FasterSkier Forums » Training

1. tradesmith45
   Member

   The Why Zone 1? thread has gone cold & though many good comments were made, they faild to address a fundamental & related questions. 25 yrs. ago when I started HR/zone based training I found major unresolved questions that appear to be just as up in the air today:
   How should the boundaries of Z1 be defined?
   How much time in Z1 vs. Z2 & Z4 vs. Z5?

   The numerous methods for identifying Zone 1 vary by maybe 15-20 BPM. (BTW, I used almost all of them except VO2max.) And I'm not even including the differences between say swimming, biking & XC skiing.

   Then if you compare say Joe Friel's training plans to Sleamaker, you find the former has far more training volume in Z2 than Z1 but the reverse is true for Sleamaker.

   The volumes recommended for Z4 & Z5 are likewise different. Borowski says most of your intensity training should be Z4 or lower (ATHR-0, 10 or 20 BPM) while Friel uses relatively large volumes in Z5a/b/c. (and from my experience, overtraining is a religion in cycling.)

   All these folks are good coaches & they are doing the best they can w/ the Exercise Phys. literature of their day+their experience & that literature is always changing. This literature gets different results for different types of athletes using many different methodologies.

   Most of us on this Forum are probably well trained & experienced amatures at different stages of our lives (I'm now 65). Anyone out there know of something published in the last few years that can provide reasonably well tested guidance for amature athletes on these fundamental questions?

   Posted 1 year ago #

2. FlintHillsXC
   Member

   Hey thanks for the post. I've been meaning to ask something similar. Does anyone know of good webpages for calculating zones? I I've used this one as a guide -- ot takes into account resting pulse, but it only had 4 levels, not 5:

   http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/hrzones.php?minHR=50&maxHR=183&Submit=Calculate

   I've also seen this one a lot in vaious skiing articles, which has 5 zones:

   http://home.hia.no/~stephens/xctheory.htm

   Do Friel and Sleamaker and Borowski have such webpages?

   Posted 1 year ago #

3. Doug1
   Member

   The second article is very good. The reason why L1 is better than L2 is that L1 is less tiring. The goal of low intensity training is twofold:

   First, it is intended to build capillary density within the muscle so that more blood can be transported to the muscle. This only occurs at low intensities.

   Second, and more importantly, it trains the body to utilize fat as a source of energy instead of carbohydrates. We store in our bodies enough fat to go exercise for days straight, but we only have enough carbs and glucose to go for an hour or two. This is why it is very important to teach the body to utilize fat.

   When you train in L2, you are above the point at which your body starts to metabolize carbs. this leads to less stimulation of fatty acid metabolization.

   The second, and bigger downside is that L2 training depletes the bodies glycogen stores more rapidly meaning that you are going to be more tired from the same workout, which in turn will reduce the quality of future works.

   In summation, L1 and L2 have produce similar adaptations from the body, but they are more pronounced in L1, and the toll that training takes on your body is less in L1.

   Posted 1 year ago #

4. davidf2d
   Member

   You can always search through the Fasterskier archives. Before Topher, there was Torbjorn, who was Beckie Scott's personal coach. He posted tons of training articles.

   There's actually quite a bit of good basic material on the Polar website.

   Remember, easy training needs to be easy enough that you can go hard on the hard days. Zone 2 is actually better from a pure physiology standpoint BUT as Doug1 points out, you're more tired from Zone 2 which will tax your recovery.
   Dave

   Posted 1 year ago #

5. tradesmith45
   Member

   Thanks for the pointer to Torbjorn's articles. I did a search for those & it looks like an article that might answer my questions about lactate testing is in a 2005 Fasterskier Club magazine but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

   My basic question is how should we identify the upper & lower limits of the HR zone we should use for overdistance training bouts over 1.5 hrs. long for trained athletes? The Why Zone 1 thread has a terrific article link in it @ http://ww.sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm . Scientists ended up using a 3-zone system - makes you wonder about the meaning of 5-6-7-8 zone systems.

   I'll spend some more time on http://home.hia.no/~stephens/skiing.htm to see if it addresses this basic question.

   FlinthillsSkier, one of the problems is there ate too many HR zone calculators out there. One of the problems this creates is varying meanings of say Zone 1 or Zone 4. Sleamaker's Z4=Friel's 4-5a for example. A helpful example of some of these differences can be found by Morbius Labs at
   [XLS] Zone Calculator for Heart Rate - Tri More Fitness
   Each zone calculator in the Excel is matched up w/ a description of how it is used. Still the lowest & highest HR for that basic OD zone is all over the map. Karvonen systems based on heart rate reserve produce the highest values. Depending on the assumption for lowest training effect HR, max HR & % of LT4 systems produce much lower values for Z1. The HR recommendations I've gotten from different testing services from almost identical lactate test data has likewise differed by 10-15 BPM. Makes me suspicious that the science behind these tests & zone systems isn't very consistent. Thus the value of a simpler 3-zone approach.

   Posted 1 year ago #

6. tradesmith45
   Member

   BTW Doug1, there is much confusion about fat metabolism training mainly because the science is complicated. Do a search using terms "fat burning zone myth" to find more details. But your other point about too much intensity during long training sessions is on the money.

   Posted 1 year ago #

7. davidf2d
   Member

   At the risk of being a little "un-PC"; you've hit the nail on the head, there's some science and some personal preference in these things. Unless you're an elite athlete, in which case you have a coach to guide you in these things, it doesn't really matter which one you pick. For us weekend warriors, doing the time is more important than getting bogged down in detail. For you, I doubt it will have any effect to worry about whether Zone1 upper limit is 135 or 140 or whatever. The important thing is to pick one set of guidelines and stick to them.

   Another good online reference, but not directly nordic skiing is pponline. Tons of very up to date articles.

   Dave

   Posted 1 year ago #

8. Doug1
   Member

   What i'm referring to is very different from the "fat burning zone" that I think you're referring to. The myth that you're talking about is dealing with weight loss and what is the best way to go about that from the perspective of a person with very limited time and drive to exercise. With that in mind, going harder to burn more calories is definitely the better thing to do, however that is not the goal that we are trying to accomplish.

   I am looking at fat metabolism from the perspective of an elite athlete for whom weight loss is of no importance. The first article that comes up in the "fat burning zone myth" search on google actually supports what i am saying

   "the body burns a greater percentage of fat at lower intensities than at higher intensities." http://www.active.com/triathlon/Articles/The-Myth-of-the-Fat-burning-Zone.htm

   The purpose of training this zone is to teach the body to become more efficient utilizing fat as a fuel source. When you're training or racing, increasing the percentage of energy that is derived from fat metabolization will extend the time that your body's stores of glycogen will last. Since glycogen stores are more or less a set quantity, the only way to go further is to burn fat.

   The reasons for this are very apparent. If you have ever "bonked" and being endurance athletes, I know it has happened at least once to everyone, then you've experienced a complete depletion of your body's glycogen stores. So complete in fact that your cognitive functions can become impaired because the brain has no fuel to run. Once you've bonked, there's almost no coming back. This is why we need to train our bodies to utilize fat as a fuel source.

   At a risk of boring some people I will go a little in depth into fatty acid vs. glycogen metabolization and why it can only occur at low intensity exercise.

   First some background Chemistry:
   Fat is comprised of a carbonyl group (which is a carbon with 2 oxygens bound to it) and a long hydrocarbon chain. Palmitoleic acid a fairly common fat in the body has a chemical formula of C16H30O2

   Glycogen on the other hand is comprised of long chains of glucose, formula C6H12O6.

   From the two chemical formulas, you can see that glycogen already has a third of the necessary oxygen molecules needed to convert it entirely into usable energy.

   Fat however, has only two oxygens for a long string 16 or more carbons, this means to access all the stored energy it requires a much larger component of outside oxygen that is supplied by the heart and lungs.

   I say all of this to hopefully give a slightly deeper understanding of the complex processes that our bodies do, and to give reasoning as to why going slow burns more fat.

   Posted 1 year ago #

9. Doug1
   Member

   What davidf2d said is right on the money. As long as you're rested enough to make the intervals and hard days quality you're probably going slow enough. I would agree with the L1 zones given on the aforementioned site http://home.hia.no/~stephens/xctheory.htm

   A good rule of thumb is that if you can comfortably breath through your nose, then you're probably in L1. From this you can then approximate what your L1 is.

   One way to tell for certain what your zones are is a simple lactate test. There are many coaches around the country that have the skills and equipment to administer one. They are relatively inexpensive <$100 and are the gold standard for determining your lactate threshold.

   Posted 1 year ago #

10. genegold
    Member

    Interesting discussion and glad to see some new work from Stephen Seilor. I agree about the value of getting a lactate test, better yet more often than once a year if your training is serious. During the off season, the most specific test is done rollerskiing. I found a classical rollerski test also good for hiking/light running, i.e., GP. A skate test is good for just that. One can get a good approximation of lactate threshold from ski races of, say, 15-20k or longer, but knowing the difference between L1 and L2 is invaluable.

    The problem is finding people who do lactate testing, or paying for your own equipment and sharing it with friends. For masters, the only (rollerski) testing at reasonable cost I'm aware of is done by Piotr Bednarski (gotraining.us) in the Twin Cities. Perhaps there are others elsewhere?

    Posted 1 year ago #

11. tradesmith45
    Member

    Lots of good comments here, thanks everyone. Doug1, Stephen’s blog is great, I've read most of his stuff but there are a few internal inconsistencies. Davidf2d is right pponline has an article that finally tells the history of the Karvonen formula & answered one of my key questions. http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0696.htm Many HR zone calculation sites use the Karvonen heart rate reserve HRR approach and call it the “best” for establishing zones. Sleamaker & Brown use it & a % of VO2max system in their book, SERIOUS Training, for setting zones. Other systems use max HR or LT 4mM HR or average HR during a 30-60 min. TT to calculate zones. Most of these systems place the LT 4mM turn point HR near the top of Z4. Wow- agreement! Cool but it shouldn’t be this hard.

    One important place where the systems differ a lot is the boundaries for Z1. The 1957 Karvonen formula sets the lower limit at 70% of HRR+RHR. This is a good 15-20+ beats higher than ANY of the lower values from other approaches but there is almost no discussion of this. Sleamaker never brings this topic up even though in practice the 2 approaches he recommends produce very different Z1 HRs.

    As pponline notes, ACSM reduced the Karvonen Z1 lower limit recommendation to 50% or more precisely >46% for trained individuals & any HR increase for the untrained (& I found a post on Wiki that said Karvonen later changed his position on minimum HR for training effect ). Making this change brings all these calculation systems within about a 5 bmp spread for the bottom of Z1 which is nothing compared to the individual variability between us in the real world. Most of these systems try to set the top of Z1 around the level of the LT 2mM level but again the Karvonen formula is way off that mark. (And from my experience some LT testers use 2 mM & others use 2.5 mM for the Z1 upper limit. I doubt the science is all that strong on this either.)

    Stephen and his team have done a great job reporting the 75/25% or 80/20% Z1/Z5 training regimes used by the Norwegians but far as I can tell, there is no explanation of why this approach might be near optimum. But there is no scientific study that says there is a good reason to spend nearly all your easy training time in Z1 rather than say 63% in Z1 & 20% in Z2 & 12% in Z3 – all we know is the Norwegians’ easy workout produces an average HR in Z1 & not much time in Z2 or 3. Same problem for Z4 vs Z5 but we all worship at the Norwegian success alter.

    So with adjustments, it is possible to get reasonable agreement for Z1 & top of Z4 HRs. And we all will agree that going too hard on easy days can prevent us from going hard enough on the hard days. After that, seems like we are mostly guessing ‘cause the science is thin.

    As for teaching our bodies to burn fat, there seems to be lots of guessing there too. A Z5 bout can only use glycogen but the body will metabolize large amounts of fat for hours afterwards. Studies have shown the more anaerobic work done, the more fat metabolized later. Why would we assume that fat metabolism adaptations don’t occur then as well as during long Z1 bouts?

    For what its worth, all my lactate tests & TT tests agree with in a couple beats for the LT 4mM HR level so for me at least, some of this stuff work pretty well. But nearly all the maxHR formule fail for me. Also over the last 22 yrs, both my LT 4 mM HR, average TT HR and max HR have all stayed within a couple BPM.

    Posted 1 year ago #

12. tradesmith45
    Member

    Here's an idea. Lets do our own "study" to compare these HR Z1 methods.

    Here's my stats & 5 different Z1 methods
    MaxHR 173 BPM
    Resting HR 50
    LT 2mM Hr 123
    LT 4mM HR 154
    30min bikeTT HR 155
    60 min bikeTT HR 153
    60 min skateTT HR 160

    Z1 Method for Bikeing Lower Upper
    Friel 65-81% TT60HR 99 124 BPM
    Karvonen 60-70% HRR 124 136
    Karvonen 46-60% HRR 107 124
    LT 2mM Hr-20 BPM 103 123
    MaxHR 60-70% 104 121

    Stephen's 17-18 yr old Norwegian Jr. look like this w/ my guess at their resting HR. He reports that their Z! training occurs at an average HR of 131 BPM or 66% of MHR & 30 BPM below their LT2 mM HR.

    Stephen's Norwegian Juniors Use
    MaxHR 198 BPM
    *Resting HR Guess? 45
    LT 2mM HR 161
    LT 4mM HR 181

    Z1 Method for XC Lower Upper
    Friel 65-81% LT4HR 118 147 BPM
    Karvonen 60-70% HRR 137 152
    Karvonen 46-60% HRR 115 137
    LT 2mM Hr-20 BPM 141 161
    MaxHR 60-70% 119 139

    What's your numbers using these methods?

    Posted 1 year ago #

13. fxg
    Member

    I have to jump on this boat to break the myth stated by Doug1 and believed by the large majority of endurance athletes and coaches. I am not aware of any study demonstrating that low intensity training is better at improving capillary density, fat oxydation, nor does high-intensity training promotes overtraining. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The training in the three seminal paper on capillary density improvement by endurance training was as follow:
    Andersen and Henrickson, 77: 4X/wk 40' 80%VO2max
    Gollnick et al., 1973: 4X/wk 60' max sustainable power
    at the end of the 5 month period they were going at 85-90% VO2max
    Inger 1979: 1x/wk 45' 50-90% VO2max
    1x/wk 3 X 3-4' max 4' rest
    1X/wk 2X 6-9' 15"/15" max
    We are thus very far from Z1 training in all of these studies!
    As for fat oxydation, it is well known that the maximal rate in absolute term occurs in Z2, not Z1. And two recent studies led to massive improvement in fat oxydation in well-trained cyclists after 3wk of 3X/wk of 60-90' 70%VO2max followed by 8-10 x 4-5' Z4 intervals (Yeo et al., 2008; Hulston et al., 2010). The key here being glycogen depletion.
    Finally, in a review paper on overtraining, Lehmann et al. 97 clearly showed that doubling the volume of high-intensity training in well-trained runners led to PBs whereas doubling the volume of low-intensity led
    to overtraining.
    The best in the world do train a lot in Z1 (Seiler et al., 2009), but it is not really known why...

    Posted 1 year ago #

14. tradesmith45
    Member

    Thanks much for your additions fxg. Can you point us to the Lehmann et al. 97 article or tell us how they defined low & high intensity training? It appears runners use lower training volumes than in other sports perhaps because the ballistic loads make overtraining more likely. So these definition details are perhaps more important.

    Seiler's study shows XC skiers are not just training lots in Z1 but often near the bottom of any likely definition of the Z1 HR range.

    When looking @ Seiler 2009, everyone should note that their 5 zone system is different from many others in that LT4 mM (88-90% VO2max)is placed near the bottom of Z4. Most other 5 zone systems place it @ the Z4/Z5 boundary.

    Posted 1 year ago #

15. Howdy
    Member

    @fxg. Awesome. What I've been saying for a while now, glad theres another. My current thoughts on why:

    1. L1 is essentially used for "buffering" the training load. Total load= (volume) x (Intensity) x (Frequency). If you feel like your maximizing the Intensity, you essentially bump op a little bit of volume and frequency by adding a few "recovery sessions," which serve both active recovery and training purposes.

    2. And if you look at an average training session, 30 minutes L1 warmup, 5X4 minutes of L4, with 5X4 minutes L1 in between, and a 20 minute cool down, you have a workout that is 77% zone 1.

    @tradesmith. The reason there are so many definitions is that there are NO physiological thresholds in low intensity. It's a steady increase of pretty much every factor until you hit OBLA.

    The only use for these zones is to quantitate workload, and so you should just set one semi arbitrarily, and use that as your guide. DONT WORRY ABOUT COMPARING AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE, thats the only benefit of using the same zone system, and honestly I feel this often hurts more than it helps.

    Posted 1 year ago #

16. sailguy
    Member

    velonews just posted an interesting excerpt from a book on zones and fat-burning at http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/08/news/book-excerpt-the-myth-of-the-fat-burning-zone_134214

    I say it is interesting, because it disagrees with many things I 'know' to be true.

    Posted 1 year ago #

17. tradesmith45
    Member

    Thanks sailguy - good article.

    Posted 1 year ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.