Three Ways to Maximize Your Cardiovascular Base Training

Zone 2 Training, Movement assessments, and Organizing Your Breathing.

Sorry to all you powder hounds, but I am dreaming of warmer weather and snow-free trails. This is the time of year I start to plan my spring and summer adventures and think about the physical capacity I will need in a few months. Specifically, late winter is when I get organized about my cardiovascular fitness and ramp up my endurance training. I know I am not alone in this effort, as this is the time of year clients start to seek me out to get ready for their summer sports. To maximize your endurance, “ramp-up,” you should focus on training in heart rate zone 2, get a movement assessment to address those nagging injuries, and optimize your breathing while exercising.

Build a cardiovascular foundation with Zone 2 heart rate training

Intensity of cardiovascular exercise is often characterized by a 5 zone training spectrum, with the easiest effort being zone 1 and the maximum effort being zone 5. The zones are based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate. During exercise, as your heart rate increases, your body will adapt the way it fuels the effort. As different types of muscle fibers utilize different mixes of fuel(fat vs glucose), an increase in your effort will change the muscle fiber type propelling your body forward and this will dictate the fuel you use. At lower heart rate zone(zones 1-3) efforts your body is relying on a higher percentage of fat to fuel your exercise. As your intensity increase up the zone spectrum(zone 4-5), your body begins to rely more on glucose and ultimately phosphocreatine to meet your performance needs.

Each one of these heart rate zones has implications on your body’s adaption to cardiovascular exercise. For example, if you are doing high-intensity sprints, you are primarily staying in zone 5. At that zone, our body will adapt quickly and improve your tolerance to sprints. Training at zone 5 will improve your ability to work in the lower heart rate zones, but not as quickly as if the majority of your training to place in zones 1-3.

If your goal is to build a cardiovascular foundation for the upcoming summer activities, zone 2 heart rate training should be your priority right now. In zone 2, your muscles undergo a series of adaptions that build your cardiovascular fitness faster than other heart rate zones because of its effect on the cellular mitochondria. The powerhouse of every muscle cell is the mitochondria. This is part of the cell is responsible for taking oxygen, fat and glucose to make energy(ATP). Zone 2 training affects the mitochondria in several ways.

Increased mitochondrial density is the primary driver of cardiovascular fitness. Of all the heart rate zones, Zone 2 training maximizes the production of mitochondria, called mitochondrial biogenesis, leading to a higher density of these energy producing organelles. Additionally, training in this heart rate zone improves the efficiency of the mitochondria to utilize fat for energy production. As you continue to train in this zone, your muscle cells become more efficient at delivering oxygen to the mitochondria. All of these physiologic adaptions, I have only articulated a few of them, lead to improved aerobic metabolism(cardiovascular fitness) at the cellular level.

Begin with a goal of 2 hours per week of zone 2 heart rate training. You can utilize fitness trackers as they have heart rate zones built into them, based on your estimated maximum heart rates. That said, I recommend using nasal breathing as an analog for zone 2 training. By nasal breathing throughout your workout, you will limit yourself to a zone 2 effort. Nasal breathing may initially be difficult and may resign you to walking, swimming, or biking at a ridiculously slow speed. But, you will adapt to nasal breathing in a matter of weeks. Ideally, you want to build up your zone 2 base training to 3-4 hours per week.

Get a musculoskeletal movement assessment

A movement assessment is where professionals such as myself can be used to improve your cardiovascular base training. I am always amazed how long an endurance athlete will wait before coming to see me about an injury. Hint, if your injury is causing you to limp, you have waited too long. Most endurance athletes know they are injured yet choose to accept it as part of their sport, and just push through it. Sometimes this, “tough-it-out,” strategy works, most times it does not. In order to maximize your cardiovascular base, you need to stay healthy. Getting a movement assessment and following the advice of said assessment, is a the best way to prevent overuse injuries. What does a movement assessment look like?

The best assessment you can have done is to have your walking gait evaluated. Why walking? Walking is where we spend most of our time moving and this is the speed at which movement faults are the easiest to fix. When I observe a movement fault while someone is walking, it is easy to predict how that fault is going to translate into their running gait. Likewise, if we can modify a person’s walking gait there is a higher likelihood that the modification will translate into an improved running gait, than if we try to modify a running style directly. Even for sports such as swimming and biking, a gait assessment is an indispensable tool.

Beyond walking, I like to put my athletes through a series of bodyweight movements, strength, and orthopedic tests to assess for movement faults, and to help diagnose the presence of injuries. In this way, a movement assessment is a helpful to way make sure your musculoskeletal system can handle a your endurance training.

Organize your breathing

Because zone 2 training improves a muscle’s energy efficiency, this allows your musculoskeletal system the opportunity to properly adapt along side the cardiovascular system. If you tend to develop overuse injuries like plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, or just nagging pains when you increase your miles, building a solid zone 2 foundation will help. In this way, zone 2 training acts as a natural injury prevent strategy, allowing those problem areas to adapt to your training load. Thus, being organized about how you breathe while working out can help prevent injuries while maximizing the efficiency of your cardiovascular system. I use the analogy of a gear system to guide how breath while hiking, running and even Jiu-Jitsu.

My cardiovascular gear system is not original, but draws from leading thinkers around breathing for performance. 1st gear = nasal inhale/nasal exhale. 2nd gear = nasal inhale/mouth exhale. 3rd gear = mouth inhale/mouth exhale.

1st gear is the base training(zone 2) and the idea is to be able to increase the intensity and/or distance you can perform while nasal breathing in 1st gear. 1st gear is also where you should exist at any point in my your life outside of exercise.

2nd gear is a ramp up in intensity, say with a hill or technical section of terrain. The increase in intensity requires that you throw off more CO2. This strategy works with nasal inhale and a mouth exhale, offloading rising CO2 levels.

3rd gear is all out and should be used sparingly as you are dumping stored fuel, glucose/glycogen. Your body is working all out as your cardiovascular system is maxed out trying to balance your O2 intake and CO2 exhale. Your oxygen exchange is at its least efficient in this gear. But this is the gear you need to use for max efforts, what ever they are.

The higher you go up in gears, the lower the endurance capacity. This has to do with muscle physiology, bio-energetics, bio-mechanics, etc. But the fact is, you want 1st gear to be your base and then you titrate out the 2nd and 3rd gears as needed.

In summary, training in heart rate zone 2 will ensure that you are maximizing your cardiovascular adaptions to endurance training. Getting a movement assessment will help prevent overuse injuries. Organizing your breathing while working out will help you dial in your zone 2 training and guard against those early season injuries.