Stop "Gassing Out": Advanced Conditioning & Anaerobic Protocols for All Situations
Be a cardio monster with practical protocols to build various types of conditioning for health and being a relentless athlete
If you are a person who loves lifting weights and/or does plenty of activity but always felt like the moment they play intense sport, begin sparring or wrestling, or are otherwise limited at sport practice because their “cardio” was their issue…this post will go over *exactly* why that probably is and lay out precisely what is needed to fix it. Read through this thoroughly and apply it as written.
Contents:
“‘Zone 2’ isn’t Enough”
The True Definition of “Conditioning”
Why you Lack Conditioning to Keep Up During Hard Sports/Practice/Sparring
Aerobic vs Anaerobic Energy Systems
Special Benefits to a Strong Conditioning Base
Advanced Conditioning Protocols Based on Specific Needs
Exercise Selection, Modalities & Sport/Individual Specific Considerations
How to Fit This into Any Program Without Overworking the Body
Closing Takeaways
“No…’Zone 2’ cardio isn’t enough.”
A common case I see in the gym are people who love lifting but hate cardio. Other cases I see are those who “like cardio“ and hate lifting – but the cardio they’re referring to are usually light jogs and low intensity, long duration exercises.
Rarely – if ever – do you see someone whose preferred mode of training is high intensity anaerobic conditioning. This is the type of training that makes people puke and induces fatigue that makes cowards of anyone.
For this reason, it is one of the most neglected aspects of fitness training outside of competitive athletes or others who place themselves in situations where someone else is pushing them physically hard.
In most cases, the most “functional” trait you can have is good endurance. FAR too many gym rats end up being useless after 30 seconds due to neglect of this trait.
This is a huge mistake for many trying to improve real performance as often we seek to relentlessly chase more strength or power when it is our endurance and conditioning that is mostly letting us down in our sport.
We also tend to separate fitness into categories of strength and cardio - and because high and low intensity conditioning can both be labeled “cardio“, it is very common for individuals to opt out of *high* intensity work for the glaringly obvious reasons:
It is fucking hard.
Other common implications behind this are that most “office bodybuilders“, admittedly or not, are training to augment their physical appearance not primarily to develop their physical abilities (or health).
This can also lead to situations like the referenced scenario below, where many tend to think of cardio as a fat loss tool over a method to improve your energy systems and/or conflate body composition with endurance too much:
Defining “Conditioning”
Strength & Conditioning content unfortunately often forgets about the second part. Strength Coaches frequently specialize in the “strength” department for several practical reasons, however, it is often the conditioning or energy systems of an athlete that wins matches or saves them from an avoidable loss.
Simply put, strength is the ability to produce force.
“Conditioning” however, is the body’s ability to be able to withstand duress.
One major aspect of being “conditioned” (which also encompasses all forms of durability and overall health/fitness factors) is endurance.
Endurance is the ability to *repeat* strength/power outputs.
The more you can repeat a certain power output within a given span of time or the more you can withstand the duress of repeated demands…the more endurance you have & more conditioned you are.
While we have spent plenty of time talking about strength, its importance, and how it builds better athletes - it is also extremely important to make sure upper threshold conditioning is not neglected, and in many cases, elevated to high levels.
It is most often the athlete whose gas tank fails them that fails to produce consistent success in physical challenges. We have all seen the “gym bro” who tries wrestling or boxing or any other sport and after a short period is clearly winded and after getting his ass beaten will say…”haha gotta work on that cardio”.
They never ever do.
When individuals feel they can cover all of their bases with “low intensity cardio” (zone-2) they more frequently are drawn to using that method as it’s far less stressful than higher intensity cardio.
This is a positive thing about low intensity cardiovascular work as it can be done easily and improve health/recovery but it’s also necessary to understand that fully developed conditioning, for both performance & health purposes, needs 2 overall different types of energy system training…
Anaerobic vs Aerobic Endurance
There are two main types of energy delivery/production systems in the human body:
The Aerobic system, which uses oxygen to deliver longer lasting energy sources, & the Anerobic system, which uses alternatives to oxidizing processes to deliver energy to the bodies tissues and organs.
This blog doesn’t get overly technical with regard to underlying science, as we try to make this digestible & focused more on application, but this post will cover some of the basics of how anerobic training works, why it’s important, and cover in detail exactly what you need to know to train & develop the exact type of work you need to be in elite conditioning shape and health.
If you aren’t up to speed on the Aerobic training methods, standards, and uses for my training systems - All of that information is covered in depth here:
Training Fundamentals: Aerobic Base Conditioning & Getting Fit for Sport
(The above should be required reading before continuing as its essential to long term success with our methods in my opinion)
Energy System Basics:
In order to produce movement/physical effort, your body is required to breakdown a molecule known as ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which you can figuratively look at as “gasoline” for the body.
As we breakdown carbohydrates, fats, and proteins we can generate “ATP” primarily through three metabolic pathways (which can then be targeted through training). We do not store much ATP in our muscle & thus must generate it as we begin to move. The ATP reserves that are resting within a muscle at any given time will only be able to power a few seconds of high effort.
To utilize ATP and delivery fuel to your musculature as needed your body uses two different Anaerobic (no oxygen needed) energy systems and an Aerobic (requires oxygen) metabolic system.
The Phosphagen System (ATP-PC)
The Glycolytic System
The Aerobic System (Oxidative Phosphorylation)
Why you are “gassing out” despite being frequently “active”…
Aerobic training is meant to build the mitochondrial functions designed to enhance the use of oxygen to utilize glucose and fat as fuel. This is effective at allowing you to repeat bouts of low intensity activity for long periods of time (5+ minutes).
This also benefits our bodies in every way listed in the “part 1” cardio post above, however…
Those who only perform lower intensity “zone 2” cardio methods often find themselves in “good shape” but still suffering from losing steam when called upon to repeat intense bouts of activity.
For example, many of you have reported that your gas tank feels limited when you begin training in boxing or jiujitsu, or perhaps some other explosive type of sport, despite doing plenty “cardio”.
Various factors can play a role here:
Skill/movement efficiency or play style (aggressive players focusing on always using maximum brute force)
Psychological factors from being nervous about a new experience that you haven’t had seasoned years practicing before (Anxious fighters getting adrenal dumps during sparring and tightening up excessively, also affecting the factor above as well)
Lacking development of the ANEROBIC energy system pathways needed to deliver fuel for the demand of the sport you are engaged in
All of these can result in struggling to repeat bouts of power output in the higher intensity zones you are demanding in sport.
This third issue will be the focus of this post and most likely is the single, largest contributor to many trainees conditioning issues.
The Value of The Anaerobic Energy Systems (in comparison to aerobic)
In contrast to the aerobic system, the anaerobic energy system will focus on utilizing energy delivery methods that DO NOT rely on oxygen. This is important as it is a much faster system at delivering large amounts of dense fuel to the necessary muscle groups. Without relying on oxygen to deliver sustainable energy flow from carbohydrates and fats, the body can produce higher outputs over a period of time.
The “drawback” to this system, and why our bodies have 2 main strategies for energy delivery, is that this is FAR less sustainable (ie. ~90-120 seconds before burnout)
What we can learn from this chart is that the 3 anaerobic energy sources (purple, red, and orange lines - more on them below) will spike HUGE energy outputs between ~0-70 seconds and the aerobic medium/light intensity system begins to peak its power output between 1-5 minutes.
Note: While the 3 anaerobic systems are NOT producing power outputs past the ~2-minute mark in a single bout of effort - the aerobic system *does* contribute some power to explosive outputs underneath each other system.
This is part of the reason an aerobic base of endurance is important to our success and endurance ability even when the anaerobic system is providing the lion's share of our energy and power production. For this reason, all athletes and trainees must build and maintain a base of aerobic endurance (shown below) and when trying to advance our capacity and push ourselves for maximum performance, various forms of anaerobic, or “advanced conditioning” is highly valuable to incorporate into your routine.
For those who struggle with high intensity training or seem to feel their “lungs can’t keep up” with intense exercise/activity, we will cover protocol templates both specific and general to your needs further below.
Direct Benefits
In keeping with principles that we have touched on in this blog before (being well rounded and building up our underlying systems)…the value of a highly conditioned athlete goes beyond just the surface level assumptions:
Yes of course, having high level conditioning will prevent you from tiring during action when intensity is raised. This can obviously prevent catastrophic results in competitive settings if it occurs.
High level conditioning also provides an athlete with high reserves they can use to both apply themselves and recover from skill practice. Being “in shape” means higher intensity practice can be performed without technical breakdown - which allows for more “quality repetitions” to be performed in practice. Poor energy systems often lead to lower total effective reps that are performed in training and thus lower rate of skill development.
In relation to the above, I think this is part of the contributor to why you see smaller athletes in weight class sports develop more sound technical abilities over shorter spans of time (Can perform much more “quality practice” due to being less prone to fatigue…more quantity of higher quality = faster mastery).
Highly conditioned athletes usually are also more resilient in how they can recover & bounce back from injury or recovery-based tasks - and thus a higher base of fitness and foundational health can both benefit a sustained longevity of max performance and long-term health.
In particular, development and maintenance of the glycolytic anaerobic energy system (which low intensity cardio does not stimulate) is the best system to build our “VO2 max”, or maximum rate of delivery + use of oxygen.
VO2max is possibly the strongest single indicator of health & longevity so it is imperative to enhance it.
This means your long-term health and aerobic (long duration) endurance is also enhanced by higher intensity conditioning.
Thus, it is highly desirable to build up our higher threshold energy systems in addition to our aerobic system, which will not only build upon the base of our aerobic “low intensity” cardio but actually synergize and provide additional support to it.
It is also worth noting again that in practice all energy systems contribute to live performance and by improving the ability to sustain higher power outputs with more explosive conditioning can keep you from completely burning out your overall performance before you rely completely on the aerobic system and total outputs are diminished.
This is often noticed when athletes are tired and hit their “conservative stride pace”, where they are moving far slower than they started with but now maintain this 20-40% pace as they try to stay active with far less reserves left. (Think 3rd-5th round of heavyweight MMA fights)
Shown with more detail above, the anerobic systems do still provide some fuel over longer periods and during dynamic sports they will also likely be called upon after periods of recovery more than 5-20 minutes into play.
Thus, a strong energy production system with a “less steep” downward curve can also keep performance up past the official markers of 1-2 minutes as well.
So, to summarize…high intensity cardio work will:
Make us more capable and resilient athletes in nearly all high intensity action
Improve long term health outcomes and longevity
Improve our ability to perform and recover from lower intensity activity as well, creating a synergistic effect on our baseline energy and recovery abilities
This is all assuming that your high-level conditioning is performed and programmed well. Below we will cover general and specific protocols to boost our anaerobic energy systems, isolate the systems we need most, and discuss strategies on how to use them in practice and program them into your routine effectively without creating redundancy or excessive fatigue.
Advanced Conditioning Zones & Protocols
A central piece of information to understand when discussing energy systems is that, in practice, all three primary pathways are always being used to various degrees and contributing to total ATP production, however, the energy system that is dominant during a particular task is related to the intensity & duration of the action.
By reverse engineering our goals and system qualities, we can identify what energy production systems need our attention the most and how to target them effectively.
This will also include information on more specific conditioning work for higher threshold cardio that is still “aerobic” dominant as well (ie. Zone 3)