photo credit: thelastminute
Patrick and I have recently created some Google Alerts to bring directly to us interesting conversations happening out in the tri-space. We always enjoy connecting with other athletes on blogs and in forums. As we do more of that, we’ll share those thoughts and conversations with you, our Feaders, Fans and Followers, in our blog.
Question: “Should I avoid training in Zone 3?”
Rich Strauss: To answer the Z3 questions, lets first sorta define the zones we are talking about 
When we speak heart rate training, we are using “Friel Zones:” determined as a percentage of lactate threshold heart rate, where the top of Zone 4 is your lactate threshold heart rate.
We then look at zones as intensity levels that are useful tools to dial in/target specific fitness adaptations at specific points in the season:
- Z4: in our world, this is where you are recruiting lots and lots of slow and fast twitch fibers, forcing them all to adapt and get better at what they do. This is our “make you faster” zone that we really focus on in the off-season. That focus decreases as we move deeper into the season: we get closer to the race = training becomes more race specific, volume goes up = we apply more time to z1-2 below.
- Z1-2: in our world, slowtwitch fibers are recruited, but no/not many fast twitch. Bottomline, a lot of fibers go unrecruited = limited adaptation. However, this where you’re going to spend alll your time in an Ironman race day = this is THE zone for race specific adaptations for the IM distance. Therefore we spend more and more time in z1-2 as we get closer to the race and training should become more race specific. However, we avoid/don’t do much time at all in these zones in the offseason. Again, in our world, we believe you should very closely manage (ie, limit) your training time in the offseason. This is for mental health reasons, frankly. But your stated goal to us is to make you a faster athlete and, in our experience, our most time efficient tool for doing that is the Z4 work above.
That said, yes, there are absolutely different considerations, primarily injury, for z4 work on the bike and run, and we manage intensity for each sport differently. That is, very, very little z1-2 work on the bike in the offseason because, in our experience, the risk of injury is very low. However, more z1-2 intensity in the offseason run because the risk of running injury is higher.
Zone 3 has been an interesting place for us. This is HIM race-specific intensity for athletes finishing probably…riding faster than a 3:30 bike and running faster than…about 2:15? Kinda swagging those, I admit. However, my point is that you should be thinking that Z3 is where your going to spend a good bit of your day in an HIM = the race specific intensity I should be targeting closer to my race.
However, what we’ve also found is that Z3 is where you can spend a lot of time in your training, getting lots of z1-2 benefits as well as a good bit of z4 benefits. In the power-training world it’s called “Sweet Spot” training and we’ve figure out how/when to prescribe it for the bike and run across beginner, intermediate, and advanced athletes. The way I describe it is that its just “work.” I’m not noodling, but I’m not hammering. I’m in Always Be Pushing (ABP) mode. This is just a very high ROI (Return On time Invested) intensity to sit on.
Hope this helps,
Want to take part in a conversation with us? Just follow TeamEN on Twitter, and Tweet us your question, link to your forum or blog post and we’ll do our best to share our ideas with you and your friends!
Popularity: 18% [?]
Meet the EN Women
