Warning – nerdy training things ahead…
In the past couple weeks, I’ve had five or six different people ask me about zone 2 training.
“How much zone 2 training should I be doing?”
“How do I know I’m in zone 2?”
“Shouldn’t I be doing more zone 2 training?”
“Isn’t zone 2 more important than speed work?”
First off, I don’t want to spend a ton of time defining “zone 2.”
It’s complicated and my conversations over the past two weeks would indicate you’ve probably already heard about it.
It’s also not the point of today’s email.
So let’s just define it as “slower” or “easier” cardiovascular work.
It’s an effort where you could probably hold a good conversation, but not sing very well.
Now… I want to be very clear.
Zone 2 training is important.
As with all trends, however, the internet spends WAY too much time talking about it.
There’s good reason to be excited about slower, easier cardiovascular work.
By doing more zone 2 work, you will become a better, healthier athlete.
It’s also not the only thing that matters.
One thing that makes zone 2 work so important is it improves “mitochondrial density.”
Very simply, if you have more mitochondria in your muscle cells, you have a bigger aerobic capacity.
That means you’ll be able to run better without struggling so much to breathe.
Thing is… zone 2 is not the only way we can increase our mitochondrial density.
We can also do that through short, fast efforts – ie high-end speed intervals.
Further, both of these methods work through different biological pathways in the human body.
So if mitochondrial density is as important as everyone says it is – and it probably is – then we’d really want to spend time doing both in order to make even more progress.
But here’s the catch.
We can’t do a ton of high-end speed work.
If you do it correctly, high-intensity training requires quite a bit of recovery.
So if you did it every day, you’d quickly end up half-assing sessions or getting injured.
You can, however, do a LOT of zone 2.
Especially if you’re willing to use cross-training methods that remove some of the inherent stresses of running.
If you can eat enough to support recovery, you could spend hours per day doing a low-impact methods of zone 2 like biking or hiking uphill.
Now… none of this is new information.
I first learned about it in Steve Magness’ The Science of Running, in which he cites a 2004 study on the topic (page 116).
That study is over 20 years old and even then, I don’t think it was really breaking new ground.
It was just helping to confirm something a lot of professionals already knew…
You will see bigger benefits and faster progress if you engage in multiple forms of training.
Yet that’s not a very popular message on the internet.
Everybody wants to sell their thing or jump on the latest bandwagon.
Right now, that happens to be “zone 2.”
A decade ago it was HIIT.
But all of these modalities have their place in a well-rounded training program.
So what do we do?
Well, if you’re new to training or coming back from a long time off, just don’t worry about it.
I don’t really want people to think about zones until they’re doing at least three hours of dedicated cardiovascular training per week.
If you aren’t consistently doing at least three hours of cardio per week, then you’ll be much better off thinking about consistency and recovery than you will about zones.
And if you aren’t new, then we should try and cover a wide range of efforts, heart rates, and paces.
The exact ratio will depend on a wide range of factors – everything from your goals to your training history to your ability to recover will play a role – but no matter what, we want a diverse set of stimuli.
If you always train in a specific way, you’ll eventually hit a plateau and it will be tough to make progress.
Yet if you consistently challenge yourself in different ways, week after week, then you’ll continue to see progress for years to come.
If you’re confused about all this stuff and aren’t quite sure how to find a balance, then I’d be happy to help.