg day. Yeah. You know, or whatever it is. This is where we're gonna be dipping into the system. 1:07:41 Um, but again, sprints, hill repeats, uh, th- that type of stuff is gonna generate or, or is gonna push you into zone five. Into zone five. Yeah. Yeah. 1:07:50 Uh, ma- two to five-minute intervals with a one-to-one to one-to-three work-to-rest ratio. So again, very short periods of time. Um, very short periods of time, and two minutes is a long time. If you- Mm-hmm... 1:08:02 if anybody that's out there that's gone two minutes as hard as they can go- Phew... yeah, you cooked. Yeah. [laughs] You done. Yeah, you probably gonna bonk, right? Um, did we leave anything out on zone five? 1:08:14 I don't think so. So I think what's important to notice is we're, is, or to note here, the percentage of time that you spend in these higher zones in your total workout program is gonna be less- Mm-hmm... 1:08:25 than you're spending in, you know, zones two- Zone two... right? Or zone two in your recovery zone. Should be anyway. We just talked about the, the r- r- uh, work-to-rest ratios. 1:08:33 But, you know, if you're trying to combine your weight training program with your, with your endurance training program in some way, uh, in there, like these are, these are things that really need to be managed. 1:08:42 Like, where am I gonna get the most bang for my buck? And again, that's where the HIIT training came in, right? 1:08:47 Like, oh, well, if I can work in zone four and five, you know, for 15 minutes and, and get these benefits that we've just explained, um, and I can increase my oxygen, you know, burning capacity beyond the workout that I just did to burn more calories and lose more fat, this sounds perfect. 1:09:03 This is the magic of HIIT training. It's not magic. It's just purely physiology. And again, it works until it doesn't. Mm-hmm. So, um, 1:09:12 okay, so I've labeled the last one zone six, but there really isn't one there because we said we were gonna go zone f- one- Oh... one through five. I would just say anything beyond zone five. 1:09:22 And to be very specific, this is not something that I think you need to be wearing a heart rate monitor for. Um, some people do. They get a, they get a kick out of it. They wanna manage that stuff. 1:09:31 And it's maybe part of, like, m- monitoring how many calories they burn during their workouts, whatever else. I'm not saying don't do it. 1:09:37 I just, I wouldn't encourage you to be training to the heart rate zone, uh, while doing the activity, uh, that dips into this energy system and that specifically being the phosphagenic system only, where we're not doing any aero- We're not, we're not really dipping into any type of an aerobic, an aerobic base. 1:09:57 A little bit, much less than zone five. Mm-hmm. Because the interval itself is much, much shorter. Um, these are very short, explosive bouts, five seconds, maybe a couple minutes. 1:10:10 But these are much, this is like a 30-second set, you know- Mm... on the bench press, on the deadlift platform, in the squat rack, something like that. 1:10:17 This is, you know, during your, your power cleans, during your snatches. That's where we're really working in th- in this system. 1:10:24 And if you are truly training those things, and you are truly, and, uh, sorry, at a maximal level, where we're trying to increase speed, power, and strength, then you need to be doing that at the highest intensity level you possibly can in order to max- or to master the mechanics, uh, the, that explosive power and things like that. 1:10:44 You are going to need time in between sets- Mm-hmm... uh, in order to recover. So they're much longer in order of recovery. Minutes, a- as many minutes as you need- Mm-hmm... 1:10:53 in order to get back into that particular- Yeah, we're talking like, like five, uh- Could be as much, yeah. Yeah. Five minutes. Could be more. 10, yeah. I mean, g- go to, like, a power lifting gym, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. 1:11:02 How much time is spent on the platform versus how much time is sitting on a bench- Mm-hmm... waiting to get back on the platform? 1:11:07 Uh, you s- you, there's very little time spent on the platform if you're working at max levels. If you're working, like, a, like, a utility day or something like that. 1:11:14 For you power lifters out there, don't get upset with me. You know what I'm talking about. 1:11:17 [laughs] Like, if it's, hey, I'm working into my, you know, to, if I'm a month out, six weeks out from my meet, like I am working at the highest intensity levels I can. I'm not even anywhere near my de-load yet. 1:11:28 I'm still max, I'm still maxing out here as I'm getting closer with very low rep ranges, with, uh, high amence- amounts of intensity, uh, and maybe even some volume at this point still. I'm taking a long time to recover. 1:11:41 That's this zone. Mm-hmm. So as it relates to endurance training, it's not really in the mix. It's not really in the mix. Um, so that kinda covers the zones. And I know that was a lot. 1:11:54 Uh, and there's, you know, uh, trying to boil down, I don't know, six semesters of- [laughs]... exercise physiology and, and human physiology into, you know- 45 minutes into an hour... 1:12:04 the 45 minutes we've been talking is a little bit tough to do. So hopefully we haven't insulted anybody, you know, out there that's, has spent a lifetime studying this stuff. That was not the intention. 1:12:13 Again, the audience is very mixed and very broad. But, uh, what we found is there are people that take their f- their fitness very, very seriously and do track this stuff and do pay qu- quite a bit of attention. 1:12:22 So again, hopefully this was a good review. And for those that haven't, hopefully we haven't completely lost you, uh, but just built a case for why this stuff's important. 1:12:31 And, uh, here, we're gonna teach you real quick how to figure out what your zones are so you can start messing around with this. Mm-hmm. 1:12:37 So you can, you can kind of start playing around with it and understand what, what might be best for you. So how do you find your zones? Well, there's a couple methods for doing this. 1:12:45 Uh, there's maximally graded tests and submaximal tests. 1:12:50 So for 99.9 into infinity people that are listening to this show right now, a maximally graded treadmill or bike, you know, cycle test is not practical or even, uh, uh- Available to you. 1:13:04 Uh, I mean, maybe if you worked really hard and you searched, you could probably find somebody to do this. It's also probably not appropriate. Mm-hmm. Uh, and what do I mean by this? 1:13:13 So you- you've heard of, like, the VO2 max test. The maximally graded, uh, like treadmill test is you go all out as hard as you possibly can until you literally can't- Can't... which o- which oftentimes means collapsing. 1:13:26 If you're an advanced athlete and this, and you are training for a living, right? Uh, to, to earn a living or something like that, this is an appropriate probably thing for you to do. Mm-hmm. So you really understand. 1:13:36 I have done three of these tests in my life. Yeah. [laughs] Two on a treadmill, one on a bike. They are very painful and they, uh, they hurt. Mm. And they are... There are some risk involved in that, obviously. 1:13:48 Um, you are really stressing your system. Not for the faint of heart. [laughs] Yeah. That's a good way of looking at it. They are tough. So you're literally hooked up to heart rate monitors. 1:13:56 You got wires, you know, attached to your ch- to your chest and to your body. You've got a, uh, you got a halo on with, uh, with measuring O2, with a mask over your face. It is cl- very claustrophobic. It sucks. 1:14:08 Very clinical. Yeah, it's very clinical. You're literally, like, in a lab. Mm-hmm. In an exercise lab. So but there is some maximal testing that we can do, which I wanna, I wanna talk about. 1:14:16 So the other thing is, like, we can talk, to understand is we've talked about this term, and that is lactate threshold or, um, LT, um, using blood testing. Mm. 1:14:26 So I, I mentioned this before where they actually pin prick your, you know, much like a, um, like a blood sugar test. 1:14:31 They, they pin prick you during your exercise, bout of act- activity to see how much lactate is actually in the blood. 1:14:38 Again, not practical or necessary in order to achieve these heart rate zones for 99.9 to infinity percent- Mm-hmm... much percent of the people. Um, and there's also, um, a, uh, there's, there's also tests where w- uh, 1:14:55 I guess we could do, like, VO2, again, the VO2 max test, which is... Let's just say it's much less invasive and where we're measuring your heart rate, right? So we call that lactate threshold heart rate. Mm-hmm. 1:15:09 And wh- when, when, when you do that, you can, you, you can monitor this. It's very easily done. It, it can take some practice, and we're gonna walk you through how to do this. 1:15:18 But you can basically take an average of your heart rate over a certain period of time where m- you're basically working at whatever the hardest level you think you can maintain for a certain period of time. 1:15:27 And then average that out and pum- pump that into a couple of calculations to figure out your, uh, your, your numbers. So that's what we're gonna get, we're gonna get to, which then equates to your heart rate zones. 1:15:37 And those are easy to utilize, and they're the most accessible to the most people. Um, but there's other stuff you can also do that I haven't, you know, in terms of figuring out your zones. There's a pace. 1:15:47 There's, there's pace, uh, pace, pace testing you can do. There's als- It's the one where you're walking on the treadmill... speed, power zones, pace zones. Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's... Oh, there's lots of stuff. 1:15:56 You can do them in the pool. You can do them on a bike, uh, if you have power meters and things like that. There's, there's, there's a lot of things you can do. 1:16:02 But again, for purposes of today, we're talking about, um, um, we're talking about heart rate zones. Um, again, let's, so let's talk about, um, the testing on the, the bike or the treadmill. 1:16:16 As a review, there is no perfect test. We're not trying to find perfect numbers here. We're just trying to get you in the quote unquote- Idea. Yeah... zone, right? Two, what do you need? 1:16:24 You're gonna need a heart rate monitor, and you're gonna need something to, you know, like you're gonna need a clock, right? Mm-hmm. So again, most, like, wrist-worn devices anymore have this. 1:16:34 I'm not gonna get into selling brands and, and who's better at this and not. A lot of them have done a really good job. 1:16:39 You know, everybody from Apple to Garmin to Polar has these things, and they're, you know, the, the, to the degree or the level of accuracy that they work is oftentimes b- based on how much money you spend. 1:16:51 Um, and but you d- Again, this does not need to be perfect. What I would not encourage you to do is use the little handheld electrodes- Yeah... on the bike, bikes or the treadmills that happen to be at your gym. 1:17:01 I would get yourself a heart rate monitor. 1:17:05 Uh, also ideally, you would have a heart rate, you would have a chest strap, uh, that is close to, you know, your actual heart, which picks up the signal and then transmits it to your watch or to whatever device you're happening to be transmitting it to. 1:17:17 However, you could do this without that. You could do this with, uh, with just your wrist-worn device. I mean, there's great technology out there. So anyway, those are your needs. Heart rate monitor and your clock. 1:17:27 In, in some cases, you're gonna need equipment. Um, here's the goal. You're gonna basically monitor your heart rate for 30 minutes at the highest output you can sustain without bonking, 1:17:38 and you're gonna take the, your average heart rate for the last 20 minutes of that 30 minutes, and that should, should, should correspond very closely to your lactate threshold. 1:17:48 So I know that leaves a lot of room, and that's why I said practice can be- Mm-hmm... is, is sort of important here. Um, and we're gonna walk you through this a little bit more here in a second. 1:17:56 But t- it's important to note your pace should be basically the same at the end as it was at the beginning. So you have to know kind of how fast you can go without tipping over and going into the edge. 1:18:08 So if you're not been endurance training, and you go out there, and you try and do this right now, whether it's on a bike or a treadmill or, or otherwise on your, on your own bike, not a, like an indoor bike, which I would encourage you to do it there, uh, or outside on a track or something like that, this can be tough for you to get y- you know, closer it, to, to your actual zones. 1:18:27 You may need to practice this a little bit. Mm-hmm. You, you should be trained. Uh, and, and, and I will tell you this. 1:18:33 The less trained you are, whatever your zones are today, if you did this test today, in about three or four weeks, you're gonna wanna do it again because you're gonna recog- your, your cardiovascular endurance and your ability to do all the things that we've been talking about in this podcast should drastically increase. 1:18:49 In which case, your zones will drastic- will change drastically. Yes. I don't know about the... 1:18:53 I don't know if The zones will change drastically in terms of the number, but they will change I think they'll change And the difference between zone two and zone three- Mm-hmm... could be very different. 1:19:01 And obviously, the difference between zone four and zone five could be very different. So those are things you absolutely wanna know. Um, most people come out of the gate too fast. 1:19:09 They just, they just do, even if you're a trained athlete. You're being tested, right? [laughs] This is a competition. Like, we're, we're trying to do our best here. 1:19:15 So oftentimes they come out of the gate too fast, so it's... And they, and they can't maintain that pace throughout. That's why I encourage you to do this indoor if you can- Mm-hmm... where it's very controlled. 1:19:25 Like, if I'm trying to do this on a bike outside- Yeah... there's a stoplight. Too many variables. There's, a squirrel runs out in front of the [laughs]... You know, and you gotta slow down. There's wind. 1:19:33 There's, there's hills, there's wind- Yeah... there's all that stuff. So, um, doing it inside in a more controlled environment, take out those variables, uh, this is a little bit easier to do. 1:19:41 Um, like I said, some experience can be, can be helpful for you here. So if you're gonna do this on a treadmill or the run test, um, here's what you do. You warm up for 10 to 15 minutes, right? Get yourself going, right? 1:19:54 And then you begin your 30-minute run to work to your max sustainable pace, whatever that is for you. Again, if you're on a treadmill, you just tap that button up to where you think you can maintain it, right? 1:20:05 Uh, that, that's, that's speed up with maybe a little bit of an incline, but you're, you're... Once you're set, you're gonna stay set. All right? 1:20:12 And then, uh, y- you, you do that again for that, for the first 10 minutes, you're finding your way, and then for the last 20, you have to stay there, and you're gonna monitor your heart rate during that time. 1:20:24 Most devices this time, they're, or at this, they're doing it for you, right? And they're just simply gonna give you an average for the total workout, which is all you're looking for. Yep. 1:20:32 That's, that's all you're looking for. 1:20:34 Um, and that time should be, or excuse me, that percent or that heart rate should be your lactate threshold heart rate, your average heart rate during that, during that 30 minutes, but more specifically- That's right... 1:20:44 or sorry, during that last 20 minutes. Um, here's, here's something on the run side. If that's too hard for you, here's an alternative. You could do three five-minute intervals. Um, they have to be hard. 1:20:57 You have to, you have to really go hard. But sustainable effort intervals with a five-minute recovery between each effort. So get warmed up. Again, get r- warmed up, then do your three by five minutes- Mm-hmm... 1:21:09 at that hard, sustained pace, and then take your average heart rate across those- Those three... those three, those three intervals, and that'll be your lactate, um, uh, heart rate or your lactate threshold heart rate. 1:21:22 And then for those of you that are on the bike, this is the easiest one. This is my favorite one to do. Um, it has the least amount of risk. Like, there's no, there's, uh... It, it's easier on my body. Mm-hmm. Right? 1:21:32 Not impact. Yeah, and I can really focus on pushing. Uh, this, uh, mechanics on a bike are much easier than mechanics running. Again, it doesn't beat my body up the same. 1:21:42 Uh, I just feel comfortable there, and I really know myself on the bike versus the run, so I choose bike. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah. I was gonna say, if you're a runner, I would stick with running. 1:21:50 If you're a cyclist, then go with the cycling. If, 1:21:53 f- because for me, I do know that cycling, it's greater range of motion, and if I'm not, if I have not been on my bike, and I try to get on, and I do this test on the bike, it's gonna take me a few attempts, because I will just bonk. 1:22:07 Yeah, you'll just go too fast- So-... or go too hard. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I get it. Again, experience matters. Uh, so ideally, like we said, you're doing this indoor. 1:22:15 You're gonna warm up for that 10 to 15 minutes, same as the run, right? And then begin your, uh, same as your run, then you're gonna begin that 30 minutes of, uh, of hard work. 1:22:25 Uh, and then, uh, get to that pace within that first 10 minutes, and then you're going to take the average of that last 20. And again, you're gonna wind up with your lactate threshold heart rate. Mm-hmm. 1:22:37 That's gonna give you a number. Whatever that number is, that's what you're gonna use for what we're gonna tell you next, which is basically do your calculations for zones one through, what, one through five. 1:22:48 Now, I'm gonna preface this with, if you start doing some Googling, you will find not that the zones change much, like they're, we're, the, the... 1:22:57 Most people agree, like, what we're giving you right now is the, are the heart rate zones. 1:23:02 Um, but they may tell you, like, if, if you did the run test or if you're testing this for your run, these do vary as compared to, like, the bike. And if you're a swimmer, there's actually another test called the CSS. 1:23:14 I'm not gonna go over that because, uh, that one's a little bit more complex, and I, I, my guess is most people are not doing that. You can look that up, but there is a swim test you can do. 1:23:23 It's a little bit of a tougher, uh, uh, a tougher test for you to do. 1:23:27 But if you, if you're a triathlete, then you're gonna wanna know where your lac- where your LTHR is across your bike, your run, and your- Those things... and your swim. 1:23:36 So, but most people are not training that way, so I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna go through that one. But here's the quick and dirty on the zones. So zone one is under 80% of that lactate threshold heart rate. 1:23:47 So take the number that you got, take 80% of that. Everything below that is zone one. Zone two is 80 to 88%, right? So we're starting to climb up there, of the LTHR, not of your maximum heart rate. Mm-hmm. Right? 1:24:01 This is, this is way different. Different. This is much, much different. So you're gonna take 80 to 88% of the, uh, of that number. 1:24:08 Zone three is 89 to 94, so we're starting to move up, and you can see where this is going. 1:24:14 The, the, the, uh, the zone percentages start to decrease as obviously we're getting into those higher t-intensity levels, so there's not as much wiggle room- Mm-hmm... because you don't have as much wiggle room. 1:24:24 [laughs] You, again, you are on the clock. Zone four is 95 to 100. There really isn't anything past there. Anything past there, and you're gonna- Mm... again, you're gonna start collapsing. 1:24:33 You're not gonna be able to, to maintain that for very long. So again, 95 to 100 for, for zone four. Uh, zone five is, again, that's above 100, and most people don't train there. Mm. They don't wanna train there. 1:24:47 Uh, and if you are training there a lot, I caution you. Uh, I would ask the question why, uh, but I would caution you to, uh, make sure you Maybe take a look at, at why. There, there, there's a lot of... 1:24:59 I think there's, there's other questions that can be asked here, which would be, you know, like people think they're training in zone four, but they're actually only in zone three, or they're training in zone four and they may be near- nearing zone five. 1:25:11 Um, I think it's more common that people think they're training in zone four or in, or in zone three. More common that they think they're zone, in zone two, but actually training- In zone three... in zone three. Yeah. 1:25:23 I remember keeping my heart... For me, for a long time was I had to keep my heart rate under 130 beats a minute, like on the bicycle. Mm-hmm. It was fucking... Uh, in zone two, sorry. It was so hard for me. 1:25:33 So hard for me to do that. [laughs] Uh, y- I just wanted to go fast. Yeah. I just like going fast. Um, and, and, uh, you know, on the run, it felt like a shuffle, which I felt dumb. I was like, "What am I... 1:25:43 This isn't even running. This is jogging. I don't jog. I run." So things to get out of your head as you're going into this, but also things that you will discover as you explore these, this, this type of training. 1:25:56 So, uh, that was a lot of information. Uh, we should probably, like put this together in a guide or something and kind of to walk people through it. But again, it's easily... 1:26:04 This shit is easily found on the, on the internet. Interwebs. Yeah, interwebs. Yeah. Nothing that what I said here or that we've talked about today is- Yeah, but sometimes it's easier-... mysterious... 1:26:12 for people to digest when they hear it versus having to go and dig for it too, so. Yeah, again, my hope is that people walk away from this going, "Okay, that's interesting. 1:26:21 Let me play with this device that I spent $800 for- [laughs]... and, uh, see if I can maybe, you know, just, just monitor some stuff for a while and kind of see where you're at." 1:26:30 Maybe if you're a record keeper, you know, if you, if you are tracking your workouts, just maybe track kind of what you're doing before you even do this test- Mm-hmm... 1:26:38 to find out kind of where your average heart rate is for these workouts and, and whatnot, and what your, what your perception of your effort is versus what the device is telling you, and then maybe make your calcu- do your test, make your calculations, and kind of see how that all compares and contrasts. 1:26:53 Could be a fun, eye-opening experience. Yeah, it is, it always is for me, and it also gives me, like, if you're a person that maybe needs a little bit more, like, "I need a little drive for my workouts right now. 1:27:02 I'm just not feeling it," or, "I need a little different focus," this is a good... This, this can be healthy. Again, I think there are people out there that in- in, uh, depend and rely on devices entirely too much. 1:27:14 Uh, and then there's others that probably could be getting a lot of benefit, you know, in their, in their, their workout programs by using them more. Mm-hmm. And I'm one of those guys, I, 1:27:22 I- Depends on the- I just, just got back into the, to the devices, uh, very recently, and I, I like doing it, uh, but at the same time, I'm not married to it. And I just took mine off. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. 1:27:34 So again, that's okay, too. Yeah. 1:27:37 But, uh, if you need, like, a little bit more, like, focus during your workouts, sometimes, like, managing the numbers can be helpful to kind of get you to the gym and, um, not necessarily validate the workout that you did for the day, but to kind of keep you focused on what you, what it is you're actually doing during that workout, or more specifically, not doing during that workout. 1:27:55 Um, and then, you know, use the, that feedback that you get subjectively and objectively to make different decisions- Mm-hmm... or just make decisions about how you're approaching your, your, your, your fitness program. 1:28:07 But, uh, like, like I said, that's a lot. Thanks for hanging in there with me. Uh, again, I didn't want this to be a huge, uh, PhysX lecture, but, um, hopefully that's helpful for, for people. 1:28:17 And they can stay tuned for, uh, some of the other stuff we'll bring to the table specific to how to utilize those zones for certain maybe workouts or training periods during, uh, during the year based on what they, their goals are and, and, uh, what might be important to them at particularly ti- particular times as they periodize out those programs to just be a, a better, faster, stronger athlete. 1:28:38 [rock music] Thank you for tuning into this episode of Iron Sights. If you enjoyed our conversation, you can support our mission by hitting the subscribe button, leaving a review, and sharing the podcast with a friend. 1:28:50 I'll see you on the next episode.
