Case in point my commute to work: I bike a short distance of about 3 Km. On the way there are a few hills - nothing too excruciating but difficult enough to get my heart pumping a wee bit and give my legs a bit of a burn. A few students of mine also take this same route. In Korea, students are required to take PE class a few times a week: I often see them running laps, playing sports, or hiking the nearby mountain. In my mind, I gathered my students were in decent shape. So I was surprised to see many of them have to walk their bike up the hill! And considering I lug around a lot more dead weight from my upper body's dead than they do, it made me realize that perhaps I'm in better shape than I thought. It begs the question: are these kids and teenagers at the fitness peak of their lives? If that's the case, what will they do after high school and PE class? (In the case of Korean men, compulsory military service.)
There are six generally accepted aspects to fitness; these are:
Aerobic Endurance / CRE (Cardiorespiratory Endurance): how good your heart and lungs are at working for a long period without tiring
Muscular Endurance: how able a muscle or group of muscles are able to work continuously
Strength: the maximum force a muscle or group of muscles can apply against resistance
Speed: how fast your body or a part of your body can move
Power: combination of strength and speed
Flexibility: the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion
Hand-eye coordination, Accuracy, Reaction time, Agility and Balance are five other components of fitness.
Of all the aspects of fitness, CRE is (arguably) the most important to develop as it enhances all the other fitness components.
To develop CRE you have to make sure that you are in your training zone. Training zone you ask? This means that optimally, your heart should beat between 70% and 85% of your maximum heart rate to be able to stress your cardio-vascular system enough to train it.
If you exercise at an intensity of between 50% and 70% you are in the "aerobic zone".
We find our maximum heart rate by going 220 minus your age.
How do you find your pulse? You don't need no fancy-shmancy machine. All you need is a timer/stopwatch and two fingers for this...
From www.wikihow.com/Check-Your-Pulse
Use your fingers when finding a pulse. Don't use your thumb when finding it, as it has its own pulse.
Find the radial pulse. This is also known as the pulse on the inside of the wrist. Use the pads of two fingers. Place these just below the wrist creases at the base of the thumb. Press lightly until you feel a pulse (blood pulsing under your fingers). If necessary, move fingers around until you feel the pulse.
Find the carotid pulse. To feel a pulse on the side of the neck, place two fingers, preferably your index and middle finger, in the hollow between the windpipe and the large muscle in the neck. Press lightly until you feel a pulse.
- Check and record your heart rate. Use a watch or clock with a second hand. Make a note of the rate of the pulse, which is the number of beats per minute.
- If you don't have a watch or a clock around, the Cleveland Clinic Health System recommends counting the beats you feel for 15 seconds and multiplying this by four to get your heart rate per minute:
Your pulse is: (beats in 15 seconds) x 4 = y (your heart rate) You can count beats for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.
Determine your normal heart rate. For adults, normal heart rate is 60-100 beats per minute. For children under age 18, normal heart rate is 70-100 beats per minute. This is your heart rate when you are at rest. Determine your beats per minute by following the steps listed above.
Take a 40 year old person having a peak heart rate of 180. Seventy percent of 180 is 126 while 85 percent of 180 is 153, meaning this person's heart should beat between 126 and 153 beats per minute to be in the optimal training zone.
| Age 20 years | HR Zone 70-85% 140-170 beats per minute | Maximum HR 200 beats per minute |
| 30 years | 137-162 beats per minute | 190 beats per minute |
| 35 years | 133-157 beats per minute | 185 beats per minute |
| 40 years | 126-153 beats per minute | 180 beats per minute |
| 45 years | 123-149 beats per minute | 175 beats per minute |
| 50 years | 119-145 beats per minute | 170 beats per minute |
| 55 years | 116-140 beats per minute | 165 beats per minute |
| 60 years | 112-136 beats per minute | 160 beats per minute |
| 65 years | 109-132 beats per minute | 155 beats per minute |
| 70 years | 105-128 beats per minute | 150 beats per minute |
CRE can be developed using interval training, continuous training or fartlek training. Both Fartlek and interval training put extra stress on your system, eventually leading to faster speeds and improving your anaerobic threshold. (It's also called lactic threshold). Remember my students who have to walk their bike up the hill? Part of what we witness here is a low anaerobic threshold (muscular endurance and power also definitely come into play, but we'll discuss this another time).
Your anaerobic threshold is a powerful predictor of performance in aerobic exercise.
To explore further, let's start with a brief, oversimplified, review of physiology. Your muscles can "burn" glucose for energy in two ways, aerobically ("with oxygen") and anaerobically ("without oxygen").
From rice.edu: (skip this part for the TL;DR)
An all out sprint, which requires a great deal of power output in a short period of time, uses the anaerobic system. The energy is quickly available, but the anaerobic pathways are not very efficient; short term energy stores are rapidly depleted, lactic acid builds up, and exercise soon comes to a halt. After a brief rest, the system is recharged and ready for the next sprint.
Distance running, which requires a steady power output over a long period of time, uses the aerobic system. These pathways can't generate the speed of the anaerobic, but they do possess a great deal more efficiency and endurance. Depending upon the distance, and effort, the body can use different proportions of both of these systems. Those who have raced the 800 meter know it's too long to be a sprint, but too short to be distance. This is right at the cross-over between the aerobic and anaerobic systems.
While running at a comfortable pace you use both systems, but the anaerobic:aerobic ratio is low enough that the lactate generated is easily removed, and doesn't build up. As the pace is increased, eventually a point is reached where the production of lactate, by the anaerobic system, is greater than its removal. The AT, also known as the lactate threshold, is the point where lactate (lactic acid) begins to accumulate in the bloodstream.
The AT varies from person to person, and, within a given individual, sport to sport. Untrained individuals have a low AT (approximately 55 % of VO2 max), and elite endurance athletes, a high AT (approx. 80 - 90% of VO2 max). You can train your body to remove lactate better and to juice up the aerobic mitochondrial enzymes, thus raising the AT. Don't worry you still get to experience the joy of lactate-laden legs that won't move, but it will happen at a faster running speed. Applying the right types of workouts is the key to properly shape your AT.TL;DR: Improving your anaerobic threshold can increase high intensity endurance performance.
How do you push your anaerobic threshold? The anaerobic threshold, the point at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in the muscles, is considered to be somewhere between 80% and 90% of your maximum heart rate and is approximately 40 beats higher than the aerobic threshold. The anaerobic threshold is the point at which your body switches energy sources from oxygen to glycogen.
Let's compare the three types of training sessions: interval, continuous and Fartlek.
Interval training session
An interval training session is a short/medium bout of high-effort exercise over a set distance or time followed by a short rest period. This is then repeated a set number of times throughout the session.For example, do 8 sprints of 100 meters at 90% effort, then allowed yourself a 60 second recovery between each sprint.
How interval training is progressively overloaded:
- Training an increasing amount of times each week.
- Increasing the length of your sprints, for example from 100 meters to 110 meters.
- Increasing the number of sprints, from 8 to 9.
- Increasing the intensity of each repetition, from 90% to 95% effort.
- Increasing the recovery time between repetitions, for example from 60 to 50 seconds.
Continuous training session
Continuous training involves training (running, swimming, cycling) over a long distance at a steady pace.For example. running continuously for 20 minutes, at a steady pace in your training zone.
How continuous training is progressively overloaded:
- Training an increasing amount of times each week.
- Increasing the length of time in your training zone.
- Increasing the pace, from a 5 minute/km pace to 4.5 minute/km pace.
- Increasing the length of time ran during each session, for example from 20 to 25 minutes.
Fartlek training session
This either sounds foreign to you, or downright weight. Fartlek is a Swedish word meaning “speed play”. If you're familiar with Tabata or HIIT, Fartlek training is similar in that it's another form of varied pace training. It involves steady pace training over a long distance, during which short bouts of fast, intense training is included. This is not a new concept, it's been around for decades.It differs from traditional interval training in that it is unstructured; intensity and/or speed varies however you wish.
For example, running at a varied pace for 20 minutes, alternating between recovery walking, jogging, mid-paced running and sprinting.
How Fartlek training progressively overloaded:
- Training an increasing amount of times each week.
- Lengthening the sprint sections of my Fartlek run
- Running the sprint section at an increased incline (steeper hill)
- Reducing the recovery walk section.
- Increasing the length of time ran during each session, for example from 20 to 25 minutes.
It's very important that you warm up and cool down with any type of running, but because Fartleks are especially intense, you especially need to warm up before doing any Fartleks. Do a thorough stretch, focusing on your hamstrings, calves, ankles, and shins. This is somewhat of a high-intensity run, so it's not recommended for people who haven't ran before--you should get used to running by doing a few miles a day for a few of weeks before attempting to do Fartleks.
Although Fartleks are often used in running, but theycan be used just as effectively in bicycle or elliptical training too.
What’s your favorite way to do cardio? Add your comments below, then GET OUT AND RUN! (or ride)
No comments:
Post a Comment