Why our first 8 weeks of training is primarily Zone 2/3
Key Takeaway
Our current phase, BUILD, will primarily be training the aerobic system during our dedicated conditioning sessions. Why?
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The aerobic system is the foundation for everything we do.
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Our focus this phase will be strength/muscle building (this isn’t exclusive)
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Enhances recovery
Of course there is value in training the other energy systems, which typically will be accomplished through higher intensity methods. However, by spending time building our aerobic system we will be enhancing the potential of all of these future training methods.
When a police officer runs up a flight of stairs and then continues to clear the building; this is where you will see if that officer put the time in to build his aerobic base. That period where after the officer sprints and the body is trying to recover…this is the aerobic system.
A well trained aerobic system will you to recover faster, use your fine motor skills better, and combined with quality training it will be easier for you to deal with the stress of these professions.
Energy System Review
Although the diagram above depicts what energy system is most dominate at different phases of effort, all of the energy systems depicted above “turn on” at the same time.
From my book:
Alactic System- This is your most powerful system. The time varies but this system lasts around 10-20 seconds depending on how trained or gifted one is.. Runs off ATP-PC. Think max effort lifts, throws, sprints, etc.
Anaerobic System- Lasts around 30-90 Seconds and like the title says it runs without oxygen. This is your typical zone most people spend time training. Uses glucose to create the ATP-PC from above for fuel.
Aerobic System- Uses Oxygen. This is the longest running and most flexible energy system of the body. Typically this is seen as just the long distance runner or cyclist zone. The reality is this energy system is probably the most trainable. Not as powerful, but foundational. The longer you go the more it relies on fat for energy but still uses carbohydrates for fuel.
The key from the above breakdown: They all use different energy sources to work and they compete with one another. If you try and train them all at once for too long, and at incorrect volumes, your body won’t know what to do with the stimulus and you’ll simply adapt to nothing. You’ll be mediocre at all things. Keep reading to see how we avoid this in our programs.
The longer you can “stay” aerobic, or rely on this system, the longer you can go during activity.
Current Programming
For the first 8 weeks of BUILD we are going to be training our aerobic system and building a massive engine to complement our strength and muscle building.
Why can we do that? Because these two adaptations when programmed correctly will actually complement each other. We can push aerobic sessions and slowly raise the volume over time to let yourself adapt to the extra work. That adaptation to the extra work allows to you to handle even volume and you’ll be able to recover from your other sessions. This is how you get training to “stick”.
Short higher intensity activity - 10-20 seconds - followed by full recovery - is often a great phase of training to include a fair amount of lower impact aerobic work. You’re essentially training the background recovery mechanisms of the body. If you don’t believe me, check out any division 1 football team training camp. I promise you’ll see a ton of training this way…not a lot of tabata training while leading into season.
Closing
What people don’t understand is that if you destroy yourself with max effort short duration intervals- think of your tabatas, or 30 seconds on 30 Seconds off repeats, or in other words that middle ground in conditioning that is so common in most programs…you’ll never really train the engine in the background that is fueling your recovery between sessions.
You will also certainly impact your recovery between your strength sessions and over time even negatively impact them. Our programming is literally designed to cover the entire year of 2026. This isn’t the crash diet version of training where you peak quickly and then stagnate.
Our First Phase of build is 8 weeks. We raise your strength, muscle, and aerobic capacity. Second phase we do the same and let you hit some PRs while raising the intensity of your conditioning a bit. We can do that because we put the time into building our base.
That will bring you to the spring for Phase III and then IV for the rest of the year.
You will be shocked with what 16 weeks of quality training will do for you. At that point we will move to a slightly different training split to keep things novel.
So far everyone who has had early access to this program has being giving me great feedback on being able to balance it with the profession and life. I am truly excited to see how the community likes on TrainHeroic.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments.
