I have tried everything I can think of for cardio. Miles of hill sprints. Intense combination workouts, mixing the rower with medicine ball plyometrics or mixing sprints with push/pull workouts. I've competed in a triathlon (only a short one 
). At one point I was running 13 miles twice a week. I've done spin classes, boot camp classes and circuit training and I've done all of these for extended periods (6 months+).
After reading Joel Jamieson's work, my understanding changed. The anaerobic systems have little room for improvement and working them leaves you mangled. I get enough anaerobic work from weight lifting and playing my sport. The real key to conditioning is aerobic training.
Arthur Lydiard was a New Zealand running coach who produced Olympic champions from a population the size of Wales. He studied Kenyan training and, altitude training aside, he had all of his distance runners, from 800m up, do marathon training of 100 miles per week to build their aerobic engine. To prepare for competition, he would have his athletes do some lower level races about 6 weeks out.
I can't run 100 miles per week. I'm not 6'4 at 140lbs and I am simply not built for that sort of distance. I get injuries from running more than 15 miles per week for extended periods. Fortunately, I am a mixed ability athlete (strength, conditioning and skill), so I do not have to match the training of an Olympic runner. However, as far as conditioning goes, Lydiard's mantra of "Miles Make Champions" is accurate.
The predominant goal of my non specific conditioning training is to build my aerobic engine and predominantly I am looking to increase the size of my left ventricle by stretching it. This will mean that each heart beat provides more blood and therefore more oxygen. To do this, my target heart range is 130-150bpm. Any lower and I'm not really working hard enough to stretch the chamber as much as I could; any higher and the ventricle is pumping blood out before it has fully expanded.
A metric for charting progress is resting heart rate. For me to be in shape for a 15 minute MMA match, I have my RHR ideally down in the low 40s. Mid 40s may be fine for someone else. This requires me to do around 2 hours of cardio a week. It may change for someone else but not by a huge amount.
I find running to be the easiest rpe (relative perceived effort) exercise to get my HR in the right zone but also the most taxing on my body. Cycling, rower, elliptical etc don't get my HR as high with the same effort but they do provide less injuries. However, the holy grail for me has been swimming. It does take longer to get your HR up but in my experience this is irrelevant. If I put in the same effort in the pool as I do on the pavement, I get equal results. 2 hours per week of swimming lengths at a leisurely pace gets my RHR down to 42. And it's virtually zero impact. I'm not beaten up the next day.
How has this worked for me and how does it apply to the real world? When I switched to aerobic training, I measured my power at threshold with a spin bike. For the next 6 months I started jogging at an easy 10 min/pace. I didn't touch the spin bike in that time. After 6 months, I retested my P@T and it had increased 40%. I don't know about you but that blew my mind. Watching my wattage not only break but destroy the 200 barrier was crazy. I could put out 40% more effort in my fights AND MAINTAIN IT. The same has happened for the fighters I train - cardio went through the roof.
So we've covered building the aerobic engine. But we all know that a good runner will gas hard in a fight. Why? They have the cardiac development to succeed but they do not have the efficiency. Their muscles are not trained for repeatedly pushing and pulling at higher intensities, they don't have the experience to be able to pace themselves and use the right techniques at the right time and they don't have the experience to avoid a panic response when someone is attacking them.
How do we cover those factors? By playing our sport. Mat time. Get the rounds in. Again, you do not need to go crazy but you DO need mat time. Martial arts are skill based and like any skill based sport (tennis, basketball, hockey, archery etc) you must practise a lot to develop those skills. Get your CNS, muscles and reflexes to adapt to the spcifics of your sport.
So in summary, work in the aerobic zone, using HR and RHR as metrics, and play your sport a lot. Neither is enough by itself. Well, 5 minute BJJ matches will probably be OK if you just put in a lot of mat time but certainly not MMA.
Like always, happy to answer qustions. Next I'll make a thread about programming.
Update: I've switched to cycling and by using the gears, I can get my HR in the right zone and I don't feel all bashed like I do with running and it is much more fun than laps of a pool.
). At one point I was running 13 miles twice a week. I've done spin classes, boot camp classes and circuit training and I've done all of these for extended periods (6 months+).After reading Joel Jamieson's work, my understanding changed. The anaerobic systems have little room for improvement and working them leaves you mangled. I get enough anaerobic work from weight lifting and playing my sport. The real key to conditioning is aerobic training.
Arthur Lydiard was a New Zealand running coach who produced Olympic champions from a population the size of Wales. He studied Kenyan training and, altitude training aside, he had all of his distance runners, from 800m up, do marathon training of 100 miles per week to build their aerobic engine. To prepare for competition, he would have his athletes do some lower level races about 6 weeks out.
I can't run 100 miles per week. I'm not 6'4 at 140lbs and I am simply not built for that sort of distance. I get injuries from running more than 15 miles per week for extended periods. Fortunately, I am a mixed ability athlete (strength, conditioning and skill), so I do not have to match the training of an Olympic runner. However, as far as conditioning goes, Lydiard's mantra of "Miles Make Champions" is accurate.
The predominant goal of my non specific conditioning training is to build my aerobic engine and predominantly I am looking to increase the size of my left ventricle by stretching it. This will mean that each heart beat provides more blood and therefore more oxygen. To do this, my target heart range is 130-150bpm. Any lower and I'm not really working hard enough to stretch the chamber as much as I could; any higher and the ventricle is pumping blood out before it has fully expanded.
A metric for charting progress is resting heart rate. For me to be in shape for a 15 minute MMA match, I have my RHR ideally down in the low 40s. Mid 40s may be fine for someone else. This requires me to do around 2 hours of cardio a week. It may change for someone else but not by a huge amount.
I find running to be the easiest rpe (relative perceived effort) exercise to get my HR in the right zone but also the most taxing on my body. Cycling, rower, elliptical etc don't get my HR as high with the same effort but they do provide less injuries. However, the holy grail for me has been swimming. It does take longer to get your HR up but in my experience this is irrelevant. If I put in the same effort in the pool as I do on the pavement, I get equal results. 2 hours per week of swimming lengths at a leisurely pace gets my RHR down to 42. And it's virtually zero impact. I'm not beaten up the next day.
How has this worked for me and how does it apply to the real world? When I switched to aerobic training, I measured my power at threshold with a spin bike. For the next 6 months I started jogging at an easy 10 min/pace. I didn't touch the spin bike in that time. After 6 months, I retested my P@T and it had increased 40%. I don't know about you but that blew my mind. Watching my wattage not only break but destroy the 200 barrier was crazy. I could put out 40% more effort in my fights AND MAINTAIN IT. The same has happened for the fighters I train - cardio went through the roof.
So we've covered building the aerobic engine. But we all know that a good runner will gas hard in a fight. Why? They have the cardiac development to succeed but they do not have the efficiency. Their muscles are not trained for repeatedly pushing and pulling at higher intensities, they don't have the experience to be able to pace themselves and use the right techniques at the right time and they don't have the experience to avoid a panic response when someone is attacking them.
How do we cover those factors? By playing our sport. Mat time. Get the rounds in. Again, you do not need to go crazy but you DO need mat time. Martial arts are skill based and like any skill based sport (tennis, basketball, hockey, archery etc) you must practise a lot to develop those skills. Get your CNS, muscles and reflexes to adapt to the spcifics of your sport.
So in summary, work in the aerobic zone, using HR and RHR as metrics, and play your sport a lot. Neither is enough by itself. Well, 5 minute BJJ matches will probably be OK if you just put in a lot of mat time but certainly not MMA.
Like always, happy to answer qustions. Next I'll make a thread about programming.
Update: I've switched to cycling and by using the gears, I can get my HR in the right zone and I don't feel all bashed like I do with running and it is much more fun than laps of a pool.
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