Transcription
Dear scholars,
How much of your training should be at low intensity, high intensity, or somewhere in between? In this video, we discuss the current scientific evidence surrounding the best methods for distributing your training intensity to achieve the best endurance performance results.
To start this conversation, we must look at this graph. As you exercise at low intensities, your body produces blood lactate at low levels. There is a small rise; however, this is sustained and remains stable. This pattern continues up into a point where a sudden rise in blood lactate can be seen. We can call these two points lactate threshold one and two, or ventilatory threshold one and two. These mark the training intensity zones at the most basic level.
As most of us do not have access to a sports science laboratory where they measure our blood lactate response to incremental exercise, we can estimate our training zones using practical measures such as percentages of heart rate maximum, rating of perceived exertion, or RPE, or the torque test.
We must also acknowledge that training volume is a simple measure of how much. For example, if you were to run 10 kilometers in 45 minutes, your training volume could be either 10 kilometers or 45 minutes, depending on your preference. For the sake of this video, we measure training volume using distance. We can measure training volume for each training session we do, as seen in this example. You can also sum up the total amount of training volume you do each week.
A typical training program will increase training volume five to ten percent a week for three weeks, followed by a one-week recovery where volume is reduced, before starting the next four-week training block. However, I aim to discuss this in another video in more detail.
If we recall the training intensity zones, we can split our weekly training volume into segments, which tell us how much of our training was done in each of the three zones. Z1 refers to zone 1, Z2 refers to zone 2, and so on. If we take a look at week 2, we can see that 55 kilometers of training was done. However, of this 55 kilometers, the majority was done in zone 1, with smaller amounts of training done in zones 2 and 3.
The fundamental question you may ask yourself is, how much training should I do in zones 1, 2, and 3 for best endurance results? This would be called training intensity distribution, or TID. Should you split your training equally between all three zones? Should you do all your training in zone 3, for example? How about a mixture of all the three zones? But which TID is the best?
There are three primary TIDs: threshold training, pyramidal training, and polarized training. Threshold training splits the majority of training volume into zones one and two, with very little done in zone three. Polarized training devotes a large amount of training to zone one, very little to zone two, with a small emphasis on zone three. Pyramidal training devotes most of the training to zone one, less to zone two, and even less to zone 3. It gets its name by its shape. But the question remains, which of these three methods is the best?
After a whole lot of reading through the scientific evidence, there appears to be a growing consensus. However, it must be admitted that the amount of research on this topic is rather scarce, so we look forward to what future science has got to tell us with regards to their findings to help continue this discussion as to how we should program our training.
The current consensus so far is that polarized and pyramidal training are superior to threshold training for endurance performance. An insight from Dr. Daniel Plus regarding Ironman training noted that training intensity distributions are likely to change depending on where you are in your training program. At the start of a season, training may look more polarized, whilst nearing race day, your training may look more pyramidal when athletes tend to add more specific race pace sessions to their training program.
To add to this discussion, a recent publication observed this trend in a group of world-class middle and long-distance runners. They said that depending where they were on the season, a polarized or pyramidal training approach was more apparent. A more recent line of evidence by a group of researchers suggests that instead of using physiological markers to identify your training zones, such as percentages of heart rate maximum or rating of perceived exertion, using a percentage of race pace may be better. However, this is highly novel, and more research is needed to see whether this method may be superior.
To apply what we've just learned, we shall use a practical example of a moderately trained half marathon runner. First, we must identify our general weekly training volume. People typically prescribe this based on previous experience or, if they're highly new to the sport, starting out at very small training volumes, for example, 10 to 20 kilometers per week. I will be making another video looking specifically at training volume and its relationship with endurance performance because its relationship is not linear, as we once believed.
Once we have established an appropriate training volume, we now need to calculate how much we should be doing in zones one, two, and three. Here, we'll be using the polarized training intensity distribution model. If we times our weekly training volume by the percentage of training we should be doing in each zone, we can easily calculate how much distance we should be running in each of the three zones. In this example, we'll be running 35 to around 43 kilometers in zone one, naught to five kilometers in zone two, and seven point five to twelve point five kilometers in zone three.
We now need to decide how we can program this into our week to ensure that we are in the correct training zone. We must also program in our estimated training intensity. As we discussed previously, we should also measure this during the training session to make any slight adjustments needed if we are off pace. Do be aware that heart rate will increase for the first three to six minutes of steady-state exercise and then will level out, so don't be concerned if your heart rate looks rather low when starting an exercise session. If you're doing intervals, take the last 30 seconds to a minute of the interval and use the peak heart rate that you record.
Once we have the amount of distance we plan to cover and the intensity we should cover it at, we can program our training into our week like so. Make sure that you don't clump all your training together and that you have enough rest periods following high-intensity training and long sessions.
If we recalculate how much of our training is in each zone, first sum up the planned weekly volume you've programmed. Then, sum up how much training was done in each zone. Divide the volume in each training zone by the total volume and times by 100. In this example, 79% of our training is in zone one, 0% is in zone two, and 21% is in zone three. This fits a polarized training model near enough perfectly.
As previously mentioned, throughout the training program, these distributions are likely to change slightly week by week, and it may take more of an appearance of a pyramidal distribution if we may add more specific training sessions at or near race pace once we approach race day.
I hope you have found this video informative. This is a relatively new channel. If you find this content interesting, you're more than welcome to subscribe and stay informed of future videos. If you have any recommendations for video content, please let me know, and I'll see what I can get done. Thank you very much.