How Much Conditioning Work Should You Be Doing?

It's time to bring my mini-series of emails on aerobic fitness and conditioning work to a close, with an answer to the original question you probably had on your mind. How much conditioning work should YOU be doing? And now we know the basics of the heart rate training zones, and the benefits of zone 2 aerobic training, you can start to piece things together into a productive strength AND conditioning plan. It's obviously person and goal specific, but let's tackle this from the perspective of my general client base.

• Age: 30-45 years old

• Training Experience: 3 years +

• Goals: Increased strength, athleticism, muscle and fitness.

• Training Schedule: 3x p/w strength training (i.e. M/W/F).

If that sounds a little bit like you, and you want to add some conditioning work on top of the strength training you're already doing, then this below advice will work great for you. How Much Conditioning Work Should You Be Doing? When programming conditioning into your program, you need to consider the overall aims. In this scenario, we want to maintain or even continue to build strength and muscle, alongside getting fitter aerobically and anaerobically. With 3 strength training sessions already in your program, with 4 rest days all evenly spaced, recovery is likely going to be in a good place. Adding additional conditioning on top is going to add a significant additional recovery demand. If you go too big with your conditioning work, your recovery will drop, and your progress will slow, or more likely come to a grinding halt. So the first recommendation is to do the minimum effective dose of conditioning to start with. That means, the smallest amount of training that brings about a positive adaptation. Over time, this can increase and build into phases of maximal tolerated dose (the maximum amount you can handle without overtraining), but its always smartest to undercook first, then add a little heat if needed, rather than burn your buns by going too hot too soon. So What's The Minimum Effective Dose Of Conditioning? With a good understanding of the basics of the heart rate training zones, we know that:

• Zone 1: Too low intensity to drive adaptation.

• Zone 2: Great for aerobic conditioning, very easy to recover from.

• Zone 3: Beige AF. Too fast for aerobic training, and too slow for effective anaerobic training.

• Zone 4: Great for anaerobic training, higher recovery demand.

• Zone 5: Very hard, very fast, very high recovery demand.

If we're focussing on the minimum effective dose and wanting to push aerobic and anaerobic adaptations without creating a crazy additional recovery demands a solid approach can be:

• More Zone 2 (aerobic benefits with minimal additional recovery demands).

• Some Zone 4 (anaerobic benefits but additional recovery demands).

• A little Zone 5 (anaerobic power benefits but high recovery demands).

And how might that look?

• Zone 2: 60-80 minutes per week.

• Zone 4: 20-30 minutes per week.

• Zone 5: 5-10 minutes per week.
  

As a starting point for most people, that would be a solid recommendation that would start showing benefits, without crushing you with the additional training you'd be doing. How To Build That Into Your Training Week. Finally, you just need to make sure you space this out in your training week sensibly, so that your training feels great, and you can realistically do the productive work you're aiming to do. The zone 2 work is the biggest time demand, so you may want to break that up a bit over a few sessions. The zone 4 and 5 work is short enough to do in a one-off effort, so you can place them straight into your training plan. A very effective approach to training strength, anaerobic and aerobic conditioning is to keep the high intensity/low volume work (heavy lifting/anaerobic conditioning) together, and away from the low intensity/high volume work (higher rep lifting/aerobic conditioning). Using that framework, a training week could look like this: Monday: 45-60 Mins Strength + 5-10 Mins Zone 5 Intervals Tuesday: 20-30 Mins Zone 4 Conditioning. Wednesday: 45-60 Mins Strength. Thursday: 20-30 Mins Zone 2/Recovery Conditioning. Friday: 45-60 Mins Strength: Saturday: 50-60 Mins Zone 2 Conditioning. Sunday: Rest. If you wanted an extra rest day, you could take the 20-30 minutes zone 2 on the Thursday out, and put it after your strength training on the Wednesday/Friday. The key is, that the zone 2 stays zone 2 so you recover from it easily, the zone 4 stays zone 4 so 20-30 minutes of it doesn't crush you on Tuesday, and that your Zone 5 is a quick in and out job. And that's how much conditioning you should be doing as a starting point to improve your conditioning alongside your strength training. Thanks, Ian.