Better Intervals Today
On Wednesdays many of you have 20-30 minutes of intervals in your program.
Broadly speaking, these intervals are to improve your aerobic capacity, or well your body can utilize oxygen. Training to improve endurance.
Many people don’t like doing the 8-10 minute warm up we prescribe before a long bout of intervals, but this is the most important part!
When doing intervals to improve aerobic capacity we typically want to accumulate time with your heart rate around 70% of your maximum. If you’ve been hanging out, working or driving all day, your body isn’t prepared to exercise. Warming up circulates your blood, increases body temperature and gradually prepares your body. Without first warming up, intervals feel harder and you’re probably going slower - both only hurting your progress.
They feel harder because your heart rate is likely to spike above this range. Your body doesn’t have a chance to prepare for exercise by doing things like moving your blood from your core to your working extremities. It feels really hard to go from resting to 80% of your heart rate max. You give less effort on the next set, and your heart rate spikes just as hard because it went from 0 to 60 too fast and this is how it can buffer it.
That’s an unproductive workout. Your heart rate got high, but not high enough to work on high intensity training, and it wasn’t low enough to improve your base. Basically it just felt hard, but lands in a gray zone of effectiveness. Many runners face this problem and their runs are easy but not actually easy enough once they throw on a heart rate monitor.
I digress, this isn’t a blog to convince you to get a chest strap. Instead, it’s a reminder that warming up for a bout of intervals is only going to improve the quality and the training effect you get from it. Some days you have to cram it in and get it over with - not a big deal to skip a warm up now and again. But if you always skip it and go straight for intervals, you’re leaving fitness on the table.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain