Endurance Physiology vs. Performance

We touched recently on how to train for strength using the heavy-light-medium template. For my money, that’s probably the easiest format you could use to introduce a beginner (or even an intermediate) athlete to strength training with enough variety to allow for a lifetime of potential strength gains. 

In this article, I want to do something similar for endurance training. We won’t use the same template-based format that I used with Heavy-Light-Medium, but the goal remains the same: introduce tangible concepts that a coach or athlete can use to get started on appropriate aerobic development.

MY ARGUMENT FOR ENDURANCE TRAINING

When I started working with tactical athletes, I was fresh off of a master's degree in strength and conditioning. The unfortunate reality of the formalized strength and conditioning space is that the “strength” piece is often emphasized at the expense of the “conditioning.” Pull any random strength and conditioning coach aside and ask them to rattle off rep ranges for building absolute strength. They’ll ace the test. Ask them the same question about setting up an appropriate progression for aerobic base building and they’ll likely give you a blank stare. I don’t blame the coach in this example, I blame the industry. Strength training is easy to force into boxes on an Excel sheet and patterns in our heads. It’s “easy” to program for and thus becomes easy to idolize at even the highest professional levels. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to appropriate training for tactical athletes, we have it backward. The nature of combat is endurance. Sure there may be strength and power elements thrown into the mix (kicking a door, for example), but at the end of the day it’s the individual who can last longest, think clearest, and move most efficiently who will win the day. All of these essential traits, and more, are the product of a robust aerobic system. 

PERFORMANCE VS PHYSIOLOGY

One of the frameworks that I’ve developed for thinking about endurance training effectively puts every possible session you could do into one of two buckets: Performance or Physiology. 

PHYSIOLOGY BUCKET

When we think about training stimuli and adaptations to imposed demands, what we’re really looking at is physiology. From an aerobic/endurance training standpoint, this might mean that we’re looking to increase blood flow to the muscles through capillary density, increase the ability to handle oxygen via Vo2max or increase the athlete’s ability to move quickly via alterations in muscle fiber type. Effectively, we’re looking to make alterations to the athlete’s physiological makeup such that future aerobic sessions become easier and easier.

From a programming standpoint, these sessions are almost exclusively what I would consider “Zone 2” training. When I prescribe this type of work, I’m less concerned with a specific pace (or even a specific mileage) and am instead looking at various constraints (heart rate, etc.) and total time/volume. Oftentimes these sessions can be challenging for athletes without much exposure to aerobic base-building work because they are more used to being given a set distance and moving as quickly as possible to complete the task. In doing so, the athlete unfortunately creates a physiological environment that may not optimize the adaptation that we’re going after…a more robust aerobic base.  

PERFORMANCE BUCKET

When we look at performance training, we’re more inclined to create sessions that are targeting a specific goal. For example, an athlete may have an upcoming 5k race or 2-mile run assessment with a particular pace in mind. The goal pace and distance form the backbone of the session and we become more focused on performance outcomes (i.e. did they hit the interval target) and less worried about physiological metrics (i.e. heart rate). 

Naturally, we must consider the risk/reward of this type of work. When we look beyond our physiological metrics towards a specific performance goal, we run the risk of pushing the athlete into a sort of “red zone” which requires additional recovery and increases the risk of injury.

If our Physiology Bucket represents the slow build-up of accumulated work over time, the Performance Bucket is the sharpening of the knife that allows us to achieve our goal at the right place and time. 

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

If we think of the Physiology-Performance framework as a spectrum, conversations around how to program for endurance become quite simple. For the large majority of our training calendar, the bias should be toward the Physiology-type sessions. Long, steady efforts conducted at an easy pace (Zone 2, nose breathing, etc) that increase in duration as the athlete adapts. If you’re familiar with the 80/20 concept as it pertains to endurance training, these types of sessions fall into the 80% category.

The shift towards Performance-type training begins once we are within striking distance of a specific goal. For the sake of argument, we’ll say that six months out from a benchmark race or assessment we should start to shift towards more specific work. There are myriad ways to do this, but a simple approach might be to take one of your longer endurance days and add a handful of quick intervals at the end at goal race pace. As we move closer to the event, that session may shift entirely into the tempo/interval/speed domain. As we move even closer, it might be that a second endurance day gets dropped in favor of some additional pace work. The specifics should be very athlete-dependent, but the overarching principles and ideas remain relatively the same. 

AN IMPORTANT POINT

I want to make an important point here before closing things out: a well-structured endurance program should include elements of aerobic work and speed work at all times. Oftentimes, this can be as simple as injecting some surges or light sprints into a longer steady-state run. On the flip side, even as we approach our goal race, we would do well to maintain at least one day a week of long, slow, distance work to keep the physiology in check.

As with all things, effective programming for endurance is less about fitting together puzzle pieces and more about adjusting volume knobs. Spend most of your time building up robust physiology by ticking off slow, steady miles so that when the time comes to shift into performance mode, the raw material is there to be honed.