When people think about aerobic conditioning, they usually think about long, slow, boring tasks that transfer over to long, slow, boring events. That is because the aerobic system works in that way. Aerobics is described as the “with oxygen” system because it involves utilizing oxygen for energy reproduction. It also uses fuels like glycogen and fat during longer duration exercise. Think about sports like endurance running—they take a long time, largely spent maintaining a specific pace without many short sharp bursts.

The trouble starts when you have athletes competing in power sports who have the need to be able to perform high intensity efforts repeatedly with sub-optimal rest, but who are only training anaerobically.
The argument is that aerobic conditioning doesn’t transfer. “Why would you do continuous exercise for 20 to30 minutes when in their sport they are doing a seven-second max out effort?” you might ask. I get that; really, I do. Aerobic fitness is not specific to the demands of the sport.

But aerobic conditioning is still very important for athletes competing in intermittent sports. The reasons include general health and longevity and the ability to recover.

General health and longevity

By maintaining a good level of aerobic fitness, you are keeping your heart and lungs healthy and improving your ability to cope with daily life.

The purpose of the heart is to pump blood around your body. When you don’t look after your heart, this ability slowly declines. You might see an increase in your resting heart rate, higher blood pressure, and a decrease in the amount of effort you can give before puffing and panting.

The lungs’ purpose is to exchange gases, which reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood and replaces it with oxygen. The more oxygenated blood we have circulating, the greater efficiency we have for strength, power, endurance and recovery.

Thankfully, more and more people are starting to recognise the benefits of strength training for older populations, but the same focus should be had for keeping up some kind of aerobic fitness. It doesn’t have to be overly stressful. I often prescribe 20-40 minutes holding 120-140 beats per minute, so something as simple as a brisk half hour walk with the dog is often enough.

For those of us not wanting to wear a heart rate monitor for a simple walk, a real-world guide is that you should be able to still hold a conversation, but your speech should be a little broken with pauses every few words. That kind of level of breathlessness is about where we want to be: not gasping for air, but not completely comfortable, either.

Ability to recover

The knock-on effect of doing this kind of training, and being more aerobically fit, is having an improved ability to recover between bouts of exercise. Short-term, this can be as simple as lowering your heart rate between sets of heavy squats, hill sprints, or your half-time break. Mid-term, this can be your ability to recover between training days. Long-term, it can be hugely important for recovery post-surgery, giving your body the ability to supply fresh blood to the affected area.

In the sporting realm, we are looking more at the short and mid-term benefits that I mentioned above. Remember when I spoke about aerobic training not being specific for sports with short, sharp bursts of power? Well, imagine if you could get your heart rate 10beats lower during your rest time than you could previously. It sounds small, but it could have a big effect on your ability to reproduce maximal effort time after time. This can be done by increasing your aerobic capacity. You’ll just have to come to grips with doing some slower, longer cardio effort instead of high-intensity metcons.

Example sessions

If I’ve convinced you all to improve your aerobic system, you’ll probably want to know a few different options.

1. 20-40 minutes holding 120-140bpm. Yes, I know I’ve already mentioned this one, but it really does work. Choose your favourite piece of cardio equipment in the gym (bike, treadmill, rower, you name it), or take it outside and get some good old sunshine and fresh air, then hover your heart rate in the aerobic zone for a decent chunk of time. Simple and effective, for sure. Do this once a week (or more if you fancy it) and you’ll soon start noticing the benefits.
2. 6 x 5 minute Wattbike blocks. This is similar to the first option, but it breaks things up a little more for those of us (like me) who get bored without a shorter time frame to occupy their brain.
   You will be completing 30 minutes total, but in the way of six five-minute blocks. I usually program these for people in an ascending format:
   0-5 – 150 average watts
   5-10 – 200 average watts
   10-15 – 250 average watts
   Then repeat.
   Obviously, this is just a guide, so play around with the averages and see how you feel, you want the third/sixth blocks to be harder, pushing the higher end of the aerobic zone (140bpm) and the first/fourth blocks easier to bring the heart rate back down.
3. 3 minutes on, 3 minutes off.
   Usually I would do this one on the Wattbike to measure average output over the time frame, but the main point again is that it is above the time-frame for the other energy systems, so your aerobic system will kick in to maintain pace for the duration.

There are countless variations of aerobic workouts, but these are the three that I use the most often with athletes. Give these workouts a go, and take a step to embracing aerobic training as part of your routine. You won’t regret it.