Following on from some very interesting discussions on my Facebook page, I figured that it was time for a more training related blog post. This is aimed particularly at readers who are endurance athletes, or those with performance orientated goals who simply want to ride, run, swim faster. There is definite application for the general fitness and weight loss clientele as well, so read on.
Icing the cake is an analogy which I learnt very early in my fitness career, and has stood me in good stead bearing in mind I was a competitive recreational athlete for 18+ years. I see far too many people who fail completely to understand the way to correctly periodise a programme to ensure they maximise their performance gains. Periodisation involves varying the intensity of your workouts on a weekly and monthly basis to stimulate all of the energy systems, maximise adaptation and promote recovery.
Whole tomes are written on the science of periodisation, and I have had to simplify things significantly here, but you will definitely get the gist of it. I see three big mistakes when it comes to intensity within a programme; not enough intensity, too much intensity too often, and perhaps worse no plan at all! Are you falling foul of any of these? I am going to deal with the first two issues right away, and follow up with the final one in my next post.
1. Not enough intensity.
This is a common limiter on athletes getting results. They simply don’t work hard enough in enough of their workouts, and fall into the trap of endless slow miles believing that volume is the answer. Endurance athletes coined the phrase ‘junk miles’ to signify those which are too slow to bring real benefit, and instead just contribute to a level of fatigue which can then prevent higher intensity sessions from being effective. It is a particular problem for athletes who become a slave to the training log, and want to show an increase in mileage each week.
At its most simplistic level if you only ever run (or ride or swim) slowly, then you get extremely good at doing just that. Say you want to run a half marathon, and build up so you can go out several times each week and run a slow 10 miles. This won’t prove to be an effective strategy when you get a little carried away on race day, go through the first mile at considerably faster than your training pace, and then end up walking the rest. You might laugh, but I see victims of this at every race I attend. If you don’t push yourself to go faster occasionally in your training, then you certainly won’t be able to do it on race day without suffering the consequences.
We become very good at whatever we practice the most. To be successful, a training plan should contain sessions of a variety of lengths and intensities, in line with whatever your goal. In the big picture, too much, too little, too fast, too slow or too much of the same will limit your progress and slow down adaptation. I am going to talk about how to come up with a training plan in the second part of this blog, but for the meantime just recognise that not all workouts should look the same in terms of intensity or duration.
The fallacy of low intensity workouts being effective is also one I see repeated in a huge percentage of group exercise classes in gyms. A vast majority of gym clientele are after body composition changes (i.e. fat loss), and there are more effective and less effective workouts to get you there. If you want to lose fat, the comments here are aimed directly at you, and perhaps less so at endurance athletes who usually need more low-intensity workouts in their programme (see point 2).
Now I am not a ‘cardio-basher’ as seems to be popular these days, but I will say that if you haven’t felt the need to remove your sweatshirt during a class then the chances are pretty good that you are not doing the best thing for fat loss. Even a ‘recovery’ workout at low intensity should be enough to make you warm enough to strip off some layers (If you are somebody who wants to keep their outdoor clothes on so you can ‘sweat out’ fat, then kindly stop reading now as you are beyond my help!).
I similarly have to bite my tongue when I see people in a class having a long conversation with their neighbour, or sitting on cardio machines whilst texting or reading a magazine. Effective exercise to burn fat needs to raise your heart rate above the level of a hibernating dormouse for more than a few minutes. Does this mean that all lower intensity group exercise classes or a gentle walk is no good for fat-loss…not at all! Just recognise them for what they are; something enjoyable to do perhaps with friends, rather than something to significantly move you towards your fat-loss goals.
2. Too much intensity too often.
Far fewer people fall into this trap, but it is perhaps more damaging when it comes to optimising your progress in endurance sport. It most often happens when you attend too many high-intensity group exercise classes in the gym, or join in club ride/run/swim sessions which push you consistently into overload. The ego is a wonderful thing, but it can write cheques which your body can’t cash (I’m pretty sure that I borrowed that quote from the movie Top Gun).
As many of you know I am an indoor cycling instructor who qualified under the Spinning® programme, in my mind the original and best when it comes to helping clients to understand the benefits of a periodised programme. Their system works for everyone, regardless if they have sport or fitness orientated goals. The exact descriptions and names may be different, but the key principals will still apply in any good programme.
A periodised training programme to maximise fitness gains should contain recovery workouts (50-65% Max Heart Rate), endurance workouts (65-75% MHR), strength workouts (75-85% MHR), interval workouts (65-92% MHR), and a limited number of high intensity ‘race-day’ workouts (80-92% MHR). The percentages of each type of workout will vary depending on the time of year and the point in a competitive season. Similar concepts apply in run training, with recovery runs, endurance runs, tempo runs, hill runs, interval runs and races to bring into the mix.
Far too many of the heavily choreographed cycle workouts popular in gyms today are always some version of ‘race day’ or possibly interval zone. It will be high end, big intensity, sweat-until-you-drop workouts, for session after session, week after week. It is no surprise that people reach a plateau and then fail to see gains, or worse still get sick, injured or burn out. The body needs recovery time, and if you go to your maximum level more than once or perhaps twice each week, eventually you won’t be able to achieve the same level of intensity anymore because you haven’t allowed for sufficient recovery.
Get into this state too often, and you will reach a level of cumulative fatigue which will prevent any fitness improvements and most likely send you backwards. Even if you do then schedule a recovery workout, your body may be so stressed that the very act of just taking gentle exercise will put you into another overloaded state. It’s tough to notice this trend without a heart rate monitor or paying very close attention to how you feel, and before long everything becomes in the ‘grey zone’, neither high intensity nor recovery. The hard workouts will feel too hard and the easy will not be easy enough.
This is why I am a real advocate for using a heart rate monitor to provide feedback on intensity, or power output if available on a bike. RPE (rating of perceived exertion) works if you have nothing else, and the premise of mixing up your workouts to provide different levels of stress to the body and energy systems always applies whatever your chosen activity. If your cycling, running or other training programme doesn’t contain a good number of workouts at endurance (aerobic only) or recovery intensity, then you are likely going to fall into this trap of doing too much too often at some point. Too much intensity too often, or too much for your current fitness levels, will quickly push you into an overtrained state which is not a productive or fun place to be.
Icing your cake!
So what does this have to do with icing your cake? I like to view my weekly and monthly workout volume as a cake in terms of the intensity which I am aiming for. To be successful almost everyone will need a structured plan, with workouts of varying intensity each week. A high proportion of those sessions should be in the endurance zone (65-75% max heart rate), as this is where the body learns to be efficient, to preferentially burn fat and not glycogen (carbohydrate stores) where the stores are more limited. Most of us have enough muscle and liver glycogen to exercise at a reasonable intensity for 2-3 hours, and enough fat to take us from here to the other side of the world (only joking but you get the idea). A high volume of endurance zone workouts cause changes at the cellular level which enables us to spare the limited sources of glycogen and tap into the almost unlimited fat reserves – in other words we become more efficient.
Endurance athletes often call this ‘aerobic base building’ and perform a high percentage of these lower intensity sessions indoors during the winter months when it is harder to get outside. Base building may not be the most exciting training, but it is absolutely vital if you want to get results. Regular indoor cyclists should do likewise, and go through periods (perhaps 6-8 weeks a few times per year) where a very high proportion of the weekly volume is in the lower range. There is nothing quite like a well-structured endurance Spinning® session to make you feel amazing, and it is a shame they are so often overlooked in favour of higher intensity workouts!
Once you have built your base, these endurance type workouts should still make up the ‘meat’ of any programme, but the number can be reduced slightly to allow for the higher intensity strength, interval, and race day sessions. I am going to hazard a guess that for many people who attend group sessions, either outdoor running or indoor cycling, these percentages will be completely out. Group exercise is very effective at increasing motivation and encouraging people to push to a new level, but they need to be used sparingly if you have endurance sport goals. All too often it’s a quick warm-up, balls to the walls for as much of the session as possible, then a 5 minute cool down and perhaps stretch. That’s great for one session, but not 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 or however many times each week. The more of your workouts you perform at above endurance level intensity, the more you should also perform in the recovery zone.
If you are going to go hard, then pick one or maybe two sessions each week and work REALLY hard. Do some high end intervals or a race day ride and go for it. High intensity workouts should be the icing on the cake. Think about it. Let’s take a sponge cake – eating cake alone is rather dry and uninteresting, whilst icing alone would be very sickly and sweet. Maybe 9/10 cake with 1/10 icing is the perfect mix, and that is how training for endurance events should be. Upper end anaerobic intensity should never make up more than 10% of your weekly training volume, regardless of the period of training.
So that was a very long post to give you some really cool background on effective training intensity. In my next post I will cover problem #3, so I can help the many aspiring athletes which I meet who are operating with no plan at all when it comes to their quest to get results. Regardless if your goal is to cycle 50 miles, run a half marathon, climb Snowdon or lose 30 pounds, it pays to have a plan! Comments and feedback as always please beneath the blog, and I will do my best to reply.
Your friend in fitness,
Beth
