8/10/2019 Aerobic Training is the Devil
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Aerobic training is the devil
The global financial crisis, war for oil, Snooki from Jersey
Shore. The first decade of the 20 th
century bore witness to many heinous misdeeds. Now add another
to that list the vilification of the
aerobic system. In the ast decade or so it became en vogue to
dismiss all aerobic work, whether for
athletic enhancement uroses or fat loss, as simly a waste of
time. !ccording to the dogma it was
good for three things"
#. $etting slow
2. $etting skinny
%. $etting weak
&e, aerobic work was the devil, and I, like so many other
coaches, drank the 'ool !id. (or a long
time my training and that of my clients and athletes was the
eitome of anaerobic training) Tabatas,
*IIT, srints, the whole nine yards. !nd the results were....
somewhat disaointing.
+ont get me wrong, anaerobic conditioning works. &ou will
get fitter. &our test scores will
imrove. -ut when your conditioning work leaves you with blurred
vision, shaking, drenched insweat, wanting to uke and emty your
bowels at the same time, you eect the results to be
goddamn sectacular/ Somewhat disaointing ust doesnt cut it.
Time to reconsider
*owever after much frustration and listening to several coaches
a lot smarter than myself, I am
leased to reort that I have reconsidered my osition on the value
of the aerobic to athletic
erformance, which has aid dividends for my clients and athletes
alike.
Ive learned that a well develoed aerobic system can lessen the
accumulation of fatigue following
training and cometition. It can hasten recovery between sessions
and bouts of intense activity,
saring recious anaerobic reserves of energy. It athletic
cometition it will allow you to sustain a
higher ower outut and remain cometitive from the first minute to
the last. 1ast and best of all,
aerobic training tends to be sychologically far easier than
anaerobic conditioning to erform. Im
not advocating being a ussy, but its always smarter to get the
most gains from the least effort.
You will NOT get small and weak
(rom the outset I want to address the understandable concern
that ecessive aerobic conditioning
will imair strength and sie gains. Nobody reading this wants to
be smaller and weaker. *owever
much of the research used to validate such claims about aerobic
training is flawed. Studiesinvolving cray high volumes of steady
state work, studies in which no heavy resistance training is
erformed, studies in which energy intake does not rise to meet
increased activity etc. 3ithout
careful consideration these findings studies like these can
contribute to the misconcetion that
aerobic eercise is the death knell of strength and sie.
3hat is more, one only has to take a look at the well resected
coaches who have chamioned
aerobic work for athletes. $uys like Joel Jamieson, +ave Tenney,
4ike -oyle, 4ark 4claughlin
5harlie (rancis 6secial thanks to all these individuals for
their contribution to my continuing
education7) these coaches are not in the business of making
slow, weak athletes. !erobic work is
good enough for them and its good enough for me. In my caacity
as a strength and conditioning
coach for 1ondon 3ass 8ugby, my athletes strength and ower
scores continued to risethroughout this season desite the near
total eclusion of anaerobic conditioning from their
rogramming
8/10/2019 Aerobic Training is the Devil
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5 Tools
#1 Cardiac output
This is the bread and butter of aerobic conditioning. 9vidence
shows that cardiac outut is strongly
linked to lactate threshold: the greatest work rate we can
indefinitely sustain before enteringanaerobic, uke your guts u
territory: which is the strongest redictor of aerobic and
reeated
srint 6i.e. ractically every field sort7 eercise.
The rationale behind it goes like this" eercise creates an oygen
demand that the heart has to
increase its suly of blood meet. -ecause your maimal heart rate
is fied at roughly 220 beats
er minute minus your age, the only way to increase your maimal
rate of oygen suly is to
increase the volume of blood eected from the heart with every
beat. ;ne of the ways to achieve this
is to increase the sie of the hearts chambers and it is eactly
this adatation that cardiac outut
work targets.
Imagine the heart as a water filled balloon. If you fill the
balloon with as much water as ossible,eventually the balloon will
stretch and increase how much water it can hold. The same is true
of the
heart. If you continually eercise at the intensity that fills
the chambers of the heart with the greatest
amount of blood, it will stretch over time, allowing for greater
blood to be transorted with every
beat of the heart. The magical number for cardiac outut work is
#%0:# minutes at the highest intensity you can
sustain. 3hen you finish each work interval you should be ust
short of taing out. 8est for around
> minutes, then reeat for > total sets. !gain, this method
can be trained using any e?uiment but
heres my ersonal favourite" find a long, stee hill and get
running.
# !igh resistance interval training
Not to be confused with *igh Intensity Interval Training 6*IIT7,
high resistance interval training is
a conditioning method that acknowledges a simle fact" the
athletes who can roduce the highest
force for the longest time tend to win. Taking this into
account, high resistance interval trainingaims to develo the
ability of our fastest, strongest muscle fibres 6fast twitch
fibres7 to better utilise
the aerobic system, our most sustainable energy athway.
