Have you ever hopped on a piece of cardio equipment and saw a setting that said “Cardio Zone” or something similar? Then you selected that option and you proceeded to workout at a steady pace for 20, 30 or even 45 minutes? Ok, well it’s time to ramp up your conditioning and your kick your weight loss into high gear. No more “Cardio Zone” for you…No…its weight loss and conditioning zone for you from now on!
To get the most bang for your buck it’s time use that cardio equipment for phase training or interval training if you prefer. Why is phase training so awesome? Because it improves your conditioning WAY better than steady-state cardio. Without getting too technical, it improves all the ways that your body uses energy, it burns more calories, it increases motivation and increases your metabolism…what’s not to love about it? But how do you go about it?
To begin, you want to establish a good conditioning base…think learn-to- walk-before-you-run. A note about the 3 different heart rate zones you will be working in before we get to the meat of it all. First, figure out your target heart rate for each zone. Use 220- your age x 65-75% for Zone 1. This will have you working between 65 and 75% of your maximum heart rate. Calculate your Zone 2 and Zone 3 targets by using 220-age x 80-85% and 220-age x 85-95%.
PHASE 1
Perfect! Now that you know what your Zone 1 through 3 heart rates are, you are ready to begin. If you are a true beginner at all this, then start in Zone 1 for a few weeks…or at least until you can comfortably work in Zone 1 consistently for a week straight for 30-60 minutes. If you aren’t quite there yet, then it is ok (no, advisable) to start out with, say, 10 minutes a day and work your way up.
PHASE 2
Once you can comfortably complete some “cardio” sessions in Zone 1 you are ready to move on…congratulations! Working in Phase 2, you will increase your workload by going into Zone 2 target heart rates. An example is illustrated below. You will work in Zone 2 for a minute (and you know what your heart rate should be because you calculated it already right?) then recovering in Zone 1 for 2 minutes. Repeat the cycle of 1 minute/2 minute rotation based on how much time you have that day. If you have 3 days that are available to you that week then cycle back to Zone 1 workout on day 3---the recovery is important! You can stay in this phase until you are able to comfortably complete it without feeling exhausted. NOTE: What happens if you can’t quite reach your target heart rate for zone 2? Use the heart rate you did achieve as your NEW target. For instance, if your target is 144 heart rate target but you only got up to 135 beats then 135 is your NEW target to achieve until you build up a good aerobic base.
PHASE 3
Alrighty then…On to Phase 3. As you might guess, Phase 3 introduces you to peak intervals. An example is illustrated here. As the weeks progress, you can play around with the time spent in each heart rate zone. For instance, on day 2 you can increase the time spent in zone 2 to 3 or 4 minutes while keeping the 1 minute recovery cycles. On day 3 you can increase the number of times you go into zone 3. Some examples are illustrated below.
EXAMPLE 1
EXAMPLE 2
It’s important to take a RECOVERY WEEK every 5 weeks or so. A recovery week has NO high intensity days so you just rotate low and medium intensity days. You want to avoid over-training so recovery is not an option. If you find that your heart rate isn’t dropping back down as quickly when you go to a lower zone then that is a huge sign you are over-training.
Once you have advanced to Phase 3, you can play with the times spent in each zone based on your goals and abilities. Just to give you some ideas, use the following templates to spur your imagination.
OR
OR A SPORT-SPECIFIC WORKOUT (such as hockey, football or soccer)
Go ahead and have fun with these. This is a systematic, progressive approach to increasing your conditioning while adding a little variety to the old, stale steady-state cardio regime. Because it is progressive, this will keep you from plateauing as you make progress. Will following this guideline work to increase conditioning? You bet! It follows 2 important principles of training…The overload principle and the specificity of training principle…you see, its science!!