What Zone Do You Do Cardio In?

OldAssDude

ronocnikral wrote: »

bcalvanese wrote: »

My intent today was to try the 180 - age method on a trail run. Since I have been training for the past 2 years and have shown improvement, I added 5 to that. So for me it is 180 - 59 + 5 = 126.

Well its very difficult to keep my heart rate that low trail running on hilly terrain (even at a less than 4 MPH pace), so it turned into a more intense workout.

If you scroll down to the stats and click on time in zones you can see how much time I spent in each zone.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1772399320

Here is one I did the other day when I was at the shore. It was on flat land so no hills. Even though the pace was faster, my heart rate never really hit zone 5 because it was on roads with no hills.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1763933990

I guess the 180 - age method is not suited for trail running.

It actually is. My normal 10-13 mile trail run out my backdoor and I do 11 min miles with an avg hr of 130-135.

If you wanted to spend $5, you can pick up maffrtones training for endurance 2nd ed. A very good resource. In it, you'll read that you need to stick with the plan for 6.months to a year. I spent 2. 5 months on a treadmill barely able to jog at 4.2 mph for more than 10 mins. Then it slowly started to come together for me...

You are probably in a lot better shape then me then. It will be for me eventually, but right now I can only keep my heart in that range running at 4 mph on flat land...:)

I am improving though. About 8 months or so ago I could only run for about 30 seconds, and now I can run 5 miles.

heybales

I was shocked when I did the Maffetone method years ago, along with his diet, which the Zone diet from Sears later came out with same idea.

Took me about 2-3 weeks of running slower (per HR) before my pace started increasing and surpassed where I had been, for same HR. Had been running cross-country since middle school, pretty much similar training all the time.

But I could not accomplish it on the bike - just too much fun to go hard, could never hold back to keep HR low. So pretty much limited my benefit since so many shared muscles there, and of course the aerobic system.

But if the purpose of the workout is either endurance training, or frequent training where injury is just around the corner from overuse - it works great.

After VO2max tests later in life, that zone ended up being the bottom of the aerobic and top of the active recovery zones based on LT/AT HR. (speaking of which - mine was at 91% of HRR too, so I could sustain that for 30-40 min, longer if avg HR was used, so training can allow that high sustained intensity. No good for a marathon obviously)

Here's what got me years ago to try it - I was trying to improve my pace on the half-ironmans .

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2010/04/mark-allens-training.html


Now I'll still use the mid-aerobic zone for runs, to keep them hopefully away from causing injury, so I can have more fun on the bike.

ronocnikral

bcalvanese wrote: »

ronocnikral wrote: »

bcalvanese wrote: »

My intent today was to try the 180 - age method on a trail run. Since I have been training for the past 2 years and have shown improvement, I added 5 to that. So for me it is 180 - 59 + 5 = 126.

Well its very difficult to keep my heart rate that low trail running on hilly terrain (even at a less than 4 MPH pace), so it turned into a more intense workout.

If you scroll down to the stats and click on time in zones you can see how much time I spent in each zone.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1772399320

Here is one I did the other day when I was at the shore. It was on flat land so no hills. Even though the pace was faster, my heart rate never really hit zone 5 because it was on roads with no hills.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1763933990

I guess the 180 - age method is not suited for trail running.

It actually is. My normal 10-13 mile trail run out my backdoor and I do 11 min miles with an avg hr of 130-135.

If you wanted to spend $5, you can pick up maffrtones training for endurance 2nd ed. A very good resource. In it, you'll read that you need to stick with the plan for 6.months to a year. I spent 2. 5 months on a treadmill barely able to jog at 4.2 mph for more than 10 mins. Then it slowly started to come together for me...

You are probably in a lot better shape then me then. It will be for me eventually, but right now I can only keep my heart in that range running at 4 mph on flat land...:)

I am improving though. About 8 months or so ago I could only run for about 30 seconds, and now I can run 5 miles.

8 months is about as long as I've been at it this go around. And yes, I shed 40 lbs over that time frame and yes I would like to shed another 30 lbs. I'm 34, so my faster times benefit from age.

As I said above, just about every training program for running, cycling and swimming can benefit from having an extensive aerobic base period where the training consists of long and low intensity training. Olbrecht admits this training is boring, but entertainment is not usually the purpose of the training and addressing boredom is not a reason change up the training plan. We should always keep our goals in mind and allow them to motivate us to continue to train and we should work our training program. Tweaks and adjustments are needed, but very rarely have I heard of someone in the aerobic base period make an adjustment to add in intervals or training in what is known as "no man's land." adjustments are usually made to training session times and frequency.

Unfortunately most people end up training in no man's land, and nothing can be a bigger waste of time if theyre looking to improve their performance.