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Stuff About Training Zones...

Sunday, 27 March 2016 01:10

By Ken Johnson (usatriathlon.org)

Every workout needs to be done with a specific purpose in mind, and planned. Training, whether done on your own or following a coaching plan, typically has three dimensions: frequency, duration and intensity. Frequency is how often, and duration how long — distance, e.g., a 1,000-meter swim in the pool, or time, e.g., a one-hour run. Intensity is harder to quantify, but basically means how hard.

If you’ve looked at multisport training plans from a coach or online, you’ll often see intensity specified in terms of training zones. Different coaches may use a different number of training zones, but traditionally in triathlon training we’ve had five zones, known as Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4 and Zone 5. For more advanced endurance athletes, Zone 5 is sometimes subdivided into three zones: Zone 5a, 5b and 5c....

Training in a specific zone leads to specific adaptations. Zone 1 is the lowest intensity, used for warm-up, cooldown and recovery workouts. Zone 5 is the highest intensity. Zones 1 through 4 are aerobic, Zone 5 (and its subdivisions) are anaerobic. Simplifying things quite a bit, Zone 2 trains for endurance, Zone 3 trains for endurance during early season training, and Zone 4 trains the body to better tolerate and remove lactic acid (the waste product produced by muscles during exercise). Zone 5 trains for speed and power, and to work longer in an anaerobic state.

So how to you know what your training zones are? One of the easiest to use is the Rate of Perceived Exertion, also known as the Borg scale. Here intensity is estimated based on your breathing rate; the harder you breathe, the more intense you’re exercising. In Zone 2, for example, you’re breathing harder but can still carry on a conversation with your workout partner. In Zone 4 it’s uncomfortable to talk, and in Zone 5 you don’t want to talk!  READ MORE