Are You Conditioning Enough?
Level 2: Rookie
Welcome Players! A high level of conditioning will allow you to practice longer, more frequently and with higher levels of energy. You will recover from those practices quicker, be able to tolerate more volume of training, and will have the necessary foundation to train anaerobic power in a highly efficient manner without increasing risk of injury. Before you overload on strength training, make sure you have the metabolic efficiency to keep up with your goals and use conditioning to outwork your competition!
Contents:
Warm Up
Benefits of Conditioning
Aerobic / Anaerobic Continuum
Goal-based Conditioning
The Foundation is Aerobic
Conditioning for the Future
Final Thoughts
Warm-Up
So much emphasis has traditionally been placed on the physical requirements for sport such as strength, power, speed, etc. that there is one critical aspect of performance that is often overlooked: the endurance of the athlete.
After all, it was originally called Strength & Conditioning.
So what happened to the conditioning?!
Somewhere in the past decade with an abundance of research being performed on the optimal ways to develop muscular adaptions, coaches got lost in the whirlwind of strength and forgot what the real goal of training really is: to improve at sport.
The goal is the single most influential factor in developing a training program.
For every input in a training program the question you have to ask yourself is, “Will doing this help me improve at my sport (or goal) the most?”
“The most” is the key component. Training is about efficiency. Efficiency with your time and efficiency with how you spend that time training for adaptations.
Getting stronger is certainly the most efficient way to improve performance if you have generally very low levels of strength.
But what if you’re already "strong enough”? Will getting even stronger provide enough ROTS (Return on Time Spent) to justify it?
Or will becoming more aerobically fit have a higher ROTS?
Or will developing higher levels of POWER from strength be more beneficial?
Or maybe improving mobility at key joints will improve performance the most?
The point is, what should be included in your training program is almost entirely dependent on what the goal of your training is and what your current levels of performance are.
I wrote “Are You Resistance Training Too Much” for the athletes who spend the majority of their time strength training, missing out on a complete view of performance by limiting themselves to one attribute.
This article serves as the counterpart, providing insight into the less-often practiced art of conditioning and how improved cardio-metabolic endurance could be the key to leaving your performance plateau and elevating to a new level.
To get the most out of this information I recommend you familiarize yourself with the concepts of programming and sport performance training with these articles:
With that said, let’s get into what conditioning entails and how you can improve your fitness through training by working smarter, not harder.
Aerobic vs. Anaerobic Energy Systems
The first thing to consider when conditioning is which energy system you’re trying to improve.
Training is the act of undergoing a specific stimulus/stress to achieve a desired adaptation.
Running 10 kilometers won’t improve your 100 meter sprint time and likewise running 100m sprints won’t improve your 10km run time.1
Why?
Because they utilize different energy systems.
There are entire textbooks devoted to the physiological function of the different energy systems. Our goal here is to give you a working (basic) understanding of them so you can immediately improve your conditioning.
Energy Systems on the Spectrum
There are three (3) main systems the human body uses to produce the energy required for movement. All three rely on the production of ATP to fuel muscular contractions.
Creatine-Phoshpate (Anaerobic)
Glycolytic (Anaerobic glycolysis)
Oxidative (Aerobic)
The most important thing to understand about the energy systems is that although they are taught in a black-and-white manner, it is more likely that each energy system is operating simultaneously at different intensities depending on the environment.
The anaerobic energy system is best suited for providing large amounts energy in short time frames (<6 seconds).
The anaerobic glycolytic energy system is most useful for providing energy in short to medium time frames (30s - 1 minute).
The aerobic energy system is the most efficient at producing energy for long-term endurance events (5+ minutes).
If those ranges seem broad and non-specific, that’s because they are!
The ranges are more to give an idea of when that energy system is providing the majority of the ATP in that interval, not to say it’s the only energy system supplying ATP.
Let’s briefly go over each before getting in to how to train for their adaptations.
Anaerobic System (Creatine-Phosphate)
The greatest amount of energy is created and released in the shortest amount of time via the creatine-phosphate (CP) system.
When the body has a rapid increase in demand for energy it is supplied immediately by CP, which is mainly stored in the skeletal muscle itself - ready for activation when called upon.
The benefit of the CP system is that it can produce large amounts of ATP very quickly.
But once it’s utilized its supply, it takes significant amount of time to replenish it - upwards of 6 minutes or more to reach near-full stores.
You can increase your local stores of creatine-phosphate by increasing your systemic creatine intake - which is exactly what creatine supplementation is designed to do. By supplementing with creatine you are increasing the stores of CP available at the muscle to use while training (if in the CP system), thus allowing you to do more repetitions.
But once the initial stores of CP are depleted, your body must turn to other energy systems to supply ATP for your exercise until it has been given the appropriate amount of time to replenish it’s stores.
Glycolytic System (Anaerobic Glycolysis)
The next available energy the body calls upon to sustain activity is via glycolysis. If that sounds familiar it’s because the root glyco- (meaning “sugar”) is very similar to the word glucose, which is sugar!
Glycolysis therefore is the breakdown (-lysis) of sugar.
During glycolysis, glucose is converted into pyruvate through a series of enzymatic reactions that do not require oxygen. The pyruvate can then be further metabolized through a variety of pathways, including the production of lactate.2
The result of these reactions at every step of the way is the production of ATP which is then used to fuel our muscle contractions.
One benefit of anaerobic glycolysis is that because it does not require oxygen it too can produce ATP relatively quickly, but does not produce the same amount of ATP as the creatine-phosphate system.
Because it can produce smaller amounts of ATP relatively quickly, it does not require as much time to replenish its stores during exercise compared to the CP system.
The anaerobic glycolysis system is responsible for providing the energy for work after the anaerobic system is depleted and before the aerobic system takes over. You’ll see how this works in the examples following.
Aerobic Energy System
The aerobic energy system is a highly efficient way that our body produces ATP in order to create energy in our body. It is highly dependent on oxygen, and thus respiration, in order to produce ATP.
The aerobic energy system produces its energy at a much slower rate and in much smaller amounts but is able to sustain production for almost unlimited amount of time if the molecules that drive the reaction are present.
It is also unique in the sense that it can use fatty acids in addition to glucose (a carbohydrate) in order to produce ATP.
Because it can produce ATP per unit of oxygen consumed with respect to availability of fatty acids / glucose, the aerobic system is directly tied to the performance of your breathing and the quality of nutrition in your diet.
Goal-Based Conditioning
In order to know which energy system you should spend time developing - you have to determine what the primary energy system your sport utilizes.
Let’s go over a few of the easy ones:
Golf: A short, powerful movement performed intermittently over the course of 4 or more hours on 2 or more consecutive days.
Anaerobic energy system for each swing, as day goes on becomes increasingly more glycolytic depending on pace of play, nutrient consumption, skill level, etc. Large aerobic base required to store enough capacity for anaerobic repetition.
Running/Biking/Swimming: Endurance sports that require constant movement at a certain pace. Primarily aerobic efficiency with bouts of anaerobic spurts for speed.
Basketball: A fast-paced, explosive game played with varying play periods and frequent breaks in play for recovery. Primarily between anaerobic and anaerobic glycolytic energy systems depending on position and player. Aerobic base required for repetitive play and to maximize anaerobic efficiency.
You can figure out what kind of energy system your sport uses by simply breaking down the structure of the game. How long is the “play” going on? How long are the breaks in play? What’s the timing structure of the game?
A sport like Soccer (fútbol) on 45-min running halves is a much more aerobic sport that requires intense anaerobic activity when necessary as opposed to a sport like baseball which is mostly anaerobic in nature unless you’re a pitcher where you’re throwing every pitch and thus relying on more aerobic dominance to get through the game.
One thing you’ll notice in all the examples above, and one of my main points of emphasis on the underrated importance of conditioning, is how important an aerobic base is regardless of sport.
The Foundation is Aerobic
The aerobic base is literally the foundation for which all future performance rests - metabolically speaking.
You can think of an athletes aerobic efficiency as their fuel tank. The greater the aerobic base, the more energy they have to work with.
Their anaerobic efficiency is their engine. The bigger engine (V12) can rocket through fuel creating massive amounts of horsepower (movement), while a smaller engine is more limited.
Put a huge engine on a small fuel tank and you’ve got an athlete who is good for one prime effort. There are very little, if any, sports where this profile is a competitive advantage.
But even if you put a super small engine on a huge fuel tank - well now you have an ultra-endurance competitor! And their engine really isn’t that small.
So regardless of what demands your sport has it will be imperative to train to upgrade your fuel tank so that when you do eventually get a bigger engine, your car is off to the finish line.
When most coaches look at conditioning, they’re only looking at what the demands of the athlete is during competition. The problem with this thought-process is it’s not taking into account the entire work/effort required to get to the competition, nor the effects of what happens after the competition.
The more aerobically fit you are the more efficient you will be with energy production and the more “fuel” you’ll have when anaerobically training. For a sport like football, where practice is daily and the games are intense, greater aerobic fitness means more efficient energy expenditure in practice and a quicker recovery between games. This can be the difference between players (or teams) playing at full-health in the playoffs or teams literally limping in.
Another reason aerobic efficiency should make up the foundation of your conditioning is because it requires extensive volume over a long period of time to build an aerobic base.
It takes years to log the amount of volume required for a highly efficient and functioning aerobic system. No matter how much or how hard you train, the adaptations just aren’t possible in a short-time frame.
Anaerobic conditioning on the other hand, can be trained and adapted to in the manner of weeks or months.
With this in mind it’s easy to see why it would be a higher priority to continuously be working on your aerobic efficiency and then when the time is right, cycle into anaerobic training blocks in a periodized fashion.
This gives you the best of both worlds: A strong, resilient aerobic base that acts as the foundation for powerful anaerobic work to be done on top of it.
High aerobic fitness increases your potential for performance, whereas high anaerobic fitness realizes your potential. Building a high aerobic base for an anaerobic athlete means that if they can maintain the same efficiency of effort, their performance increase will be drastic! An athlete with a larger aerobic base does not need to be as efficient in their energy production, whereas an athlete with a small aerobic base needs to be extremely efficient in order to achieve the same output.
Conditioning for the Future
What makes an optimal conditioning plan then?
Well - the dreaded yet truthful answer is - it depends.
The sport, training experience, physical ability, and training resources all will factor in to how a conditioning program is developed for any one individual.
Since the specificity of the person + environment is so high, let’s just go over some general recommendations that will apply to most athletes.
The Aerobic Base
Long, Slow, and Steady.
That’s what every athlete should be incorporating into their year-round conditioning.
What does long slow and steady actually look like?
It looks like Zone 1 (on the intensity zone, not HR zones) for about 80% of your metabolic training volume. For most athletes, this is simply 2-4 hours a week of a light run or a slow bike ride.
The magic in aerobic conditioning is that requires very little effort. You don’t have to work hard. A sentence you will rarely ever hear in the training environment!
But you do have to be disciplined and consistent.
It can take six months to build the early stages of a good aerobic energy system, and six weeks of absence to blow it all away.
The other piece of aerobic conditioning is that it has to be easy!
That’s why we use the intensity zones via active heart rate to limit the speed or pace of the conditioning.
Athlete X has a max heart rate of 200. They want to figure our what their aerobic conditioning intensity should be.
Using the intensity zones we can estimate 60% of their max heart rate to get their zone 1 intensity.
0.6 X 200 = 120 bpm.
Now this athlete has to choose a modality, let’s say they want to go running.
They’ll need a heart rate monitor (I recommend the Polar H10) to monitor their heart rate while they run.
In order to be effectively training the aerobic energy system, they’ll want to run at a pace that keeps their heart rate around 115 bpm, or just under 120.
The other part of the equation is volume. Aerobic efficiency trains best with long (>60m) sessions in order to encourage optimal physiological adaptation.
So let’s say they start off with two 60-minute sessions a week, for a total volume of 120-minutes at <120 bpm intensity.
They can then scale that volume (120m) by 10-20% (arbitrary) every week until they achieve their desired volume, lets say 240-minutes / week.
As long as they keep their pace within the targeted heart rate, they’ll be well on their way to developing a strong aerobic base to then build upon in later stages of conditioning.
Anaerobic Conditioning
Now that our athlete has had six months (or longer!) of aerobic conditioning, they have a large enough fuel tank to handle higher intensity work.
But even when they begin anaerobic conditioning, the aerobic training doesn’t stop.
Aerobic efficiency is a forever-attribute. To maintain it’s efficiency and continue to push it’s development you need to be training it!
When the cycle of conditioning programming calls for anaerobic training the proportion of training changes, not a complete switch.
For example, an off-season football athlete might make up the majority of their conditioning with aerobic conditioning for the first three months of the off-season (Feb-April), with little to no anaerobic conditioning.
These long slow steady sessions allow the athlete to recover from the intense season while encouraging adaptation in their aerobic efficiency.
When they begin to get ready for their pre-season camps, sometime around May, they may start to adjust the proportions of Aerobic to Anaerobic training.
If the first 3 months were 100:0 (aerobic:anaerobic), the next 2 months might look more like 90:10. Still consistently aerobic training, but starting to incorporate anaerobic work 10% of the volume of conditioning.
When July rolls around and it’s time to prepare for training camp, they might scale even further towards anaerobic training to the tune of 80:20. Even now, at the portion of their conditioning where anaerobic training makes up the most it’s ever been, it’s still only at 20% of the total volume!
Why??
There are a few reasons conditioning is programmed this way:
The intensity relative to time required to complete anaerobic training is extremely different from aerobic training. While they may be able to complete a 2-3hr bike ride in zone 1 intensity, they will only be able to run sprints for MAYBE 10-20 minutes (of actual sprint timing) during the course of an anaerobic session. This is reflected as unequal, but in reality is because anaerobic training requires significantly less time under stress to encourage the adaptation compared to aerobic training.
Because of the intensity of anaerobic training, the recovery time necessary to get back to full potential is significantly longer than aerobic training. Once mildly conditioned you should be able to train in the lower intensities (aerobically) nearly every day without recourse. Anaerobically on the other hand needs to be balanced over the course of the week relative to volume requirements, meaning they might have a truly anaerobic once every 3-4 days.
The more anaerobic the sport the higher the % of volume anaerobic training will make up, but regardless of goals the aerobic training is still a requirement to develop the full base!
From there you can then scale the anaerobic training to your needs.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of variables to take into consideration when trying to prepare for optimal performance in sport.
That’s why there are professionals like me whose job it is to take all these variables into account and produce the best plan for that person to achieve success.
Separate from the practice of the sport itself (which I wrote about here), physical training can make significant improvements towards your performance.
Strength & Conditioning, or performance training, is highly effective at improving physical capabilities as they relate to the execution of your sport.
Strength training is important for the obvious reasons, and has a plethora of community understanding as to how and why it’s important.
Conditioning on the other hand, is strength training’s little brother that is oft forgot about, unjustly so!
Conditioning, meaning establishing and operating with a metabolic efficiency to perform large amounts of work over a long period of time, is vital to the long-term performance of an elite athlete.
A high level of conditioning will allow the athlete to practice longer, more frequently, and with higher energy levels than their non-conditioned counterpart. They will also recover from those practices quicker, be able to tolerate more volume of training, and will have the necessary foundation to train anaerobic (power) in a highly efficient manner without increasing risk of injury.
It must be stated that no one attribute is more important than the others.
They all present equal opportunity to improve performance, but will yield unequal results relative to the athlete training.
This means that a strong, unconditioned athlete will benefit more from conditioning than a conditioned athlete.
But it also means a weak, conditioned athlete will benefit more strength training than they would more conditioning!
The art of programming revolves around understanding the needs of the athlete, understanding their personality, and understanding the science of performance to give them the right inputs to achieve a desired adaptation.
It’s certainly not easy, but I hope that the material contained in Train Like a Pro brings you one step closer to taking control of your performance!
Have a question? Want to share your experience with us so others can learn too?
Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. The content is purely educational in nature and should be filtered through ones own lens of common sense and applicability.
Adaptations occur on a spectrum, so it’s not as black and white as it seems. Doing anything will improve your overall fitness, but here at Train Like a Pro we are seeking to achieve optimal adaptations, which means doing efficient work where the least amount of work achieves the greatest amount of adaptation.
This is an extremely simplified explanation of the reactions that occur during glycolysis, but the point is that it’s an anaerobic breakdown of glucose to produce ATP quickly.