- Morning, Trainiacs, just cooking up my little
post-workout shake,
that was 3200 meter swim
in an hour and four minutes,
now that I am officially into the strength and speed
building phase of the year, kick the workouts
up a notch from the 25 to 2700 meter swims,
to a little over 3,000, and then in January
when we start getting into race season,
because my race season starts early, we kick it up
to around 4,000, oh sizers are loud in the morning!
All morning, every morning.
(techno music)
One of the things that's come up, over the course of the
Trainiacs virtual camps lately, is how important
zone two training is, and people have said, well,
how do I deal with zone two when on the run my heart rate
spikes higher, how do I deal with zone two in the pool?
Today, I'll explain how to implement zone two at the swim
the bike, the run, and what you can expect,
because you're gonna have a bit of a rude awakening
when you start doing zone two training, by the way,
zone two training, probably the most important training
you'll do.
Let's talk about zone two training.
I'll link to a couple videos that I've done in the past
couple weeks about just how important zone two training is,
but to touch on it for like, half a second, I'll explain
how and what zone two training is, how you can get it.
Alright, so this calculator here, that I've created
is a customized, Taren's-eyes-created-only,
like my version of how to figure out your zones.
It takes a little bit of some of the zones in running,
a little bit of the zones in biking, a little bit of
the zones in power, and perceived exertion,
and takes it all in, makes it very very practical to use
as opposed to a lot of those training zones that you get
that are just templates online that say,
oh, here's a percentage of your max heart rate, or,
here's a percentage of your heart rate based on your age,
which really aren't very accurate, but this takes
into account your individual FTP test,
your max heart rate test, your level of medication,
or injury, or how hardy you've been in training,
things like that, so it gets you a really narrow
and specific set of zones, and we use a five zone heart rate
system, that is the same for the bike, the run, and the swim
and I'll explain more about that.
You can get this by going to triatalontaren.com/hrtraining,
but I've expanded it from heart rate to also include power,
so go check it out.
Okay, so speaking about zone two training, it is where
you do the bulk of your training.
I guarantee that just about all of you are going to be
spending more time in zone three, you don't wanna do that,
zone two is just hard enough to create a cardiovascular
response where your heart and lungs get stronger,
you also burn a fair bit of fat, cause it's at a low
intensity, but it's not so intense that you're
digging yourself a hole, opening yourself up
for illness and injury.
Most people do most of their training in zone three
because it's really comfortable, it feels hard enough,
but it's like oh, hey, I'm doing a whole buncha work here,
but it's not so hard that it's making you fast,
so it's digging you into a hole, but it's not making you
any faster, it's also not improving your cardiovascular
system, so, it's this gray zone, is what it's called.
Zone two is where you want to spend, like I say,
about 40 to 50% of your time, somewhere around 20 to 30%
of your time in zone one, and a total of 20% of your time
in zones four and five, because those are really intense,
and they are fast enough to actually make you faster,
and stronger, so like I said, you can get this,
and all of this customization
at triathalontaren.com/hrtraining, but when it comes down
to actually doing the work, that's where I started
getting a lot of questions, over the course of this
training camp, I'll explain.
So as the trainiacs from the virtual camp
started doing some of the prescribed zone training,
a bunch of questions came up, first off,
how in the world do you run in zone two,
most of the athletes weren't able to keep their heart rate
low enough to actually stay in zone two, and that's
really, really natural.
What we've done with that calculator is,
we've set the cap of zone two a little bit lower,
so that it actually is harder to keep your heart rate
that low, and the reason for that is because running is
so corrosive on the body that we want to be extra cautious,
and make sure that we aren't getting ourselves into that
gray zone training, which is really hard on our muscles,
our cardiovascular system, our neuromuscular system,
so we back off a little bit, with those customized zones.
On the bike, it actually should become fairly easy to stay
in zone two, however, it's not gonna feel very difficult.
The first few times that you bike and run in zone two,
it's going to end up being fairly hard,
especially on the run, to keep your heart rate under there.
On the bike, if you start spending that 40 to 50%
of your time in zone two really working on strengthening
your heart and lungs, you're going to find that
all of the sudden it starts becoming easier to access
that low heart rate, and that's the whole benefit,
of this, is that right now, if you start running
and all of the sudden, boom, your heart rate goes up to
150 beats a minute, and you're really not even
running that hard, that means that you have a ton
of potential to improve, because you aren't even able to
access your lower heart rate.
You know, have you ever watched any of those
Lionel Sanders training videos, where he's like "(gasps)
"Oh my God, my heart rate was like 150 there!"
That's that low, at his absolute crazy maximal efforts,
because his cardiovascular system is so well trained
that he doesn't blow himself up and get into the redline
very often, and he's accessing more of those
lower heart rates, so, it's important to stay in zone two
however, for four to five weeks, it's gonna take
a quite long adjustment period that's not gonna feel
very intense, here's how you can make it intense,
whether you're on the bike or the run.
Number one, if you're on the run, you can end up playing
cadence games, so it'll probably force you to slow
your pace right down, but you can slow that pace down,
while trying to keep your cadence fairly high.
Keep pushing that cadence up, it's probably going to
shoot your heart rate up, a little bit, that's okay.
You can also then, start nasal breathing.
Nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing
has really big cardiovascular benefits, I'll talk about that
another time, but it is also going to make it hard,
so maybe you do three minutes nasal breathing,
three minutes mouth breathing, with low cadence,
three minutes mouth breathing with a high cadence,
and keep cycling those through, whether you're on the bike
or on the run, it's going to break it up instead of just
saying, alright I'm gonna go do 80% of this 60 minute run
for 48 minutes, I'm just gonna be in low zone two training.
Super, super boring, but with this, it breaks it up,
and it keeps you mentally engaged, because there's
more things that you're working on, and, they are
really beneficial things.
What about on the swim?
People say, well, should I stay in that 80-20
where 80% is that low intensities in zone one and two,
and 20% is in the high intensity, well, two things, one,
because of the hydrostatic pressure, the water crushing,
essentially, the outside of our body, it's hard for our
heart rate to get high, as it is.
You can go and max out in some water running,
and your heart rate might only get to about,
say 140, 150 beats a minute, that is going to have
a lower amount of stress on our body.
Second thing is just in general, because there isn't so
much pounding, and there isn't so much corrosiveness
on our body in the swim, we can up the intensity and not
really worry about getting into those gray zones,
or those really difficult zones that are, are
hard on our body.
If you think about how often young elite swimmers
are out there training, they're probably training 14, 15
times a week, and they're training really intensely,
but it's not like it's over training them, rarely do you see
an over trained swimmer, so don't necessarily worry
about that 80-20 too terribly much on the swim,
so stick to the 80-20, doing a good chunk of your training
in zones one and two, for the run and the bike,
also, play those games to break it up,
so it's mentally engaging, don't worry too much
about that 80-20 on the swim, and then, what can you
expect, be patient.
Somewhere around, I would say, four to five weeks,
if you are being patient, you are sticking to 80%
of your efforts being at lower heart rates,
you're gonna find very quickly, and this is the time
to do it, in the season, that your pace is going to increase
at the same heart rates, at the same perceived
exertions, your heart rates are going to be lower,
which is then going to result in,
when you hit that 20%, it's gonna be (claps hands) bam!
Really fast, because you've been fresh, not training in
that gray zone, that's just digging a hole for yourself,
so that's going to then result in when you're trying to be
fast, you are going to be much faster, than if you had done
a whole bunch of gray zone training, and that is going to
allow you to get really fast.
This is why you can see person after person after person,
racing year after year after year, doing all the training,
and not getting any faster, and not really making
any improvements, and even getting injured,
because they're doing a ton of their training in zone three,
not enough in zone two, and when they wanna go hard,
they don't go very hard.
So, trainiacs, if you wanna get that spreadsheet,
like I said, go to triathalontaren.com/hrtraining,
also, this is something that we talked about
for probably three to four hours, over the course
of the virtual camp, so it's a really big topic,
let me know your questions about zone two
and just zone training in general, how we balance
that 80-20, zone two, zone three, zone four, zone five,
all of those things, let me know about them
in the comments below and I'll probably have to do
more videos...
Later, trainiacs.