Hey Athletes! Do you think you can train too much in Zone 2? Listen to this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything to find out how much is too much!
Episode 43 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: Can You Do Too Much Zone 2?
This week’s question is from Michael. He asks if you can do too much Zone 2 training. Joe and Jerred go over Zone 2 training and answer how much is too much!
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To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Ask Me Anything: Can You Do Too Much Zone 2?
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage gym athlete asked me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to garage. Team athlete.com/ama. Let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney: What’s up Jared. Finally doing these in my
Jerred Moon: office. Yeah, you’re looking good. Looking crisp.
Joe Courtney: I think I chose the wrong shirt because I think I’m blending into the background. If this was a green screen, then I think I’d just be a floating head.
Jerred Moon: But that’s okay.
Joe Courtney: Live and we learned
Jerred Moon: next time. And if you are watching this on, on the YouTubes, we have, we’re trying to get better video capabilities, and I’m going to show it off right now with the click of a button. If you’re listening, don’t worry. You’re not missing a bunch because [00:01:00] I am just actually putting the question on the screen.
The, here it is, Michael T asks. He says greeting from Australia. My question is, can you do too much zone two cardio? Is there an ideal limit to number of hours per day or number of days in a row? Thanks for the great podcast guys. Well, thank you, Michael T for the question and for thing, we have a great podcast.
I really appreciate that. so do you want me to, you want me to go first or do you want to go first?
Joe Courtney: I’ll just chime in real quick. I don’t have a whole ton to say about it, but Zinnia is great. I try and throw in a lot of zone two at the end of workouts, especially cool down, on, you know, our program is four days a week.
So at least one of those days, or at least at a fifth or six day are going to be strictly. Zone two types of conditioning with maybe some other stuff thrown in. And if I’m doing any condition, I’d try and end it with at least 10 to 15 minutes of Zen too. But having said that, because we’ve talked about all the good parts of zone two in the past, I [00:02:00] think if you did a lot of it, if you, if that was your primary point of conditioning that you’ve been doing, from a mentality standpoint, I think it might be hard to go back to higher intensities because you might be really good at zone two and doing those moderate, it densities for your conditioning, but if you try to go all out, do as high intensity efforts mentally, mentally, you know, physically, you might be okay for it mentally.
You might just, it might kind of drag you down because it’s just, there’s a lot of it’s the effort is completely different. So. While doing it while doing kitting, keeping zone two. And it is great. And to, to, to work that in, especially for extra, extra stuff, you do. I think if it’s, it shouldn’t be your primary source of conditioning.
I think you still need to have the other parts of it. so if you can fit it in. Other ones, other high intending, you know, it was zone four or even five, to balance out with the zone two, but I don’t think that it would in the long run, if you can just do that, especially if you’re just getting back to it.
I don’t think there would be necessarily a negative, but as [00:03:00] long as, so to me, it’s just the mentality standpoint of it.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And I think, you know, in our view, we want you to be a little bit more well-rounded so that, you know, I could answer this question from multiple different angles, because if you look at heart rate training and specifically zone training, you kind of have to get all your information from endurance type athletes, right.
Because they’re the ones more concerned with those powerlifters, not too concerned about what zones they’re in, when they’re training or anything like that. And for us with concurrent training, we’re trying to, to blend the two. And so the. a cool, cool thing. Like if you just kind of want to go down this journey a little bit, and look into some of the endurance stuff, I believe his name if I’m pronouncing it correct.
Is Phil Maffetone? I could be butchering that touch anyway. He, he kind of pioneered this low intensity training. he’s not the big proponent on all the science behind zone two or anything, but he was kind of on to this before anyone else. And he was an iron man triathlete and he would, [00:04:00] when he would train, it was kind of like odd people would like go train with them.
Cause he was a really good trap iron man triathlete, but he would be running so slow, you know, he would be, he would just be like barely jogging and all the majority of his training was this way. And people just thought like he was crazy, but then he would crush the iron mans because then he would. Go and operate at a higher intensity.
but to Joe’s point, you have to see those intensities. You can’t only live in zone two. So technically speaking to answer your question, you can’t do too much zone two. Like you could be on a walking or zone two program for the rest of your life. If you want it to, you could keep strength, conditioning, strength, and your conditioning on zone 2, but you’re not going to be prepared for much else.
so you have to get all of the, you have to get zone four and you have to get, Zone five and occasionally zone three is kind of like a, the race pace, like that’s where you would want. But zone two is going to build this, this significant base. And we’ve talked about that before, but down to percentages, what do we like to see versus what [00:05:00] do other types of training want to see?
it’s fairly similar, in the endurance world, you could go up to 80% of your conditioning being in zone two, and the rest being those higher and higher intensity intervals. For us, we like to see closer to 50 to 60% of our conditioning being in zone 2. So I don’t really look at the strength work as much, but over 30 day rolling period, this is kind of how I calculate it out.
And that’s why we do so much zone two back-loaded at the end of every month. So for our deloads is because time-wise of all the conditioning that we’ve programmed it’ll bounce out to around that 50% Mark with how much zone two we have. Thrown into just specifically that last week, but also, you know, it’s intermixed throughout some of the cycle itself.
At times there might be one or two just regularly program that aren’t in D load. So those are kind of the percentages we’re looking. So rolling. 30 days, 50 to 60%, endurance athletes hit 70, 80%. and then just making sure that you’re hitting those other areas. If [00:06:00] you want to be able to perform at those higher intensities, like I said, like a lot, like you were saying, Joe,
Joe Courtney: Yeah, goals and balance are definitely some of the more important factors when, when thinking of how much you should do.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And John too just is so overlooked. It’s like, this is how you build your base. Like, this is how you build your base. So you can build on top of that. And like, with this mile I’m doing right now. I think a lot of people, if they had to program this for themselves, they would just, they would run sprint intervals every other day and think that they’re just going to get faster and I’m taking the opposite approach.
I want, I we’re doing sprint intervals like once a week, but I want to build this huge aerobic base with zone 2, over a longer period of time, as opposed to running myself into the ground over a 12 to 16 weeks, I want to build this huge base with the aim to hopefully run a five minute mile. Not not saying with it not being challenging, but being conditioned to do so because I’ve ran mile and a half of the [00:07:00] air force, Joe, I’m sure you have as well where we ran way past our capacity of what our fitness level could actually hold talking like vomiting after, or I’ve been dry heaving during it’s because we’re trying so hard to push ourselves to a level we’re not truly conditioned and our body can only hold on for so long.
So we’re getting all these alarm signals. I’d rather build this huge base and be able to execute at that high intensity later on. And I think that’s what you have to do and why you can do so much zone 2. I just wouldn’t want it to be the only thing that my training. It also sounds boring as hell.
Joe Courtney: Yeah.
I mean, I, I enjoyed the, the, the one day that I do have like a longer three, four mile, even five by like, you know, a zone to run, but I mean, that’s like, that’s the entire day. And after awhile, you know, halfway through, I’m counting down the minutes. I still don’t mind it. I like those days, but it’s just, I need to do something else.
Jerred Moon: It’s called the season to get better though. You know, like we’re doing a zone 2 and on the BCT track and I’ve done, Like I got a quarter of a mile further [00:08:00] in a same allotted amount of zone two time. And it was just cool. Cause you know, your heart rate is clamps. So, you know, you’re just getting a little bit fitter to like go, be able to go that much further.
So it’s, it’s cool to see those things.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. Mild times as well.
Jerred Moon: Cool. Well faculty, thank you so much for the question about how much zone two we should be looking at in our programming. if anybody else has a question out there, go ahead, go to garage, gym, athlete.com/ama. You could submit your questions and to everyone who has thank you.
We are going to be answering those over the next couple of weeks. And if you’re listening to this five star review, positive comment really helps the show. If you’re watching, go ahead and subscribe to the channel and also leave us a comment on these. You can even drop your AMA question. In the YouTube comments, if you want, because we can look at those and respond to those as well.
So thank you guys so much for listening or watching.
I hope [00:09:00] you enjoy. Today’s ask me anything episode two, one more time. If you want to submit a question, topic or idea you can do. so@garageteamathlete.com slash AMA and Hey, while you’re there, if you haven’t already sign up for garage, gym athlete membership, we are the best community and programming on the internet.
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