![]() ![]() Your HRV or heart rate variability is considered to be a barometer of your parasympathetic nervous system activity. This technology is available to everyone with a heart strap (preferably Polar) and a smart phone. The science behind using DFA-Alpha1 is very complex… and way over my head. I’ve hit my max HR on some trail races- a most unpleasant experience! Your resting HR is your HR in bed as soon as you wake up and before you get up. ![]() For an accurate assessment, we need to know your maximum HR and your resting HR. Using your heart rate (HR) is probably your best way to identify what zone you are in. Heart rate: When you are in Zone 2 your heart rate is somewhere between 65-75% of your maximum heart rate. Read: Polarized or 80/20 Running: Train Slow To Run Fast Methods to calculate your Zone 2 heart rate. These will precisely determine when you transition in and out of Zone 2. You are mainly using fat oxidation for energy production in this zone.įor performance athletes and high level endurance athletes, it is well worth your effort to go to a performance lab for a professional determination of your LT1 and LT2. Anything below your LT1 is considered aerobic. We’ll call it the first lactic acid threshold or LT1. That transition point goes by many names. Until recently athletes needed to go to a performance lab, or stick themselves to measure lactic acid to try and determine where they transitioned from aerobic (fat oxidation) to Zone 3 and above. For the rest of us, we need to slow down to stay in zone 2, but as your aerobic base becomes stronger, you will be able to run faster and longer while staying in Zone 2. Some very well trained runners need to run pretty hard to stay in zone 2. If you live in a hilly area, you may find that you need to walk those hills at first to maintain your heart rate in Zone 2. It is a pace that is slow enough to allow you to stay in your Zone 2 heart rate target zone. You can talk during the run, you can breathe through your nose during the run. Simply put, zone 2 running is an “easy” run. Lactate, the lactate shuttle, and the science behind lactic threshold training are discussed in this article. How can you build that shuttle’s capacity? Correct, zone 2 training. Well-trained athletes can “shuttle” that lactate back into the mitochondria to use as fuel. Once you cross the ceiling of zone 2 you are burning more glucose (glycolysis) this will cause your lactate to rise. Training more in higher zones isn’t going to improve your overall performance as much as your lower HR efforts. The only way to build a strong aerobic base is with months of base training in zone 2. As I discussed here, the best way to improve your lactic acid threshold performance is with a strong aerobic base. The harder efforts or the 20% are important too. With polarized training, 80%+ of your training is completed in zones 1 or 2. Zone 2 training even improves your faster training. The same is not true about our glycogen stores. The reason why you can maintain low heart rate efforts for a long time is that we have an infinite source of energy available to us in terms of our fat stores. That rate will depend on how well trained you are, and how well your mitochondria clear the lactate. The rate at which you fatigue is variable. Once you recruit your Type 2 muscle fibers, you will start to fatigue. This equates to you feeling like you can maintain your efforts for a long time. There is always some glucose being burned… so lactate will rise a bit in zone 2, but it should rise to a point and stay there. In Zone 2 training we want to be firing all our Type 1 fibers and not fire or use our type 2 fibers.
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