The Art of Manliness - Get Fit, Not Fried — The Benefits of Zone 2 Cardio

00:00:00.000 Hey, this is Brett. We had a technical issue with today's episode. We uploaded the episode.

00:00:03.460 Only half of it appeared on people's podcast players. Should be fixed now. Sorry for the

00:00:07.900 confusion. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of

00:00:19.040 the Art of Manliness podcast. When most people work out, they jump right from a resting state

00:00:24.100 called zone one cardio to zone three cardio. But in skipping over zone two cardio altogether,

00:00:29.480 they miss out on a significant range of benefits to their health, fitness, and overall well-being.

00:00:35.180 Here to unpack why you need to make the relatively easy yet hugely beneficial form of exercise that is

00:00:40.380 zone two cardio, a big part of your life is Alex Viata, a hybrid athlete and coach. We spend the

00:00:46.300 first 20 minutes of this conversation discussing the physiological science of what cardio zones are

00:00:50.760 and what happens in the body as you move from one zone to the next. From there, we turn to the more

00:00:55.400 accessible and practical elements of getting into zone two cardio. Alex shares the easiest way to

00:01:00.360 know if you're in zone two, and we discuss how it can improve your heart health, metabolism, sleep,

00:01:05.180 and weight loss, as well as enhance athletic performance, whether you're into endurance sports

00:01:09.480 or powerlifting. We then get into the amount of zone two cardio you should be getting each week and how

00:01:13.680 to get it, including Alex's take on the ever controversial elliptical machine. After the show's over,

00:01:18.840 check out our show notes at aom.is slash zone two. All right, Alex Viata, welcome to the show.

00:01:37.720 Hey, thank you so much, Brett. Pleasure to be here.

00:01:39.700 So you are the founder of Complete Human Performance. This is an educational website where you provide

00:01:44.760 education and courses on physical fitness, nutrition, but you also provide coaching for

00:01:49.760 triathletes, powerlifters. You've done some coaching for special operations guys. Let's talk

00:01:56.280 about a bit about your background. How did you end up doing this where you're coaching not only

00:02:01.000 triathletes, but powerlifters, but also there's powerlifting triathletes as well. What's the story

00:02:06.180 there? So yeah, so I guess the story there, I'd have to have to back up quite a bit, and I'll try to

00:02:11.620 keep this brief and to the relevant points. So back when I first started getting back into

00:02:16.880 strength training shortly after college, I was very much of the powerlifting strength at all costs

00:02:21.460 mentality. And it wasn't until about 2007 when I first got talked into running a 5K and really

00:02:28.520 coming close to having the walls close in on me in my first training run and realizing I was out of

00:02:33.500 shape that I really realized that there was kind of this gaping hole in my fitness. And it was really

00:02:39.560 the process of going from a powerlifting background, strength training background to

00:02:43.780 wanting to learn how to not just be cardiovascularly survivable, but actually be really

00:02:49.620 cardiovascularly fit. And kind of at the time, and we're talking kind of mid-2000s, the strength

00:02:57.180 training and endurance training communities were very much split. There was the whole strength

00:03:01.580 conceit of cardio is anything more than five reps. And you go into endurance training and very much the

00:03:07.120 mindset among a lot of coaches back in that day was still that strength training was something you

00:03:11.780 could do. And the strength training programs are absolutely horrible. I mean, I remember going

00:03:16.140 through my USAT certification, USA Triathlon, and the strength training was, you know, we're talking

00:03:21.300 about people doing bodyweight lunges for sets of 20 to 25. It was really bad. And part of that whole

00:03:27.720 process, that experience, and realizing that, you know, if I wanted to be a powerlifter who was really

00:03:33.220 good at running, I wasn't going to be able to talk to any powerlifting coaches about running, and I wasn't going to be able to

00:03:37.100 talk to any running coaches about powerlifting, I kind of had to develop a lot of this on my own.

00:03:41.360 And that was actually part of what went into the whole, you know, when I wrote The Hybrid Athlete,

00:03:45.640 that was part of what kind of prompted that entire concept, that hybrid training concept,

00:03:50.620 was being able to, you know, apply elite level endurance training methodology to powerlifters.

00:03:57.780 And using, you know, using the really depth of understanding of the opposite, you know,

00:04:03.100 quote-unquote opposite sport to really whittle out and get rid of all the noise and nonsense

00:04:08.720 and prescribe to strength athletes what is the absolute minimum most effective dose of endurance

00:04:14.640 training to get results and vice versa. So really taking lessons from the opposite side of the aisle,

00:04:19.760 so to speak, and using that to optimize training for everybody. And that methodology, you know,

00:04:25.380 honestly, when I, in 2012, 2013, before the book came out, and then in 2014, 2015,

00:04:31.840 really, really caught a lot of people's attention, I think. There are a lot of people who,

00:04:35.920 they love strength training, they love the process, but at the time they were going,

00:04:39.020 I don't like the fact that I gave up all of this running, or, you know, I'm a powerlifter who's been

00:04:44.520 doing this for years, and I feel a little beat up, I want to try something different. I don't know,

00:04:48.660 maybe I want to do a triathlon or something. That's what really got a lot of attention from a lot of

00:04:53.620 different groups, kind of all across the map. And it was really just a real process of being

00:04:59.100 able to, having the privilege of working with these athletes, but also speaking to their coaches,

00:05:02.320 and, you know, speaking to triathlon teams, and special forces, and all these other groups,

00:05:07.240 and learning from them, and learning their best practices, and coming back to apply it to my

00:05:11.620 practice overall. So it's really been just kind of this, you know, way too late for a long story

00:05:16.580 short, but talking to all of these people from all across different walks of life, and different

00:05:21.460 backgrounds, and trying to take the best practices from each one, and put them into my practice.

00:05:26.780 Yes, you've broken down that barrier that stands between strength and endurance, because look,

00:05:30.800 I came from a strength training background, too. That's my main focus. And yeah, you always hear,

00:05:35.420 well, you can't do endurance stuff, because your cardio, that's just going to get in the way of

00:05:38.460 your gangs, and your recovery from your session. But I think that's starting to change. A lot of people

00:05:43.220 who are in the strength side of things, they're starting to see the importance of the cardio element.

00:05:47.240 Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so the reason I wanted to bring you on is because you're a big

00:05:51.700 proponent of what's called zone two cardio. In the past year, I've gotten really into this.

00:05:56.260 Yeah. Because like you, I, you know, I was doing a lot of strength training, heavy pulling,

00:05:59.740 but neglected my cardio, and I just felt kind of crummy. And I thought, you know, this is like,

00:06:04.420 there's an element of fitness that I'm lacking. So I've gotten really into it.

00:06:07.480 Excellent. And I want to see your, bring your expertise into this. Before we get into the benefits of

00:06:12.720 zone two cardio, and how to do it, we should probably start off with what we mean by cardio

00:06:18.100 zones. I think people have probably heard about this. If you go to a treadmill at a globo gem,

00:06:22.460 you see like the zones that you can get into. So what are cardio zones scientifically?

00:06:29.360 So yeah, this is really interesting, because I think even just trying to try to define them,

00:06:33.760 you sort of get into some of the some of the question marks that still even exist

00:06:37.460 in the endurance training community. So the entire idea behind these zones, and there are the first

00:06:43.340 of all, what makes it confusing is there's more than one system of zones, there is a zone system

00:06:47.920 from one through four, there are ones from one through five, there's I've seen ones out there from

00:06:51.840 one to seven. But when we typically talk about zone two, what the heart rate zones or what the training

00:06:57.680 zones roughly correspond to are various metabolic shifts that happen in the body as you progress from

00:07:03.660 one level of intensity to the next. As you're training, as you're running, as you're cycling, as you're

00:07:08.260 doing anything else, the body is compensating and basically utilizing the appropriate energy sources

00:07:14.720 and undergoing the appropriate hormonal and neurological response to achieve whatever objective

00:07:20.960 you have set for it with regards to actual stress with regards to actual stimulus. When we talk about

00:07:26.060 zone two cardio, we're referring to a very specific sort of range of physiological stressors that the body

00:07:32.820 is responding in a certain way to a certain level of intensity that roughly corresponds to the point

00:07:39.280 just before a few metabolic shifts are made before you progress into the higher zone. So when we talk

00:07:44.680 about zone two, it's not really about heart rate. You know, when you look at a lot of cardio machines or

00:07:48.820 you look at a lot of personal training certifications, they say, well, zone two is 68 to 75% of your max

00:07:54.840 heart rate. That's more correlative. Really, zone two is referring to that period of time

00:08:00.600 before your body begins to make that shift past its first ventilatory threshold, which really

00:08:07.180 represents the point at which you start to get accumulation of a lot of metabolites. You get a

00:08:11.960 shift in blood pH. You get a change in the amount of lactate typically found in the bloodstream.

00:08:18.860 So it's really, if we think about cardiovascular training zones, consider them inflection points

00:08:23.780 where the body is kind of progressing to the next level of energy generation. I think that's the best

00:08:29.640 way to put it. Okay. Let's talk about like sort of that kind of a walkthrough summary of energy

00:08:33.500 generation. So our body to live and function, it has to use, it has to use energy and depending on

00:08:40.240 how intense we are doing stuff, it's going to use different sources of energy. So let's just start

00:08:45.760 like from like lowest, like, you know, zone one and then kind of work our way up. So like when we're

00:08:50.820 in zone one, we're just kind of sitting here, maybe taking a slow walk. What sort of, what's our

00:08:56.220 primary energy source? Yeah. So the primary energy source in zone one is still, you know,

00:09:01.200 you're basically looking at fat stores, fatty acids. Now at all stages of energy generation,

00:09:06.480 I always think of them as like kind of dimmer switches, you know, that it's not like you only

00:09:11.300 start using your highest intensity energy sources when you're performing one rep maxes. Like at any

00:09:16.400 point, our body is using pretty much all available energy sources just to varying degrees. When we're

00:09:21.500 sitting here, predominantly we are engaged and we are, we are getting all the energy we need from

00:09:26.040 fat stores. We have plenty to, you know, kind of meet the energetic or the rate of energy consumption.

00:09:31.600 The amount of glucose we're burning is pretty minimal. And the amount that's being actually

00:09:36.040 converted and going down the lactate pathways is even smaller. So zone one basically represents the

00:09:41.460 point up to a level of effort where we are burning almost exclusively fatty acids and we are

00:09:47.840 utilizing nearly zero anaerobic processes, no anaerobic fermentation, the lactate system is

00:09:53.700 barely being used, et cetera. So by far and away, we're talking, you know, 95%, I'm sure the number

00:09:59.540 is different, 95% fat burning, nearly zero metabolic stress. Gotcha. And then we're also,

00:10:05.520 the body's using oxygen to create that energy. And the energy too, it's ATP is what it's called.

00:10:12.220 Absolutely. Yes. So basically our body is utilizing oxygen. It's utilizing a fatty acid lipolysis.

00:10:19.160 You know, we're, we're breaking down fat and we're using that all to basically, again, you know,

00:10:24.480 oxygen is the terminal acceptor in the electron transport chain. It is a very efficient system.

00:10:29.460 We generate a lot of energy per quantity of fat used. It's, it's great. Our bodies are very happy

00:10:36.300 here. We can do this indefinitely. When we get to zone two, so we go from zone one to zone two,

00:10:40.380 you know, we just, we just like upping the amount of oxidation going on.

00:10:45.200 We are to a certain extent. Now, as we continue to increase in zones, what starts to happen is it's

00:10:50.040 not just that the body is an aggregate doing more work. We're getting a lot of changes that

00:10:54.560 happen at the local level in muscular tissue. Even as every muscle contracts, it briefly contracts,

00:11:00.060 it briefly reduces blood flow to the muscle at the moment of contraction. And then, you know,

00:11:04.720 when it relaxes, obviously there's more, but overall the energetic levels begin to rise.

00:11:08.720 And when we're engaged in zone two cardio, so to speak, the oxygen levels or the oxygen

00:11:13.440 requirements suddenly begin to spike. And what's going to happen is the body actually,

00:11:18.540 you're going to notice when you progress from zone one to zone two, you actually start breathing

00:11:22.080 more heavily, not necessarily faster, but the depth of respiration increases the amount of the

00:11:27.820 ratio of shallow breaths to deep breaths. Cause you know, when we're all sitting here at rest,

00:11:31.900 most of the time we breathe shallow and every now and then we take a deeper breath,

00:11:35.400 that ratio begins to change until we're taking almost exclusively deep breaths.

00:11:40.120 We are still primarily aerobic in terms of energy systems, but there absolutely is on a local level,

00:11:46.200 a certain amount of utilization of anaerobic systems. In other words, a little bit of the,

00:11:51.200 you know, fermentation going on though, the lactate systems becoming involved just to sort of generate

00:11:55.940 that little bit of energy. And so zone two basically represents that point at which the metabolic

00:12:01.160 demand is rising, but oxygen and fat stores are still, and you know, and obviously glucose

00:12:06.120 stores as well, but aerobic systems are still responsible for the vast majority of our energy

00:12:11.920 generation. Okay. And as we increase intensity, we shift to zone three, what's happening next?

00:12:17.240 At zone three, what happens is you actually cross a point called the VT one, the ventilatory threshold

00:12:22.280 one. And this is actually going to go in a little bit into how we determine these zones.

00:12:26.560 You'll notice at the VT one, your rate of respiration begins to increase. And one of the

00:12:31.680 things that's driven by, you know, there are various, you know, chemoreceptors and everything

00:12:36.060 else in the body that detect the sudden change in blood pH that's caused from an aggregate rise in

00:12:41.560 carbon dioxide. That basically means that CO2 levels in the blood, basically your body, the muscle

00:12:48.240 cells are generating, they're utilizing energy at a faster rate than your, your standard, you know,

00:12:53.820 aerobic systems can supply that. So what starts to happen is your rate of respiration increases,

00:12:58.260 your heart rate begins to increase, but we're already tapping more into kind of the anaerobic

00:13:03.300 systems. We're tapping more into those fermentation systems. And the body is already at that point in

00:13:08.260 this kind of delicate dance where it's not really able to sustain this indefinitely. We're already,

00:13:13.700 again, anaerobic systems, when we don't use oxygen, they're a little bit less efficient.

00:13:17.660 So the body is kind of on this slow path at that point towards a loss of ability to meet the energy

00:13:24.800 requirements. So zone two, you can't really do forever. Other things will break down, but you

00:13:30.140 can do zone two for an exceedingly long period of time because it's so sustainable. Crossing that

00:13:35.540 ventilatory threshold represents again, a slow accumulation of these metabolites and a gradual,

00:13:42.260 slow decrease in our body's ability to sustain a given level of intensity.

00:13:45.860 And we're starting to make that shift from using fatty acids to using more,

00:13:50.600 like starting to use glucose more to get that ATP.

00:13:53.820 Exactly. And not just using glucose, but also using glucose in anaerobic metabolism,

00:13:59.060 which is actually less efficient. We generate less ATP or less energy per unit of glucose when we're

00:14:05.980 processing it through anaerobic systems than when we do when we're processing it through aerobic systems.

00:14:10.800 So, you know, it was kind of likened a little bit to like afterburners in a jet. Yes,

00:14:14.720 we can produce a lot of energy that way, but we're using four times as much fuel,

00:14:18.580 you know, per unit of energy produced.

00:14:21.000 Oh, another difference between zone two and zone one, and then like zone three with zone two,

00:14:27.140 zone one, when you're using fatty acids and oxygen, the mitochondria in your cells are creating the ATP.

00:14:34.500 And I think in glycolysis, we're using glucose to create ATP that occurs in your cytosol. It doesn't,

00:14:39.920 it doesn't occur in the mitochondria. Is that right?

00:14:41.620 Yes. Yeah. And a lot of cases, like say a lot of the lactate producing systems

00:14:45.240 can occur in exactly in other systems. So this is no longer strictly a mitochondrial based

00:14:50.720 process. And in fact, again, the process, the conversion of lactate back to glucose or back

00:14:55.420 to glycogen is, you know, much more systemic. This is less infinitely sustainable by those organelles.

00:15:00.480 Yes.

00:15:00.860 All right. So zone three, you're starting to use more glucose.

00:15:03.360 What happens in zone four? Is it just that you're just using more and more glucose? Like when do you

00:15:06.940 start, when you start using other energy sources? So when we actually cross into zone four, that's

00:15:12.220 where it gets a little fuzzier. The line between zone three and zone four is, as some people liken

00:15:17.400 this to the ventilatory threshold too, it's when we actually start to get such a high utilization of

00:15:22.320 these anaerobic energy systems that you start to really get, I wouldn't say an uncontrolled,

00:15:27.480 but you get a steady accumulation of metabolites. In other words, the body is not clearing these

00:15:32.480 metabolites. It is not able to sustain this level of intensity without an eventual crash.

00:15:38.120 So we're using more anaerobic fermentation. We are getting to the point where the body is not

00:15:43.200 able to keep up with a given level of work. And as a result, the, you know, the, you know,

00:15:48.660 for example, the lactate levels, which are used kind of go off into the stratosphere. And this is

00:15:53.320 generally considered a level that the individual will rapidly fatigue at. In other words, there is

00:15:58.660 constant accumulating fatigue throughout an interval. Whereas zone three, let's say a gifted

00:16:03.960 marathon runner can run the entire marathon in their equivalent of a zone three. If they cross

00:16:08.780 into a zone four, they'll probably begin cracking. Now, of course, for a marathon runner, the difference

00:16:13.300 between zone three and zone four is actually very small, but that's, that's a different story.

00:16:16.860 But basically at that point, when you cross into what we typically consider a zone four,

00:16:21.260 that's unsustainable. We are using a lot more of very short-term energy systems, and we're using

00:16:26.840 heavy amounts of anaerobic glycolysis, which causes rapid fatigue.

00:16:31.840 And also when you like zone four and like zone five, if that exists, there's a debate about that.

00:16:37.300 You start using creatine and like recycling ATP basically, right? So it's like your, when your

00:16:43.260 body uses ATP to create energy, it loses a phosphate or something. And then the body's like, okay,

00:16:50.960 we can use that used up. It's called ADP now. And then we'll, we'll take creatine that's in the

00:16:56.380 system and we can make ATP really fast, but it's not very efficient.

00:17:01.360 Right. Exactly. Because what happens at lower intensity is ATP is constantly being generated.

00:17:05.740 We're generating a huge amount of ATP per molar. Let's just say per gram of fat,

00:17:09.960 we're generating a huge amount. And that's great when we're at rest because there's so much fat in our

00:17:15.640 body, relatively speaking, we've got the equivalent of, you know, tens of thousands of calories of

00:17:20.340 work that our fat can do. When it comes to glucose, when it comes to glycogen, we have much less.

00:17:26.180 Our liver only really has about, you know, 400 to 500 calories worth of work it can do. Whereas our

00:17:31.460 muscles have several thousand. So even so, if we think about it over like, let's say a marathon,

00:17:37.180 we're probably, if we had to do that on strictly glucose, we would burn through our systems,

00:17:41.780 but you know, we would burn through that very quickly. Of course, if we were to do that,

00:17:45.540 even faster and go through a process of fermentation, though, that let's say our,

00:17:50.680 let's say our muscles are capable of doing 2,500 calories worth of work with the glucose that's in

00:17:54.980 them. That's through aerobic systems. If we do that through anaerobic systems, we're really only

00:18:00.020 capable of doing anywhere between five and 600 calories worth of work with that same fuel.

00:18:05.240 So not only as we go up in energy systems, are we getting, you know, are we looking at smaller

00:18:10.560 pools of energy? We are also looking at on aggregate, the body being able to do less work

00:18:15.300 with the stores we have available. Okay. So just to recap here, zone one,

00:18:19.080 zone two, you're primarily using fatty acids. You're using oxygen and the mitochondria to create

00:18:24.180 the energy or ATP you need to do whatever. As you shift into zone three, you start using more

00:18:29.280 glucose. And I think, I think you made the point, this isn't like either or like this is sort of like,

00:18:34.200 it's a dimmer. I like that analogy. And then as you shift into zone four, it's more glucose and

00:18:39.440 maybe even using recycling previously stored ATP. Do you think there's a zone five? Like what's

00:18:45.160 your take on that? So a lot of that really depends. And you can already tell that since

00:18:49.400 everything is a dimmer switch, we're talking about pretty fuzzy definitions here. And I think

00:18:52.960 that's actually where a lot of confusion comes in. And I think something that people probably want to

00:18:57.000 reiterate is how complicated this actually is. It's like, there's no definitive switch between

00:19:01.920 zone two and zone three. Like, even though we like to say there is, there's no definitive switch

00:19:06.480 between zone three and zone four. Some people include a zone five and say, well, that represents

00:19:10.900 the pure a lactic systems, as they call it. We're talking about such a high level of intensity that

00:19:15.860 we are just using the ATP CP systems, for example. So that's just super high intensity sprints of 10

00:19:22.620 seconds or under that's, you know, some people like to differentiate that. I don't particularly find

00:19:27.820 it very useful because I think the entire purpose of planning in zones is to look at approximately,

00:19:33.100 you know, stimulus, how long an athlete can sustain it and what it means metabolically.

00:19:38.280 If you start to get into zone five, you're almost looking at something that's sort of akin to higher

00:19:42.560 rep strength training or explosive training. And it's, it's not really a useful figure. So I only tell

00:19:47.620 people to really worry about one through four. So I think that's a good background of science. We

00:19:51.940 geeked out there. Let's start, let's dig into this. Like when most people do cardio, what they think of

00:19:57.780 as cardio? So it's like a run, or maybe they're doing a body weight workout. What zone do they

00:20:02.940 typically end up in? You know, most people, when they're doing cardio, if they just decide to go

00:20:07.920 out for a run, they are usually sitting right in zone three. And I think that that really is probably

00:20:13.680 at the heart of what a lot of we want to discuss today is how easy it is or how often people think

00:20:18.920 that they are not getting a cardiovascular workout unless they are exhibiting all the signs of actually

00:20:23.720 being in that zone three. Yeah. I think a lot of people, when they think workout, you gotta be,

00:20:28.060 you have to, you gotta hurt, bro. It's gotta be, it's gotta be struggle and like out of breath and

00:20:32.720 super winded. Like, why do you think the zone two gets the short shrift, particularly by weekend

00:20:37.220 warrior type athletes? Cause I think if you talk to professional athletes, they understand the

00:20:41.900 importance of that sort of zone two stuff. What's going on with just the regular Joe wants to

00:20:46.440 exercise? You know, you know, it's such a good question too, because I think that's, I think a lot of it

00:20:51.180 just comes down to based on what our concept of exercise actually is. And I think one of the

00:20:56.120 reasons why this is tough is if you're a, if you're a high level athlete and you're doing zone two work,

00:21:01.440 you're still running, you're still running pretty quick. Uh, you know, I always talk about the story

00:21:05.360 back when I used to train, I used to run around, uh, you know, Duke university and because they have

00:21:10.320 a sports performance lab there, they would sometimes have a lot of Kenyan runners come down. Uh, you know, 0.92

00:21:15.820 again, some of the best runners in the world, you know, best, best mid distance runners that

00:21:19.780 probably have ever lived. And it's funny cause I used to run the trails down there and these guys

00:21:25.000 would pass me at probably two minutes per mile faster than what my, you know, high zone three,

00:21:31.340 low zone four pace. And they would be having relaxed conversations the entire time. And I think

00:21:36.940 for some of us who don't realize how good elite athletes are, we think, okay, these guys are going

00:21:41.720 for an easy run. They're going fast. If I am not at the very least going for a fast jog, I'm probably

00:21:47.060 not getting anything out of this whatsoever. If I'm not sweating, if I'm not working hard, if I'm not

00:21:51.300 doing any of that, how can this possibly be exercised? What am I getting out of this? And I think that's

00:21:56.000 a really, it's a really dangerous mindset. And honestly, when I first got back into running back in

00:22:00.200 like 2007, that's part of what caused me so much harm to both my lifting and my running is that that's a

00:22:07.440 lot of work. And I think for most people, they don't, they want to see, be seen as doing exercise.

00:22:12.700 They don't want to think, well, if I'm going for a fast walk, oh, well, that's not, that's not

00:22:16.420 training. You know, anybody can do that. I want to go out there and work and not realizing that

00:22:21.220 probably going for a fast walk for them represents zone two. And that's probably what they should be

00:22:25.480 doing. And also I think that something that contributes to that is just like the fitness

00:22:29.040 literature, right? You pick up men's health and it talks about HIIT workouts. Everyone's got to be

00:22:32.700 doing HIIT workouts. Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell you when, again, like back when I, when I first

00:22:39.720 started, uh, first started doing all this stuff, uh, HIIT was everything. And you know, the, the

00:22:45.120 whole idea was, hell, I remember, uh, you know, working with a lot of strongman athletes and talking

00:22:50.200 to them. Cause again, you know, again, early on in, in my career, I was talking to other power

00:22:54.120 lifters. Well, what do you do for cardio and strongman? What do you do for cardio? Oh yeah.

00:22:57.460 I push heavy sleds and, you know, tire flips and, you know, that's, that's my cardio right there.

00:23:02.180 And, you know, obviously we, we know that's, that's still good stuff, but to them, that was kind of

00:23:07.220 the minimum for cardio, anything easier than that's just a waste of time. Oh, so let's dig into more

00:23:12.120 about zone two. So how do we figure out what our zone two is? How do we, how do we know? Cause you

00:23:16.620 mentioned, so, so you said like zones are more about the energy sources that we're using, the

00:23:20.860 metabolites, the, uh, the changes in hormones that's happening in our body. So how do we figure

00:23:25.100 out if we're in zone two or not? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cause there are a lot of systems out there. 0.66

00:23:29.620 Some people use heart rate and while that's good for some, the problem with using heart rate is

00:23:33.900 first of all, everyone's max heart rate is different. Uh, the whole two 20 minus age or 1.00

00:23:38.200 any one of those systems are really only good for about the middle 60 to 70% of the population.

00:23:43.460 And even then there's kind of a plus or minus eight or seven standard deviation on that. What

00:23:48.380 I mean by that is let's say with two 20 minus age, it tells me my maximum heart rate should

00:23:52.120 be one 78. Well, that could be plus or minus eight. So my max heart rate could be anywhere between

00:23:56.880 one 86 and one 70. If I'm trying to calculate 70% of that, that's going to give me a crazy number.

00:24:02.020 So I tell people forget about the heart rate zones. Don't worry about that. Some people say,

00:24:06.540 well, you should use a lactate meter and check that that doesn't work either. The easiest way

00:24:11.460 I tell people is look, when we talk about zone two, we're talking about a metabolic shift.

00:24:16.180 So let's find the most obvious metabolic shift that happens with the most profound impact that you can

00:24:22.200 see. And that would be your rate of breathing. So when I have people do a zone two test, which I

00:24:28.500 also call a VT one test again, talking about the first ventilatory threshold, what I have them do

00:24:33.220 is basically just continue to first start out at a walk and then every minute increase their pace

00:24:39.340 ever so slightly tracking their heart rate and tracking their pace until they get to a point

00:24:43.700 where they can no longer speak a 15 to 20 word sentence without interruption. When they get to

00:24:50.000 that point, it represents that inflection point where the rate of respiration is increasing,

00:24:54.980 which corresponds to a change in blood pH. And the reason that's so accurate is because that

00:25:00.780 change in blood pH right there and that change in the need to breathe and respiration rate almost

00:25:05.620 perfectly corresponds to those various metabolic shifts that represent the shift from zone two to

00:25:11.200 zone three. So basically when you can't carry on a conversation is legitimately when you're making

00:25:17.400 pretty much the biggest metabolic shifts out of zone two. It is the easiest way to determine it.

00:25:22.740 And it's ironic. It's actually interestingly, one of the most accurate, even in a lab setting.

00:25:26.880 So the talk test is the talk test. That's it. So yeah, with the heart rate,

00:25:31.620 I've seen different stuff. And what's confusing about the heart rate thing about zone two is that

00:25:35.480 you'll see different percentages, right? So I've seen one, like the one that I've seen a lot is 78%

00:25:40.380 of your maximum heart rate is zone two. Then I've also seen like, well, no, that's too high. It's like,

00:25:44.620 it's actually 50 to 65. What I've done to hone in on my zone two intensity is I did the estimate

00:25:53.500 based on your age. And then I use the talk test to refine it. So like the estimate based on my age

00:25:58.680 kind of gave me like a ballpark to be next to. And so I'll use my Apple watch and I'll get there.

00:26:04.780 And I think right now it's like 140 is like for me, 70, 80%. And then if I'm, if I can still talk,

00:26:11.340 then I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in the right spot. That's how I've done it.

00:26:14.840 Exactly. Exactly. Yep. And that's it. That's, that is by far the best way to do it. The heart

00:26:20.180 rate will kind of give you that starting ballpark. And from there you, you very much, again, it's,

00:26:25.000 I think that kind of drives home the point though, it takes a little bit of trial and error. You

00:26:28.260 actually have to go out there and you actually have to read your body a little bit and say, okay,

00:26:31.200 well, is this working for me? Because again, the other thing is each one of us has a different

00:26:35.620 heart rate reserve in different zones, like difference in, in heart structure, uh, difference in,

00:26:41.160 you know, there's so many other factors that can be involved in changing where these zones are that

00:26:45.400 I think the way you're doing it, the way you're articulating is perfectly right.

00:26:48.100 What's your thoughts? And one thing that I've, I've heard on some ladies, a researcher that, 1.00

00:26:51.340 uh, does a lot about zone two. And he says to get the most benefit from zone two, you want to get

00:26:55.380 as close to the upper end of zone two and stay there as possible. What's your thoughts on that?

00:27:00.540 Yeah. I mean, I would say that's pretty accurate. It's, you know, it's, again, we're,

00:27:03.600 we're talking about dimmer switches here, but if you're, it's a little bit like saying when you're

00:27:07.940 weight training, it's going, okay, well, what's the difference between, you know,

00:27:10.740 one rep in reserve and two reps in reserve, if we're looking at like, say an effective reps model.

00:27:15.300 And by that, I mean, like, you know, obviously we, we don't want to train to failure. Let's,

00:27:18.660 let's talk about zone two is training less than failure. Obviously the, the closer we get to that

00:27:25.020 threshold, the, the better, the more work we can do per unit of time, you know, without getting

00:27:30.120 to the point of diminishing returns. So going much below that BT one threshold, I think it's

00:27:35.420 tempting to sometimes back off a little bit too much as well and go a little bit too easy. So

00:27:39.700 I think the take home here is we want to make that conscious decision to operate as close to that

00:27:45.140 ventilatory threshold or that zone two threshold as possible. Otherwise you are, you're leaving a

00:27:49.540 little bit out there on the table every time. And again, the purpose of zone two is not to say,

00:27:53.980 go out and be lazy. It's saying control your throttle. And that means of course, don't go too

00:27:58.400 easy either because then you're probably not getting much of a training stimulus. So yeah,

00:28:02.120 I would agree with that.

00:28:03.260 I want to throw another shout out to the Apple watch. They got a new feature. Now,

00:28:06.460 when you do your exercises, it'll actually show you like what zone you're in. I don't know if

00:28:10.420 you've seen this and it'll actually have like this arrow and it'll be like, you're at the bottom end

00:28:14.040 of zone two. And then like, it'll start getting closer to the, it'll start shifting. And then it'll

00:28:18.640 tell you, well, now you're in zone three. It's again, it's not super accurate, but it gives you

00:28:22.860 an idea. It's, it's nice to have a, like a, that, that number there to help you hone in on it.

00:28:27.920 And, and, you know, I just got to say from a, from a personal level, at first I, I resisted a lot

00:28:32.740 of wearables and a lot of devices and now I use them so heavily in my coaching. And I think

00:28:36.160 for a while there, I felt like people were relying on them too much. But what I really like now about

00:28:42.420 a lot of the feedback that they give is they do force a lot of people to be a lot more in tune

00:28:45.920 with what they're doing. So rather than just going, okay, I'm just going to go out for a run and zone

00:28:49.480 out, which can be good for you sometimes. Don't get me wrong. But having that sort of feedback and

00:28:53.460 being able to be a little bit more deliberate in how you construct your training, it's really caused a

00:28:57.840 lot of people to pay more attention to what they're doing. And I think that's a great thing.

00:29:01.040 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:29:10.760 And now back to the show. Okay. We've talked about what goes on in zone two. We talked about

00:29:15.600 how to know if you're in zone two. Let's start talking benefits of zone two because we, people

00:29:18.660 are like, well, what's, what's the big deal? Why should I do this? So how does zone two improve

00:29:23.240 metabolism? So, I mean, I think the benefits of zone two, you can pretty much almost say they're

00:29:29.020 synonymous with exercise in general, because it's just such a great way to get 95% of all

00:29:33.960 the vaunted benefits of any sort of cardiovascular training while minimizing a lot of the downsides.

00:29:39.200 So as far as metabolism goes, I mean, we're looking at a whole range of things. We're looking at the

00:29:42.640 same improvements in nutrient partitioning and same positive effects on insulin sensitivity and

00:29:50.620 glucose disposal. All of these things absolutely play a factor. And as you engage in zone two,

00:29:56.960 you are actually upregulating a lot of the mitochondrial enzymes. And in fact,

00:30:01.900 your entire mitochondrial profile to actually more efficiently burn energy anaerobically.

00:30:07.620 We're looking at, you know, huge benefits to glucose disposal. We're looking at huge benefits again to

00:30:12.380 just, again, our ability to actually perform more work, you know, on an hourly basis than we would

00:30:19.080 have in the past. So even the, the quality of our meat is improved because we can be more active

00:30:24.720 because our heart pumps more efficiently. Our mitochondria are actually generating more ATP

00:30:29.280 at rest or have the ability to do so, which allows us to be more active in general with less cost.

00:30:35.860 Metabolically, it lets us even get more out of our weight training sessions. We can increase the

00:30:39.860 density of our weight training sessions because we're recovering faster in between each individual

00:30:44.460 set, which is, I think, something we don't take into account. If I'm doing a weight training program

00:30:49.040 at all, if I can take a little bit less breast time in between our sets, I can potentially do more 0.96

00:30:54.700 sets. I can potentially do the same amount of work in less time, giving me more time to do other

00:30:58.560 things. Overall, it allows for a higher level of activity at a similar level of aggregate stress.

00:31:04.120 And I can't think of a single downside to that.

00:31:06.960 Yeah. And I think I've read research that whenever you do zone two at like that upper end of zone two,

00:31:12.240 your body starts like in a response to that, it's like a stress, right? And so your body adapts.

00:31:15.820 And so your mitochondria gets more efficient, but then your cells actually start producing

00:31:20.380 more mitochondria. And so you're able to produce even more energy, which gives you all those

00:31:23.940 benefits you just talked about. Exactly. Exactly. Like I said, a mitochondrial

00:31:27.700 profiles, which is not just the enzymes in the mitochondria, but it's the number of mitochondria

00:31:31.900 as well. It's a profound, profound difference. I mean, you're basically making every single cell

00:31:36.700 a lot more efficient, a lot more capable of generating energy. And honestly, it reduces a whole host of

00:31:43.140 other things. Like for example, there's less oxidative stress because we're able to metabolize

00:31:47.920 energy more efficiently in the oxidative system. We're looking at less metabolite production at any

00:31:53.620 given level of intensity. So we're looking at the same daily activities causing us less stress,

00:32:00.160 less hormonal stress, less oxidative stress, because we do a lot of zone two cardio.

00:32:05.060 Let's talk about zone two and cardiovascular health. What's going on there?

00:32:08.520 Sure. So again, it's got a lot of the same benefits that we typically associate with cardio,

00:32:13.440 you know, bigger stroke volume, better contractile, you know, less, you know, ejection fraction,

00:32:18.060 which is the percentage of blood that's actually pumped out, goes up. One of the best things about

00:32:22.860 zone two cardio though, is the increase in cardiac preload or what is called eccentric hypertrophy of

00:32:29.100 the heart. So one of the most important things when we look at the heart muscle is not when we,

00:32:33.560 when we work the heart, when we train the heart, it's not just that the heart gets stronger.

00:32:36.780 Concentric hypertrophy of the heart is basically strengthening and thickening of the walls of

00:32:43.420 especially the left ventricle to allow the heart to pump harder and pump more blood out

00:32:47.800 on every contraction. That's not the whole picture though. See the heart actually becomes more

00:32:53.100 efficient when it actually takes more blood in. So when we think about it after the heart pumps and

00:32:58.620 now it's, you know, re-expanding and relaxing what zone two cardio does by increasing the overall rate of

00:33:04.680 blood circulation is you're actually increasing the amount of blood flowing into the heart.

00:33:09.720 And zone two cardio is right in that sweet spot where that quote unquote preload that allows the

00:33:14.900 heart to actually take in the optimal amount of blood actually causes the heart muscle to stretch

00:33:19.900 a little bit. The more eccentric hypertrophy, which effectively refers to the flexibility of the

00:33:25.180 heart, the more of that we get, the more efficient the heart becomes. And not only does the heart become

00:33:31.460 more efficient, but we also alleviate some of the issues that come from excessive concentric

00:33:36.640 hypertrophy, which can include things like, oh, changes in a signal propagation through the heart.

00:33:42.280 So basically what I mean is this, if all we do is high intensity work, we are doing a lot of like,

00:33:47.020 let's say almost muscle building, bodybuilding for the heart. But by doing so much of that without doing

00:33:53.060 enough lower intensity work, we're not also doing everything we can for the preload, for the

00:33:58.360 elasticity and flexibility of the heart. Doing zone two work allows our heart to beat more

00:34:03.400 efficiently. It allows us to pump more blood per contraction. And it's also extremely good for the

00:34:09.680 overall, I have another way of saying like signal quality within the heart muscle itself.

00:34:14.420 So it's a little bit like if you, if you go too hard all the time, it's like trying to, you know,

00:34:19.140 do a bike pump too quickly. It's not efficient, right? Or it's like trying to pull a rower too quickly.

00:34:23.580 Anything where the optimum rate of cycle is not super fast. If the heart is doing nothing but

00:34:29.560 pumping really hard against like contracted muscles, because all you're doing is sprinting

00:34:33.920 and your muscles are working super hard, you're not going to get those same benefits to preload

00:34:39.120 and elasticity that you get from the lower intensity work. So for cardiovascular health,

00:34:44.140 it really represents a sort of critical part to the puzzle that you're actually missing out on if you

00:34:49.240 do nothing but high intensity work. Does that, you know, increase in volume of blood in the heart,

00:34:54.140 does that trickle down to other parts of the vascular system like arteries, veins, capillaries?

00:34:59.560 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That, that increase in vascular elasticity is actually a big part of it as

00:35:04.020 well, because that takes place pretty much across the entire system, you know, because arteries are not,

00:35:09.400 arteries are already fairly strong. They're, they're muscular vessels, they're, they're, they're fairly

00:35:13.060 strong. But again, if we are simply contracting the heart really hard against occluded

00:35:17.960 vasculature, like let's say I'm contracting my quads really hard because I'm doing a set of squats or

00:35:22.260 I'm doing a set of sprints. My heart is really pumping hard against that. The arteries are, you

00:35:27.600 know, contracting basically to try to force that blood into that working muscle. That's not always

00:35:32.140 ideal. The elasticity, allowing for the constant blood flow and, you know, basically allowing the,

00:35:38.300 you know, increasing capillary perfusion, increasing the number of capillaries and blood vessels and

00:35:43.260 actually doing everything it can to reduce that back pressure a little bit actually does improve

00:35:47.800 arterial compliance. Or in other words, that is just one other measure of overall heart health

00:35:53.220 and artery and cardiovascular system health. Again, potentially reducing the likelihood of

00:35:58.020 future vascular disease. So it's extremely important. Yeah. One thing I've noticed too,

00:36:02.220 with the sort of a metric I've seen is that, that my cardiovascular health has been improving

00:36:06.360 since I started zone two is my resting heart rate has been going down since I've started.

00:36:11.380 That's good. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Especially because, you know, doing a lot of zone two work as

00:36:16.180 well, just in terms of even the autonomic nervous system is nowhere near as stressful because it's,

00:36:22.200 you know, it actually, it does, obviously you're improving your heart health and the amount of

00:36:26.560 blood pumped per, per contraction, which all lowers your resting heart rate, but also it really

00:36:31.500 helps shift the autonomic nervous system balance a little bit more parasympathetic when you're at rest,

00:36:36.220 which can also do wonders for your ability to relax, lower your resting heart rate, sleep better,

00:36:41.000 all those other things. On a similar note, is there any research about zone two helping with mood

00:36:45.320 disorders like depression or anxiety? You know, that's, that's interesting because I think it's,

00:36:50.440 it's difficult to test and it's difficult to isolate zone two directly from a lot of other

00:36:54.120 cardiovascular activity or a lot of other cardiovascular training because pretty much

00:36:58.380 all exercise does help with a lot of these things. What's interesting. And I think where we have to

00:37:02.640 start to find correlates is zone two's effect on things again, like sleep quality and like the lower

00:37:07.680 incidence of sleep disruptions. Cause one of the challenges with exercise, particularly to treat

00:37:12.220 anything from mood disorders to depression or anything else is that exercise has its own set

00:37:16.440 of stressors. And if people are already dealing with, you know, some form of depression or mood

00:37:21.580 disorders or sleep disorders or anything else, exercise certainly has positive effect, but it can

00:37:26.640 also do things like compromise sleep quality if done at too high intensity, or it can, you know,

00:37:31.460 create its own level of stressors. It can create its own, you know, high amount of sympathetic drive

00:37:36.380 during the exercise itself. The nice thing about zone two cardio is both kind of theoretically and in

00:37:41.840 certainly preliminary research I've seen, it does seem to be able to convey a lot of the benefits

00:37:46.460 of exercise on various mood disorders, depression, et cetera, but without a lot of the potential costs

00:37:52.540 to overall individual stress. So again, it's, it's sort of that sweet spot where you're getting the

00:37:58.160 benefits of a lot of this exercise without a lot of the potential cost. So in aggregate, it represents

00:38:03.480 a great intervention for anyone, again, dealing with issues like depression or distraction or anything

00:38:08.480 else. There are also a couple of other interesting benefits to doing things like running outside.

00:38:12.780 I think, you know, talking anything from, you know, the, the phenomena of ocular flow to just,

00:38:17.380 you know, again, greater sun exposure and all that, but that's, that's a different issue.

00:38:21.060 Yeah. I've noticed that my sleep has gotten better since I started zone two, because before

00:38:24.460 when I was just focusing on strength and power lifting, I would, you know, I'd have my rest day

00:38:29.100 and I was, well, you don't do anything on a rest day. Your muscles got to recover. And then, you know,

00:38:32.520 since you know, you don't move your body, like your body's like, well, you're not tired.

00:38:35.560 So you're going to have a crappy night's sleep. But since I incorporated the zone two,

00:38:39.360 it's since it's low impact, doesn't, doesn't destroy you, but it still tires you out enough

00:38:43.160 where you can have a good night's sleep. Yeah. And it's great. Cause one of the other

00:38:46.880 things is awesome. When we're talking about things like, Oh, you know, sleep cycles and the, you know,

00:38:50.920 the super charismatic nucleus and melatonin release, and you know, all those things that

00:38:54.440 govern things like your circadian rhythms, being able to engage in an activity that is constantly

00:39:00.300 improving your body's ability to process and dispose of glucose and, you know, basically

00:39:06.340 undergo a lot of that, you know, process of digestion and metabolic shifts and all of that

00:39:10.900 kind of stuff. It allows the body to go through its normal sleep wake cycles a lot more smoothly

00:39:15.980 and efficiently. So, you know, you look at a lot of things like a decreased sleep latency,

00:39:20.640 you know, the spending less time transitioning between different phases of sleep. All of that is

00:39:25.880 extremely positive, improves your sleep quality, great for sleep architecture, all of those kinds

00:39:30.540 of trickle-down effects. Another benefit is I've, I've gotten tremor since I started zone two.

00:39:34.940 Like I'm not as, I'm not as, I'm not as fat. I'm not as chunky as I used to be. And it's,

00:39:40.400 what's crazy is it's not hard. Right. And it's just, it's, it's weird. I've had to start eating

00:39:45.180 more because to actually gain weight because I'm burning more, like I'm probably burning an extra,

00:39:51.780 maybe 1500 calories a week by adding in zone two. Well, yeah. And that's, that's the other

00:39:57.540 thing that's great about it too, is the whole concept of, you know, kind of caloric flux or

00:40:01.300 metabolic flux, which is the idea that let's say, let's say you just remain isocaloric just by

00:40:08.760 lifting and doing as little activity as possible. Now let's say I burn 500 calories a day from doing

00:40:15.400 zone two work, but then eat an additional 500 calories a day. All else being equal, the greater the

00:40:20.860 overall caloric or metabolic flux. In other words, the greater the amount that you both burn and take

00:40:26.560 in, the better your body composition is going to be at the end, the end of any given time that it

00:40:31.660 would be otherwise. So one of the best things you can do overall to look better and feel better and

00:40:37.120 everything else is move more and eat more to compensate. So metabolic flux, eating more and

00:40:43.560 exercising more is good for body composition and zone two cardio helps with that because it's a type of

00:40:49.280 exercise that you can do a high volume of, and it's not going to beat you up, but is it good for

00:40:54.160 weight loss in any other way? I mean, I think a lot of people might have heard of zone two as the

00:40:58.460 fat burning zone, right? They're at the treadmill at their gym. They see, Oh, you were in the fat

00:41:02.760 burning zone. Is that an accurate label and will help you lose more fat relative to other types of

00:41:08.860 exercise? Yeah. So that's, that's kind of been one of these things that was, uh, I think originally

00:41:13.820 from a, you know, a metabolic standpoint is maybe not wrong, but it's really not right either.

00:41:19.020 You know, cause really the, the, when you talk about fat burning zone, you have two questions.

00:41:23.440 You're saying, well, okay, am I burning the most fat possible, you know, per minute of activity?

00:41:28.700 And am I burning the biggest proportion of fat compared to other substrates? Because

00:41:33.200 technically the highest intensity work you can possibly do burns more fat per minute than any

00:41:38.880 other level of intensity of exercise. I mean, if I go out there and I'm just, you know, sprinting

00:41:43.340 along and running at a peak velocity, I'm probably going to burn more absolute fat overall and use

00:41:49.280 more aerobic systems overall in course of 10 minutes than I would by going slower. But the problem is

00:41:54.660 there are so many other limiting factors that overall, if that's all I do, I'm probably not going

00:41:59.000 to end up burning that much directly. The biggest fat burning zone, as far as intensity goes, would be

00:42:04.500 if I'm just sitting here lying flat on my back, for example, the percentage of, of energy I'm

00:42:10.360 generating via, you know, fat oxidation is, is the highest. So zone two kind of represents an

00:42:16.620 aggregate. It is where the percentage of fat is still notably high and the volume you can do is,

00:42:24.120 is the highest. So all else being equal, that's the point at which, you know, over the course of a

00:42:29.580 week, I can burn the most fat while not simultaneously, not burning out and not working

00:42:34.580 at too high an intensity, but it's kind of meaningless because, you know, fat burning and,

00:42:39.740 and body composition changes so much more than just how much fat you're burning during exercise.

00:42:44.560 So I, you know, I think in that regard, it's a bit of a miss, it's a bit of a misnomer.

00:42:48.980 And you know what, if you're, if you're trying to do activity to maximize caloric flux and you're

00:42:53.120 trying to do activity to, you know, burn the most while simultaneously taking in significantly more

00:42:58.100 zone two is probably the only way to really get your caloric flux up high enough, unless you're

00:43:02.740 the kind of person who can spend eight hours on their feet per day, walking around like zone two

00:43:08.060 really does help you maximize your caloric flux. And in that case, it's one of the best for body

00:43:11.600 composition, but just as far as actually being in a fat burning zone, it's, it's not, you know,

00:43:17.720 again, what you burn during exercise isn't necessarily indicative of whole body metabolism

00:43:22.460 or body composition change. Well, another thing I, correct me if I'm wrong on this. Uh, I think a lot

00:43:27.660 of times when people hear fat burning zone, they think, well, it's burning the fat on my belly

00:43:32.320 and not necessarily, I think our body's efficient, uh, getting to that stored fat that takes a lot

00:43:37.820 of work and it's only going to go there when it really needs to. So if you're burning fat in zone

00:43:41.540 two, you're likely just burning the, the fat you've consumed in the past 24 hours.

00:43:47.300 Yeah. And that's, that's really it. And I think that's, that's the shift people need to think about

00:43:52.040 in their mind is your body is, is going to make use of what energy stores it's going to make use

00:43:56.700 of in whatever order it deems most efficient. It's not going to say, Oh, you're in the fat

00:44:01.020 burning zone. Let's immediately ignore all this, uh, glucose floating around the system and,

00:44:05.140 you know, lip and everything else that's, you know, in the, in the GI tract digesting right now,

00:44:09.640 let's go straight to the belly. No, it's not going to do that. It's going to use the easiest,

00:44:13.100 most accessible stores for energy. And again, you know, and what we're getting at here is what

00:44:17.860 really taps into that, you know, quote unquote belly fat is when your body decides in its own

00:44:22.080 metabolic calculus that it's time to really tap into those stores from that particular area,

00:44:27.160 which, you know, is going to be so much more function again, of lifestyle, aggregate caloric

00:44:31.780 intake, uh, you know, yeah, whole host of other things that we could probably spend an hour and a

00:44:37.560 half listing off. Okay. So that makes sense. So zone two can help you lose weight. So this allow you to

00:44:42.340 extra lose body fat because it can help you exercise more. And if over the aggregate, if you do that

00:44:47.680 long enough, your body's going to start dip it into that every now and then to help you shed some of

00:44:52.260 that stuff. Exactly. And you know what, I think the reason why I think it's personally great for

00:44:57.120 body composition changes again, like, you know, like we're talking about, it lets you do so much

00:45:01.440 quality work that has a beneficial effect on your metabolism as a beneficial effect on mitochondrial

00:45:07.000 profiles, insulin resistance, you know, all of that. It lets you do a lot of it and it still leaves you

00:45:11.880 the recovery you need to do a lot of the especially productive, higher intensity work, the lifting,

00:45:16.540 everything else. And, you know, again, letting you really keep that, you know, caloric flux relatively

00:45:21.880 high with very low recovery cost. So I think we made a good case that zone two is it's great for

00:45:26.520 cardio health. It's great for your metabolism. It can help with things like, you know, type two

00:45:29.860 diabetes. It can help with sleep. Let's talk about for people who are, you know, they're an athlete,

00:45:34.820 they have like a sport they're trying to focus on. What's the benefit of zone two cardio for endurance

00:45:40.160 athletes? Cause this seems counterintuitive for like a guy who likes to do five K's or whatever.

00:45:44.860 Like, why would I go really slow if I need to, you know, usually you think, well, I need to train

00:45:49.860 fast to go fast. But what you're saying is like, actually, no, you spend most of your time going

00:45:54.520 slow. How does going slow help us go fast in a meet? Well, I think what's really interesting is,

00:46:01.040 you know, if we're familiar with polarized training, it's the whole idea that you do 80% of your work

00:46:04.860 at zone two and 20% at zone four. So in other words, in your training, you're doing most of it easy

00:46:10.360 and some of it hard. Interestingly enough, a lot of that was arrived at just by observing elite

00:46:16.200 athletes, not by saying, okay, we're going to try this, but by saying, okay, let's see what the elite

00:46:20.620 athletes are doing. And interestingly enough, if you look at the true elites, in many cases,

00:46:25.280 they're doing 85% of their work in their zone two or up to 88% of it in their zone two. But I think

00:46:31.920 what's really interesting is of course, if you look at their high intensity work, it's the total number

00:46:36.240 of high intensity minutes they're doing per week, not the number of high intensity workouts. So just

00:46:40.880 to break that down a little bit, I think when a lot of people think about doing like say an interval

00:46:45.300 workout, they say, okay, I've got a 45 minute interval workout coming up at 45 minutes of hard

00:46:49.880 intervals in that workout. They're probably only spending about 10 to 15 minutes actually doing

00:46:54.500 hard work. The rest is rest periods. When you're putting together a polarized program, all that high

00:47:00.660 intensity work, you only count the minutes you're doing high intensity. So I think that's one thing I want to

00:47:05.840 make sure people know is that when we talk about doing most of it easy, remember that that's still

00:47:10.380 a lot of hard work. So when people think, okay, well, I don't want to go easy. If I want to go fast,

00:47:15.360 it's remembering that since the hard work you're doing is so tough, there's no way you can do enough

00:47:21.200 of that to get in the overall quantity and quality of work you want to do. It's a little bit like saying,

00:47:26.940 okay, so to be a good runner, to be a fast runner, I've got to, you know, obviously improve running

00:47:31.300 efficiency and leg turnover speed and all these various components of, you know, metabolism and

00:47:36.760 all of that. But realizing that zone two allows you to do a tremendous amount of work to again,

00:47:42.340 improve the number of mitochondria that you have to improve the amount of fat and, you know,

00:47:48.100 and glucose you can burn aerobically. All of those things are basically increasing the size of your

00:47:52.940 engine and letting you do more of a high intensity work, which is going to translate to being able to

00:47:58.740 actually do an aggregate, a whole lot more training, a whole lot more quality training

00:48:03.120 and spend a lot more time developing all those factors in performance that just take a lot of time

00:48:09.960 and volume to develop. It takes a long time to develop the mitochondria to be a good runner. It takes

00:48:14.320 a long time to build up your heart strength to be a good runner. If you're just doing zone three

00:48:18.920 and zone four, you're probably burning yourself out before you can do enough work for those slow

00:48:24.500 adapting energy systems. You're being held back by overall stress. You're being held back by

00:48:29.540 sheer exhaustion and muscle soreness and all of those things. And eventually you burn out. You

00:48:35.400 start to get sleep disruption, all those other things long before you're actually dosing your

00:48:40.060 heart and mitochondria with the optimal stimulus to be the best they can be.

00:48:44.720 So, yeah, that's a good point. The more you do zone two, you're going to get more fit. You'll be able to

00:48:49.200 move faster, but still stay in zone two. Right. So it's like, that's what I've noticed. I've had

00:48:53.780 to, as I've done more, as I've done zone two for a longer, like I've noticed I have to go faster

00:48:59.520 to actually get into my zone two range. And that's why you watch these Kenyan guys. They're like in 1.00

00:49:04.620 zone two, but it looks like they're sprinting to you, but their body's like, no, this is actually

00:49:08.960 zone two. Yeah. It's crazy. You know, cause you know, I watch guys like you familiar with, uh,

00:49:13.780 Alexander Sorkin, the ultra runner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at the pace. He went for a hundred

00:49:18.360 miles. Look at the pace he can do for 24 hours. I mean, for him, that's an easy zone too. For,

00:49:24.260 for some of us, for, I think for a lot of, a lot of people listening, it's like, well,

00:49:27.400 that would be a really fast mile pace. So it really does. As we get that incredibly efficient,

00:49:32.820 you know, we, we start to get better and better. And again, it increases the density of work we can

00:49:37.760 do as well, you know, cause we're recovering faster between intervals. So not only are we getting

00:49:42.400 faster at our zone two, when we decide to then do other work, we can do more of it and recover

00:49:47.860 faster, which makes it a more efficient workout, but it's going to take a while to get there.

00:49:52.460 It's like lifting weights. You're not going to deadlift 600 pounds in a month. It's to get to

00:49:56.720 that, to get that speedy zone too. It's going to take maybe years to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

00:50:02.640 It does. And I think the thing that is, is people sometimes get impatient with it and they think,

00:50:06.760 okay, well, this isn't getting all that much better, but it does. It takes time. And as long as it's

00:50:11.940 providing a stimulus, it's doing what you need. Sometimes things just take time and, uh, it's not

00:50:17.540 as gratifying as hit where you can just push yourself harder. And every week you push yourself

00:50:21.420 a little bit harder. It is so much easier in some ways with hit workouts to just push yourself harder

00:50:27.120 with every week, but not actually be adapting more. You're just adapting yourself to an uncomfortable

00:50:32.220 stimulus. So you're getting better at pushing yourself hard. You're not necessarily improving in

00:50:37.700 your fitness, which is why some people will see themselves hit a wall after six to eight weeks

00:50:41.680 of high intensity training. It's because they haven't really been physiologically improving.

00:50:45.720 They've just been improving in their pain tolerance. They've been improving in their familiarity with

00:50:49.440 the movements. So they get better, but they really haven't gotten better as much as they think

00:50:54.780 they've just gotten better at the task itself. They're not necessarily much fitter.

00:50:59.900 Okay. So if you're an endurance athlete and you you're going to start zone two, you got to be patient.

00:51:03.280 It's going to seem like you're not doing anything. Like it literally, there might be,

00:51:06.400 if you're just like just doing like the couch to marathon thing, you might just be walking like

00:51:12.120 a fast walk and that's going to be zone two. And that it's going to be like that for a while,

00:51:16.100 but over time you'll be able to speed up while still maintaining that zone two range.

00:51:21.520 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So we talked endurance athletes about strength athletes.

00:51:25.640 We mentioned some of the benefits kind of in passing. Let's focus more on that. So you,

00:51:29.020 you came from the strength world. You're a power lifter. You're a big, strong guy. I think

00:51:32.640 you deadlift like 700 pounds, I believe. Uh, yeah.

00:51:35.440 So actually you've set a PR this year, so I'm pretty happy. What was your, what was it?

00:51:39.740 Uh, 747.5. Okay. That because 2.5 fell off the outside. No, that's, that's dang strong. That's

00:51:45.940 a great poll. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. So like, how does zone two help

00:51:51.140 guys who like to pull 747 pounds? So here's, here's the best thing. And this is actually the

00:51:56.640 story I always tell because you know, this was, this was actually a client of mine. He was a power

00:52:01.140 lifter, a competitor power lifter, Australian, a very, very strong guy as well. We're talking about a

00:52:05.180 dude who was pulling close to 800 pounds. Uh, you know, he's obviously stronger than I am.

00:52:10.340 It was really funny because I had him doing a lot of zone two work and it wasn't until about

00:52:14.480 six months in, cause he, he resisted the process a little bit, but he was a good sport. He always

00:52:18.000 did it. He started taking his bike to and from the gym, you know, just easy cruising and all that.

00:52:22.260 And it was really funny. Cause after six months, he, he, he sent me a, he sent me a note and he said,

00:52:26.320 you know, I never really thought about some of the benefits this was having besides heart health and

00:52:30.040 everything else. But I noticed when I was going through my squat workout. Now I was able to put

00:52:34.920 my knee wraps on for the third set without needing to stop for air and without feeling tired. And I

00:52:41.860 thought that was probably one of the most impactful, relevant things I've ever heard a power lifter say

00:52:46.580 because what zone two work was allowing him to do was get through his training session and get through

00:52:52.480 all the work he had prescribed with less overall fatigue, which you take any two power lifters,

00:52:59.360 any two strength athletes and tell one of them, look, I can get you to competition day.

00:53:04.420 Having done 15% more work than everyone else around you at little cost to yourself. What would you say?

00:53:12.440 And most of them, if they know what they're doing, would say, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'd love to be

00:53:16.200 able to do more work. I'd love to be able to program in a little more sport work and a little more

00:53:22.000 high intensity, you know, true power production work without fatiguing. That is one of the biggest,

00:53:27.580 most profound benefits, again, besides benefits to health and everything else is we're saying that

00:53:32.000 recovery in between every set, your ability to focus and brace yourself for the next set and

00:53:37.420 mentally get yourself keyed up and potentially do more work in the same period of time or to continue

00:53:42.920 doing work without actually letting yourself cool down in between, which can be a real problem for

00:53:47.300 some lifters. You're telling them all you need to do is this 20 to 30 minutes of zone two, a couple

00:53:53.320 times a week. It's not going to interfere with your training because it's so low intensity. We're not

00:53:57.720 telling you to go out and do tire flips. I'm telling you to get on the elliptical or the bike for 30

00:54:01.540 minutes. That's easy. And you tell them this is going to make it so you recover faster in between

00:54:06.640 every single set. And when you do your next set, you're going to be better recovered, feel fresher and

00:54:12.740 have more energy. So you're going to get more out of it. That is an undeniable advantage of this type

00:54:18.200 of work for any strength athlete. Yeah. So instead of taking an hour and a half to two hours for a

00:54:22.500 training session, it could be an hour, maybe 45 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And even then saying

00:54:28.280 like, Hey, you know what? One of the, one of the biggest problems I think, especially you see this

00:54:32.160 with a lot of older school lifters is say, look, you know, if someone's got to take eight or nine

00:54:36.060 minutes in between sets of squats, it is a really, really, you know, between very heavy sets,

00:54:40.120 it's really tough to stay engaged. Your muscles are already cooling down. Your cardiovascular system

00:54:44.940 is working so hard to get all those energy stores back that that is not the most efficient or

00:54:50.400 effective way to do it. You want to be relatively fresh. You want to be able to just go in and bang

00:54:54.260 out that next set with less rest. And you say, okay, look, we're going to reduce that to three or

00:54:59.220 four minutes. You're going to get four quality work sets worth of work done. And that's going to give

00:55:04.500 you time to do a little bit more accessory work. You might be able to do a little bit more phone work.

00:55:07.980 It might even free up more time to do some of that, you know, mobility work that you've been

00:55:11.320 putting off that you skip every single session. So there you go. Yeah. I've noticed that since

00:55:15.740 I started zone two, I don't have to rest as much between sets anymore, which is great. It used to

00:55:19.600 be like five minutes between a heavy, I can do like three minutes now, which is, it adds up.

00:55:24.660 It really does. It really does. I mean, especially when you're talking about a lot of athletes,

00:55:28.420 a lot of strength athletes when they're training, it's like, Hey, you're not eating,

00:55:31.360 you're not resting. You're not doing anything else in that time. You're literally,

00:55:34.240 this is just creating new minutes in your day for you, which I mean, that's great. And yes,

00:55:41.680 of course there's the cost of actually getting on the bike, but we're talking about quality work time.

00:55:47.180 Okay. So if you're into strength training, a zone two cardio can give you better quality workouts in

00:55:54.260 a shorter amount of time. So then you can do other stuff like, you know, accessory work,

00:55:58.980 if you're more competitive, or if that's just something you want to do, or, you know, it can

00:56:03.060 just be just a way to get some time back for whatever. That's what I like about it. Like my

00:56:07.520 workouts are shorter now. Yeah. I mean, as you say, I mean, you have to, you have to add the time in

00:56:11.760 for doing zone two cardio into your schedule, but it's nice not to have your, you know, your weight

00:56:16.900 lifting workouts, you know, have to stretch on and on. Right. Uh, another benefit I found in my

00:56:22.520 strength training from starting zone two, and I don't know, this is just completely anecdotal.

00:56:26.280 This is in one scientific experiment on Brett, but it's helped with, uh, some injuries that I've

00:56:32.080 had. It's like, especially tendon injuries. It's just nice to get there and get some blood flowing

00:56:36.120 because like the tendons are, they're not a vascular tissue. There's not a lot of blood going

00:56:40.460 to there. So the more you can get there to it, it helps that recovery process. Yeah. And, you know,

00:56:46.160 and actually any modality you do, there's of course, you know, bone remodeling and tendon remodeling and

00:56:50.920 all of that kind of stuff is a slow process. And of course, even non-impact zone two represents some

00:56:56.120 sort of additional, you know, stressor on the bones and tendons and everything else that strengthens

00:57:00.260 them over time, potentially in ways that strength training doesn't. So yeah, overall, you're going

00:57:04.300 to be more robust. So we talked about the benefits and say someone's listening to this, like they're

00:57:08.340 like, I want to do this. How much zone two cardio do we need to get the maximum benefits of it? Like

00:57:13.480 what's the minimum effective dose? And, you know, I tell people anything more than 30 minutes a week,

00:57:17.760 they're going to see some, I tell most people, look, Hey, if you can start out at 80 minutes a week,

00:57:22.960 you're in good shape. Now the recommendations go all the way up to 180, which sounds like a lot,

00:57:27.740 but I mean, if you break that into 45 minute sessions, it's not that crazy, but we basically

00:57:32.520 tell people, look, if you can do three 25 to 30 minute sessions per week to start, you are already

00:57:38.860 getting a lot of the benefits out of that. Gotcha. That is, I mean, talking about minimum effective

00:57:43.500 dose, if you can't make time to do that, I don't know what to tell you, but that is literally all you

00:57:48.260 need to start. Any advice for strength athletes? Cause I think they might be, cause they're so

00:57:52.380 indoctrinated to think, well, cardio is going to get in the way of recovery and gains. How do you

00:57:56.640 like to incorporate zone two into your strength athletes programming? I literally tell them,

00:58:01.640 look, do it, do this at the end of one of your sessions. You know, if you want to pound a protein

00:58:07.000 shake or anything else beforehand, go for it. But the thing I'll typically tell them is make sure you

00:58:11.520 use a modality that you're comfortable with. Don't think you have to run. Don't think you have to

00:58:15.980 bike. Don't think you have to do anything. Find some modality that you feel like you can do

00:58:20.400 comfortably. It can even be the elliptical. In fact, I'm a pretty big fan of that piece of equipment

00:58:24.260 because it's so low impact. You are not fatiguing any muscle that you're otherwise using. You're not

00:58:31.420 going to interfere with anything because it's so different. You want to do something that at the

00:58:35.980 end of a session, you feel like, okay, this isn't really a stressor. So I'll tell them, look, hop on the

00:58:40.500 bike, hop on elliptical, you know, do the stepper, do whatever you want and don't hesitate to mix it up

00:58:46.600 because the modality matters much less than what your heart rate is doing each time or what your

00:58:51.720 heart is doing each time and, you know, what your muscles are demanding. So don't be wed to the idea

00:58:56.520 that you have to do this or you have to run or you have to do anything. It's all good.

00:59:00.960 Yeah. For me, the way I've done it is I train Monday, Tuesday, strength train. Wednesday is off

00:59:05.940 day. So that's, I do an hour of zone two then, and then Thursday, Friday, strength train. And then

00:59:11.800 like on one of those days I'll do hit, like I'll do this bike just all out or some sort of body

00:59:16.780 circuit. Then Saturday, Sunday, it's an hour of zone two on each of those days. So I get three

00:59:22.220 hours. I try to get three hours. That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. That's honestly for, for a lot of

00:59:26.420 people, that's the ideal structure right there. I mean, again, some people quote unquote love a day

00:59:30.320 off. I personally don't. I like to do something every day, but yeah, I mean the way you've got it laid

00:59:34.420 out and that's the nice thing about it is since it's really so easy to recover from, it's not like your

00:59:39.760 Monday workout is going to be tough because you did, you know, an hour of easy work on Sunday.

00:59:44.160 I mean, humans are meant to be able to do an hour of easy work on a given day, not pay for it. So

00:59:49.680 it's, yeah, it's actually a good thing. And yeah, but if you can't get an hour, that's okay. Shoot

00:59:53.420 for 25, 30 minutes, three times a week, maybe. Absolutely. Absolutely. I always tell people that

00:59:57.960 some is better than none. You know, if you've got an aspiring power lifter who says, look, I can,

01:00:01.840 I can give you two 20 minute sessions per week. Is that even enough? The answer is yes,

01:00:06.000 absolutely. It is. You're going to see a difference. I think the hardest part for me,

01:00:09.760 starting zone two, because I wanted to shoot for an hour. I've read that, like, you know,

01:00:12.500 I want to get that, the maximum benefits. I'm, I like to maximize things, but it's just boring.

01:00:16.780 And so you gotta, you gotta find something to do. So what I've done is I watched a Cobra Kai.

01:00:22.960 I got the Cobra Kai on Netflix and now I'm rewatching 30 rock while I do my zone two.

01:00:28.300 And it's been great. Honestly, that's perfect because, you know, cause I, I, I, when I do zone two,

01:00:32.860 I will sometimes play a video games. I sometimes do my Instagram Q and a's when I'm sitting on the bike,

01:00:38.980 just cause it forces me to stay in the talk test. Yeah. Doing something that, you know,

01:00:42.380 kind of gets you a little bit, a little bit out of your head, makes it a little bit less painful.

01:00:47.460 You know, I mean like psychologically painful for some people and that's all good. And that's

01:00:51.820 actually one of the things I look forward to is I also say, look, this 60 minutes that I'm doing

01:00:55.800 this, this is me time. I can do whatever the heck else I want during this time. I don't, I don't have

01:01:01.240 to do anything. Cause you know, I'm, I'm doing, I'm training, I'm doing something that's good for my

01:01:05.380 heart. Whatever else I want to do at this time. That's great. This can even just be my 60 minutes

01:01:09.480 of quiet meditation time. It's perfect. Or you can listen to the art of manly's podcast.

01:01:14.520 Absolutely. Yeah. Highly recommend. Yeah. I mean, like you, I really look forward to zone two cardio

01:01:19.980 now. Cause I just like how I feel afterwards. You get that sweat going. It just feels really good.

01:01:24.340 It's the only time I get myself to watch TV. So yeah, I really enjoy it. So you mentioned modalities.

01:01:30.080 It's basically anything to get your heart going. Um, but are there any ones that you like a lot?

01:01:34.460 So for me, I actually, I still have my triathlon bike hooked up on a trainer. The reason why I love

01:01:40.220 the bike for me is I've been cycling long enough that I'm a, I'm a, I'm a pretty good cyclist.

01:01:45.100 And for me, that's an easy way to get my, uh, to get, to get into the zone too. And you know,

01:01:50.380 on the stationary bike, I can do plenty of other things. That's always been one of my favorites.

01:01:54.440 Um, I love air bikes and airdines just because you don't have to push particularly hard to get into zone

01:01:59.300 two because it's so many different muscle groups working at once. And honestly, one of my biggest

01:02:04.440 recommendations is the elliptical, which I think gets unfairly maligned by a lot of people, but

01:02:08.820 it is a, provided you find an elliptical that fits your body size because they, they have a lot of

01:02:14.940 different sizes and shapes and they're not great for everybody. It's a great piece of equipment.

01:02:18.440 Yeah. I do. I use the ellipticals when I like, we also have an inclined treadmill. So I just crank

01:02:23.220 that up as high as you can. And then I go going to like, I think the speed is like 3.5 and that'll

01:02:28.000 get me at zone two. The one thing that I had trouble with when I first started experimenting

01:02:33.120 with zone two is I tried to just like running outside. I noticed I would immediately get into

01:02:37.580 zone three, like without, I wasn't even going that fast. And I would be like, Oh, I get to walk.

01:02:42.140 And then it was just off and on. So I, based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend outdoor running

01:02:47.500 because it's just so easy to move into zone three. What are your thoughts about that?

01:02:51.380 You know, honestly, I totally agree. I do a lot of BT one tests for new clients and most

01:02:56.140 of them, you know, I'll set the treadmill to 4% and they're, and they will be hitting

01:03:00.640 that zone two long before they get to a run. And that's, that's totally, totally normal.

01:03:05.420 It takes quite a few years actually to be an efficient enough runner, unless you're very

01:03:09.900 light. It takes a lot of years to be efficient enough that you can comfortably run, you know,

01:03:14.680 as opposed to even just kind of shuffle jogging at zone two. So yeah, that's, that's very normal.

01:03:20.000 And that's why same thing, honestly, if people are saying, look, I would love to be able to just

01:03:24.580 go out and go for a run or, you know, go run some trails or something. If it gets me out of zone two,

01:03:29.200 you go, well, okay, if you love it, you can still do it, but that's not zone two. I would recommend

01:03:33.200 something else.

01:03:34.300 And also if you're a strength athlete, that that's a stressor because you do your pounding

01:03:37.200 against the ground and you know, that might not be good.

01:03:39.920 One recommendation I have, this came from my wife with her experiment with zone two cardio with

01:03:44.620 running is if you're just starting out with running and you want to do that zone two, like

01:03:48.780 do it on a treadmill. And she found that useful because you can set the treadmill flat. You can

01:03:53.640 keep it at a slow, constant speed. And she said, even then you'll have to stop and walk because

01:03:58.120 you know, pretty, you know, you'll quickly go into zone three and walk. But she, she found that just

01:04:02.940 by doing that steadily, that's the treadmill run, she was able to get to a zone two run outside

01:04:08.460 eventually. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because one of the, one of the biggest challenges of course,

01:04:12.440 is with zone two, being able to work up that threshold, that VT one threshold, if all you

01:04:16.820 do is run outside and push yourself too hard every single time, you are really going to burn yourself

01:04:21.200 out probably at a faster rate than you're going to make all the progress you want. You'll see great

01:04:24.980 progress for eight weeks, 12 weeks, but you may end up hitting a wall and you may end up really

01:04:29.680 struggling. You may be struggling to get in the volume that you know you need. You may be struggling to,

01:04:34.580 you know, have energy for your lifting sessions and everything else. So that's when it really

01:04:38.160 becomes critical to say, Oh, wait, maybe I should have showed slowed down here quite a bit.

01:04:42.660 And treadmill is great because, you know, contrary to, to some, to the belief in some circles,

01:04:47.120 the mechanics are not appreciably different than running outside. You know, the, basically,

01:04:51.220 if you look at it from a biomechanics standpoint, there are very, very minor differences.

01:04:55.000 And overall, like you're saying, it really lets you control that throttle. And it takes some of the,

01:04:59.800 I guess, self-imposed pressure. When people are outside, it's very often difficult to

01:05:05.500 realize how slow a, you know, 12, 30 minute mile jog may be, or, you know, keep yourself doing that

01:05:13.760 walk run and not overcook it. It's, it's difficult. You said like hills ups and down. And also people

01:05:19.180 just don't like going out and moving slowly. You know, they're thinking, okay, either I'm going to

01:05:22.200 walk or I'm going to run fast. I'm not going to do this sort of walk, jog, slow, moving, looking at

01:05:28.440 my watch to making sure I'm not, you know, to make sure I'm not going too fast. It's a, again,

01:05:32.800 as, as throttle control, it is such a, such a great tool to use. And yeah, absolutely. Like

01:05:38.040 if people really are serious about this and, you know, they want to say, okay, well, I want to do

01:05:42.220 this right. Yeah. The treadmill may not be the most exciting option, but you know, especially now it's,

01:05:46.620 it's, it probably depending on the time of year, it could be even preferable to going outside and

01:05:52.220 it's, it's worth getting used to it because it also very much teaches pacing, which is something I

01:05:57.460 think a lot of people have trouble with. So it gets that in your head. It lets you control your pace,

01:06:01.520 control your output, provide some valuable lessons, and it can in some ways help you make

01:06:06.060 more sustainable progress. So that's a great tool. And then another thing she noticed with

01:06:09.620 her running in zone two cardio is that she even got the benefit to her running by doing zone two and 0.99

01:06:15.580 other modalities. Like if she just did a walk on an inclined treadmill for zone two, she saw that

01:06:20.740 transfer over to her race times, they would dramatically drop and she got a lot faster. 0.98

01:06:26.040 Yeah. Yeah. And it's great. Yeah. Cause I think that the other thing is with zone two,

01:06:29.460 again, it's, there's much more transfer between modalities than a lot of the higher intensity

01:06:33.180 work. So yeah, again, you know, walking, hiking, rucking, cycling, you know, even elliptical,

01:06:39.720 all those things do have pretty good carryover and represent a good way to vary the direct,

01:06:44.800 I guess, cost and stressors while maintaining most of the stimulus.

01:06:48.980 So we've talked a lot about zone two. What about like, is there a place for zone three in your

01:06:52.460 training at all? If you're like an endurance athlete or just a weekend warrior type guy?

01:06:55.740 Yeah. So, you know, there've been a lot, there are actually a lot of very good training programs

01:06:59.900 that are called kind of sweet spot training where you spend a good 30 or more percent of

01:07:04.440 your time in zone three, which is, you know, a little bit more usual. Like it's, it's a valid

01:07:08.520 form of training. I think the important thing to remember though, is that if you are also a strength

01:07:14.280 athlete, first of all, zone three work, it's neither the most efficient way to develop a lot of those

01:07:20.260 like speed systems or, you know, higher intensity energy systems, nor the lower intensity energy

01:07:25.500 systems that zone two does just because you can't do nearly as much of it. If you are aiming to train

01:07:31.240 for a 5k or a 10k or aiming for a triathlon, it's worth spending some time in that zone three,

01:07:37.240 doing things like tempo runs, tempo rides, et cetera. Interestingly enough though, when you look

01:07:42.940 at polarized programs, which is again, just zone two and then high intensity and sweet spot programs,

01:07:48.540 which are zone two zone three and high intensity, the outcomes are almost the same, but what shifts

01:07:54.820 things in favor of zone two is a lower likelihood of injury and a lower likelihood of burnout or

01:08:00.320 overtraining. So you certainly can do it. And I think if you are a, if you are a newer runner and

01:08:06.520 you're looking to do something like you want to get a good 5k time or something else, it's probably

01:08:10.940 worth spending some time there just to get used to what it's like pushing yourself for a 20 minute

01:08:15.120 period at that zone three. As it stands though, it's a little bit like saying, okay, I'm a strength

01:08:21.560 athlete and you know, I want to do, you know, heavy singles, doubles, and triples, you know,

01:08:25.860 that has its role and hypertrophy work has its role. But what about doing sets of six with three reps

01:08:32.440 in reserve? You're going, well, there's a training effect to it. It's just not really optimal for

01:08:37.280 anything. You can do it, but it's not the best answer to any training question you could ask.

01:08:43.740 That's the way I look at it. What about zone four slash five training? What's your take on that?

01:08:50.500 Yeah, honestly doing, you know, if you're, if you are just a strength athlete and you're just doing

01:08:56.040 this for health, I would argue you don't have to do that kind of work as long as you're doing some

01:09:00.800 kind of basic strength training or anything else, or even like calisthenics, body weight training,

01:09:04.800 anything else, I would argue you don't need to do that. If your only concern is health,

01:09:08.420 if your concern is performance, you do need to spend some time, you know, anywhere between 12

01:09:13.960 and 20% of your time in those higher range systems, because those do improve a lot of

01:09:20.180 those, you know, actually shorter term energy systems and things like intramuscular coordination

01:09:25.700 and all parts of those things that truly potentiate that base you're building. So if you don't do those,

01:09:31.300 you're going to be holding yourself back. But again, the nice thing about all of this is,

01:09:35.640 is it really only takes a dedicated period of six to eight weeks to absolutely max out

01:09:41.100 your higher, your higher intensity adaptations. In other words, if you've been doing nothing but

01:09:45.820 zone two, and you go, I wonder how much fitness I've built, let me start doing some high intensity

01:09:49.920 stuff. If you do a good amount of solid high intensity work for six to eight weeks, you'll see

01:09:55.400 your potential. No, I think if you played like football in high school, you saw how quickly you

01:10:00.800 can get like, quote unquote, in shape, right? Cause you're just doing like wind sprints,

01:10:04.860 like all summer. And then, uh, yeah, you're in shape and then you can see how quickly it goes

01:10:09.540 away. If you just stop it, it goes away really fast. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, for me, I, for like

01:10:15.860 zone four, I'll do two sessions a week and they're short. It's like, I know more than six minutes where

01:10:20.100 I'm kind of doing like maybe an airdy and circuit, uh, you know, 60 seconds on really hard,

01:10:25.120 20 seconds rest like four or five times. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I tell people that's,

01:10:30.220 that's, that's fine for, you know, 99% of us are going to realize most of the benefits from it,

01:10:34.660 from that. So yeah, that's, that's, that's the way I go with it. Well, Alex, this has been a great

01:10:39.240 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work? Yeah. So a best place is I'm on

01:10:44.200 Instagram at alex.viata or they can look up our complete human performance Instagram, which got links

01:10:50.420 to all our sites, educational materials, coaching. You can find my book,

01:10:54.840 the hybrid athlete there, which, Oh my God, it's at this point, it's getting on close to

01:10:59.160 eight years old, I think. And thinking about writing a new version of it, uh, now that hybrid

01:11:03.140 training has gotten so big, but I would be, uh, you know, again, old books still has a lot of info

01:11:07.680 on it. So yeah, that would be the places to check me out. Awesome. Well, Alex Viata, thanks for your

01:11:11.500 time. It's been a pleasure, Brett. Thank you so much. Real pleasure was all mine. My guest today was

01:11:16.320 Alex Viata. He's the founder of complete human performance. You can find more information about his

01:11:19.800 work at his website, complete human performance.com. Also check out our show notes at

01:11:23.560 aom.is slash zone to refine links, including a link to an in-depth article that we wrote about

01:11:29.260 zone to cardio, the science behind it, the benefits and how to do it. Check that out. Aom.is slash zone

01:11:35.160 to. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

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01:12:18.880 it's Brett McKay. Remind you not to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - January 02, 2023

Get Fit, Not Fried — The Benefits of Zone 2 Cardio

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