Ever wonder what you should be doing for your conditioning?
Conditioning, also called cardio or energy systems development is confusing for the novice to advanced fitness enthusiast.
The physical benefits of conditioning include improved cardiovascular health, overall endurance, body composition management, a stronger immune system, resilience and can carry over to better mental health.
But how much should you do?
What can you do on your own versus what you can do in the gym?
Let’s look at this in three categories.
For low intensity conditioning, where your heart rate isn’t getting over 120-130 beats per minute depending on your health metrics, you can train at a frequency of three low intensity sessions a week for 60-90 minutes total. Most lower intensity conditioning can be done nasal breathing.
For moderate intensity conditioning, where your heart rate might be between 120-150 beats per minute, you can train at a frequency of two moderate intensity sessions a week for 12-30 minutes total.
For higher intensity conditioning, where you’re working very hard performing intense bursts working at 90% or more of your max output, you’d be looking at 4-12 minutes total work for a frequency of one session per week.
My friends at Principles Of Program Design call this the 3-2-1 Method.
Most people go wrong by doing moderate intensity all the time and very little low and high. This is what a lot of boot camps program as well as chain gyms like Orange Theory deliver.
Also, when people do “HIIT” training, they’re commonly nowhere near the output needed to make it intense, and their work to rest ratios are all over the place, don’t make sense, making it nearly impossible to recover to be intense enough (or at all) for the round(s).In Thursday’s newsletter, we’ll go over how to program this for yourself in a weekly schedule and include the different tools and protocols you can use at each level.