Build Your Aerobic Engine

Far too often training and nutrition is approached with a flawed mindset, the intensity-driven mindset. The goal of people with this mindset is to train as hard as possible, as long as possible, as often as possible. This same flawed mindset is typically applied to their diet as well. Eat as little calories/carbs/fat/junk food as possible to lose weight as quickly as possible.

Pair the two together and you have a recipe for disaster.

Maybe you’ve made these mistakes before and start to piece the puzzle together but don’t manage every factor of your daily life so you improve in one aspect but suffer in another because of it.

Everything in your daily life comes down to energy. Everything you do or don’t do regarding movement, training, diet, sleep, everything.

We often think that if working out or running some if good, then more must be better. The same mindset of more is better is often applied to intensity as well. It won’t happen overnight but if you keep this up you will go into a recovery debt because fatigue accumulates over time.

You can only adapt to the level you can recover from.

Embrace this and construct your daily routine and habits to support a lifestyle focused on recovery.

Build your Aerobic Engine

Here is what you need to know:

Have 2 or 3 days max of high intensity exercise.

You need low intensity exercise and the 80/20 rule will help you achieve that. 80 percent of what you do should be low intensity.

If you are just starting to get back into things simply doing something will cause your body to adapt. You don’t need a lot of volume or intensity for the first week or two.

Let’s call these first 2 weeks the introductory block.

After this introductory block you progress to the loading phase.

If you’re just starting out a 4 week loading period will suffice. If you are more conditioned to aerobic training then you will require more time in this loading phase. An 8 to 12 week loading block will be more effective for more trained individuals.

Throughout the beginning weeks of the loading phase focus more on increasing your volume. During the latter weeks of the loading phase focus more on increasing intensity.

After your loading phase which would be 4 weeks for untrained individuals, 8 weeks for trained individuals and up to 12 weeks for highly trained individuals you would have a 1 to 2 week stabilization period where you focus on maintaining your new fitness level.

Afterwards you want a 1 to 2 week restoration period to allow your body to reset and recover from the previous blocks before progressing to the next phase.

It is vital that you approach all facets of your health and fitness in terms of progression. The biggest mistake you could make would be starting out intense and then adding more intensity on top of it and then wondering why you don’t improve very much or start to fatigue and get injured.

Progressive overload is the key to fitness and you have to build both volume and intensity in a manner that works with the body rather than against it.