Episode 22: Zone 2 why is it important should you give a sh*t about it

Zone 2 cardio is everywhere right now — Peter Attia's talking about it, your mate at the gym won't shut up about it, and suddenly everyone's strapping on a heart rate monitor and going for slow jogs. But is it actually useful for hybrid athletes who already lift heavy AND run, or is it advice built for pure endurance athletes that doesn't quite fit our world?

In this episode, we break down what Zone 2 actually is, how to find it without a lab test, and why the science behind mitochondrial adaptation matters even if you're not training for an Ironman. We dig into why most hybrid athletes are accidentally training in the "grey zone" without realising it, how lifting already taxes your aerobic system more than you think, and the minimum effective dose of Zone 2 to actually move the needle. I'll also give you my honest take on whether Zone 2 is just rebranded slow jogging and how I'd program it for a hybrid client.

If you've been wondering whether you need to add Zone 2 to your week or if you can skip the hype, this one's for you.

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Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

What's going on, everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. I am your host, Hybrid Coach Mike, and today we're going to be talking about zone two, why is it important, should you give a shit about it, how to use it, all that kind of stuff. Basically, everything you want to know about zone two, both both as a hybrid, as someone who just runs, or whatever else you need to know. First thing first, this week, uh prior a few days ago, prior to filming this, was the London Marathon. And if any of you have not seen uh two amazing gentlemen beat the sub two-hour uh world record or or completed the marathon in under two hours. I think one of the guys was a one hour 59 30 seconds who came first, and the one who came second 159.40 or 50 seconds, which is uh one of them also had the guy who came second, I think it was his marathon debut. Uh, I don't know their names, I've forgotten them. But regardless, the world of cardiovascular fitness is well and truly on another level right now. The caliber of athletes that are around are fucking insane. Uh, the fact that two people did that, well, the fact that one person did that in an actual race is insane. The fact that two people did it back to back in a race is even more insane. Like the times they're doing are absolutely phenomenal and it's scary, uh, frankly. I wonder how many more people are gonna do it now. Keep Chogi did it first. I wonder how many more athletes are gonna do it, but nonetheless, I bet they do quite a bit of zone two, or do they? I don't know, we'll find out. So, what is zone two? Do you need to give a shit about it and all that kind of stuff? A couple other things because I haven't seen you guys in a little while, um, and I'm doing my round of recording. This weekend is uh the hawker half marathon. Uh, this is my second race of the season, two out of three that I was supposed to do. The last one was the Newcastle Half Marathon that I actually didn't end up doing. Uh, I just got back from New Zealand a couple weeks ago, and it happened to fall on the weekend after I got back. Life was a little bit hectic when you return from overseas and you're a business owner. And honestly, I just thought to make my life easier, I'm not gonna go to Newcastle to race this weekend. I wasn't feeling the best, carrying quite a bit of fatigue. I really wanted to make sure that I was primed for the hawker half marathon as well. So I figured, why don't I just hold off doing that particular race and put all of my eggs in the basket of the hawker half instead? So I decided not to do that race. Uh, I did have a couple clients in it though. Uh, one of my girls, Ziana, finished the third uh 13th overall in the half marathon, which is amazing. Uh, she did it in an hour 33. Unbelievable. Shout out to Z, she's hilarious. Otherwise, uh, yeah, it was just an awesome race by the looks of it. Hawker Half Marathon this weekend. I've got a bunch of my athletes going into that. Uh, few people their first time doing a race altogether, so I'm really excited for them. I hope they enjoy it, which I think they will because it's an awesome event. And then I've got a bunch of dudes going for a PB. I've got a couple of the boys actually actually going to be running with me. Uh, all of us are going for sub 90, I think. So I said, why don't we all just try and run together and keep the tempo together? So I think there'll be a couple of us, uh nice little pack uh moving together. Hopefully, I don't know. We'll see how we go. Logistics on the day tend to change, but nonetheless, uh let's dive into zone two. So, what is zone two? How do you find it? Blah blah blah. Zone two is roughly 60 to 70 percent of your heart rate max. Your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, so I'm 31. 220 minus 31 is 189. 60 to 70 percent of that for me is anywhere, I think, between 130-ish, 132 or 3 to 148, roughly. That's roughly the zone uh for me. For you, it would be something similar if you were about the same age. This is supposed to be the intensity that you can sustain while burning fat as your primary fuel source. Keeping in mind it doesn't matter what kind of exercise you're doing, you're always burning a variety of fuel sources, but this one you are supposed to be primarily burning fat exclusively. Now, there's some ways to test this uh to get an accurate reading. Wearing a heart rate monitor is your best bet. Um, you know, a chest strap, not the one on your wrist. Uh, a lactate test is actually probably one of the best ways because the point at which your body starts converting uh lactate for energy is beyond the point at which uh you are no longer using oxygen andor fat for energy, so you're going from aerobic to anaerobic. That transition is going to indicate the point at which your heart rate is uh still in zone two, or the point before that. Sorry, that transition is gonna indicate when you are still in zone two. Um, to be honest, you don't need to do that unless you're an elite-level athlete, it will be extremely useful for you. Maybe one of the dudes who ran a sub two hour marathon. Um, I think that's like 250 pace or something, by the way, which is go and try run 250 pace for 100 meters. Let me know how you go. It's fucked. Um, another thing you can do to test the zone two theory is like if you can do the talk test, which is basically where you're like walking, uh running and talking at the same time. If you're roughly able to still talk, you should be close to your zone two range. Anyway, zone two, in my opinion, isn't for everyone, particularly if you're a beginner, it's intermediate. And there's a couple reasons why, and I'm gonna explain those first, and then I'll still unpack everything you need to know below this. But as a beginner, you probably aren't gonna be able to maintain zone two anyway. Uh, what that means is you could be in zone three or four when you start doing a slight power walk. So, assuming that you would then need to maintain zone two in order to get cardiovascular benefits is gonna be ridiculous because for most people it would be like a walk who are really unfit, or some people it could be, you know, hardly any exercise for them. Um, and they might find uh that their heart rate spikes up anyway. So, like some people could be in zone three taking a shit. I think I've said this before. Like, you don't need to be in zone two in order to get benefits, particularly as a beginner. Most of your training as a beginner is probably going to be in that zone three or four anyway, regardless of how hard you're going. Um, you might feel like the intensity is low and it's easy, but your heart rate could still be way up high. And that doesn't mean you should stop or you're not doing anything beneficial. You definitely are. Uh if anything, as a beginner to intermediate, I actually recommend people just use uh a difficulty rating in order to gauge the intensity of their runs. So instead of thinking, oh, I need to be at a particular pace uh or oh sorry, at a particular heart rate in order to get these benefits, just be like, okay, is it easy enough for me to be able to, you know, talk a little bit? Am I feeling comfortable? Do I feel like I can do this for a long period of time? That is probably the equivalent to your zone two. If you don't think you can maintain or do that, then you're probably going a little bit too hard. Essentially, zone two is exercise that you are able to maintain for long periods of time, work, get your heart rate up a little bit, work up a bit of a sweat, uh, and basically, you know, do the main thing is you're able to do it for longer duration. So I would say, like, you know, close to four hours, maybe more in some cases, I don't know, depending on the level of athlete. But um, you know, if you're someone quite unfit, you may not even last anywhere near that. But the point is it's supposed to be easy. Okay, so zone two, easy. Everything above that, you know, it could be a zone two could be a five or six out of ten. Everything above that would be obviously harder and therefore puts you in higher heart rate zones. Now, how and why is it important? How did it blow up? What why did it get so much? Um, what's the word? Uh, why is it so popular? Obviously, it is science and it's like sorry, I take that back. It's not necessarily science because there are other zones. Um, there's some people use zones that go up to six. So zone one, two, three, four, five, six. Six being like um either a sprint or beyond that, um, or like extremely fast or beyond that. Something that is truly a sprint, like which is truly anaerobic, is actually not in a heart rate zone because it can't be maintained for a period of time. So something that is like literally a hundred meter sprint, people will be like, oh, that's zone five, whatever. I don't think technically it is, it's it's actually not a zone at all because it can't be maintained. Um, your muscles die way too early for you to indicate that that is a heart rate zone you're supposed to be staying in. Um, so I wouldn't say something like that, but zone five is like really hard continuous exercise, like your heart rate is maxing out basically for a period of time. Um, anyway, why did it blow up on social media? I'm not exactly so uh sure, but I have a couple theories. There's a really famous doctor, physiologist guy uh who I really like, uh although he was found to be in the Epstein Files, uh, but I think he's amazing still as a as a doctor, not for any other reason, just to clarify. Um his name's Peter Atia. Um, he kind of I feel like is one of the people that made it mainstream, and you might have heard him heard of him before if you're following this channel. He kind of uh elaborated on it in the terms of longevity, in terms of longevity and in overall health, uh amplifying it as a secret to mitochondrial health and cardiovascular fitness. Um the other thing is he was one of the people that kind of I would say that popularized it, but this message of you know doing zone two uh exercise being long, continuous, and somewhat easy made it accessible to everyone, it made it it sounds science-based, it gives basically people permission to exercise at lower intensities and to go slow. And it's important because this today's culture and society, in my opinion, is always obsessed with intensity. And I think it was interesting at the time that that was popularized that you know people were like flipping the switch and be like, no, you don't need to be going hard all the time. And frankly, no one should be going hard all the time. Uh, and anyone who knows an elite-level athlete or like those dudes that did the sub two hour marathon, they definitely are not going hard all the time. Okay, so uh it's really important that we look at both sides of the coin. And I feel like Peter Itia plus a bunch of other people kind of shed light on the fact that you know intensity isn't the only way to get fitness, uh, and you need to be looking at both, you know, going hard but also going easy sometimes. Now, zone two specifically, what does it do? Uh, it specifically stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis and it improves your body's ability to oxidize fats. What does that mean? Um, essentially, just your your body's ability one to use fat as energy, uh, but also increases the number or size of your mitochondria, which are the things that use oxygen for energy to create ATP, which then creates muscle movement, which then propels you forward, blah blah blah blah blah. That's a very, very basic understanding of physiology there. I'm not going to go into it anymore because no one here is a science nerd. Uh, actually, maybe a couple of you are. I've had a couple doctors DM me, but I'm not gonna do this for you guys, it's for everyone else. Um, by the way, you do not need to know the physiology of all this shit, okay? As a as anyone does, like any level athlete, you do not need to know this stuff. I'm just touching on it because I feel like it's important that I at least shed light on it for you to get a better understanding of context. Now, other things that this does, that zone 2 training does, that are really important, uh, it improves capillary density. So your capillaries are the smallest blood vessels you have in your body, and they're that small and thin that oxygen can literally pass through the walls of them. So if this is a capillary, this circular thing I'm making with my hand, oxygen can literally pass in and out of it that way, not just through it, but in and out of the walls of it. And the reason why that's important is because that's how it goes through into your muscles and and everywhere else in your body. It passes through the walls of these capillaries because they are so thin and they allow things to pass through them, one of them being oxygen molecules. Um, other than that, though, that then allows your body to then deliver those. So the more capillaries you have, sorry, then means okay, oxygen can then go to more parts of this muscle, and then more parts of this muscle can then use oxygen, and more parts of this uh muscle can then use oxygen for energy, and so on. Okay, so it kind of creates this downstream effect as to which ultimately leads to you being fitter or being able to go for longer periods of time. Okay, that's one thing. It also can help improve lactate clearance. Uh, lactate itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, lactate is actually uh something that is uh uses energy in uh used for energy in the body. Um, but lactate clearance when built up for too long, there's some, I don't know if this is actually a hundred percent, but there's some theories that are suggesting that you know you that you get that lactic acid buildup and all that kind of stuff. pH levels change in the muscle, causing fatigue, causing that burning sensation that people experience. Uh, science has kind of actually shown that it's not lactate itself doing that, um, but it's a byproduct of lactate and the system in which it operates and everything else happening around it, pyruvate, etc. etc., which are a bunch of other things that I'm not going to go into that cause your muscles to fatigue and them to not be able to exert maximal force anymore. Okay. Um, but as you get fitter, you are able to exert higher amounts of power or force or energy or use uh uh basically become fitter at higher outputs. Okay. Other than that, uh you essentially just recover faster between efforts the fitter you are, and uh harder efforts feel easier, basically. Okay, zone two uh is often aimed at pure endurance athletes and not hybrid athletes. So the original that this is something that's important. Zone two, you always hear the 80-20 rule 80% of your training should be in zone two, and the 20% should be at higher intensities. That works for people that are doing a lot of cardiovascular training only, like people that aren't in the gym and all that kind of stuff. But your average hybrid who's maybe doing three or four hours of cardio per week, or those doing a little bit more or less than that, whatever. Um, assuming that they don't do that much exercise overall, telling them to then only do 80% of their training in zone two uh means that maybe, or to do 80% of their training in zone two might mean that they're basically doing 80% of their training really easy, um, and they're gonna be missing out on a lot of potential benefits or gains that they could be getting because they're not exercising that long. So, just to give you a better example, because I don't think I feel like I explained that well, uh a runner who is running for, say, for example, 10 hours per week, it would maybe make sense for them to do 80% of their training in zone two. So that would be eight hours in zone two and then two hours of high-intensity stuff, which which might, I'm not saying it is, but it might be a good number for them to stay around, okay, depending on what they need. But someone who's running for two hours or one hour a week, this would mean that basically they're doing 55 minutes or 50 minutes or whatever of zone two and then only five minutes of cardio of high intensity cardio per week. That's not a lot of hard work, to be honest. And if you're not exercising that much or doing that much cardio, that percentage is probably too big. Like if you're running less than five hours per week, something like a 50-50 split might be more beneficial for you, or a 60-40, or something like that. Uh, you don't necessarily need to be doing so much zone two if you're not exercising quite a lot anyway. Uh, the reason why it's important for those elite-level athletes who are running for ages in a week, like 10 hours plus and maybe even more, well beyond that, iron men that are training, you know, 20-hour weeks or whatever it is, is because it allows them to build volume with less fatigue. You're not going to be able to go hard for 10 hours, but you can do it 10 hours of zone two for sure, because they're quite fit uh and it and it kind of um what's the word? They're quite fit and it costs less fatigue. It basically doesn't cause as much uh soreness, so they're able to go again, and it allows them to accumulate volume and still get those adaptations uh of the cardiovascular system. Whereas if I were to say to them, go, you've got to do 10 hours of hard running, there's no way they've probably got at the at their level and how hard they're going, they've probably only got three hours, maybe a little bit more or less, of actual hard work in them. Uh, and even then, that's heaps. Uh, but you know, maximal work, it'd be crazy to think that they'd be able to go for 10 hours straight, okay, or 10 hours in a week or more in some cases, depending on where their fitness is. So, some other things here. Hybrid athletes have a totally different stimulus pool, which I've kind of touched on. I don't think any hybrid should copy an endurance athlete's volume because this normally means that they're under-training strength and then uh often over-training overall, but also potentially under-training their cardiovascular gains. So I don't think they're going to be getting as much cardiovascular benefit by copying an elite-level athlete's program. Uh, it's just not designed for them. Elite-level athletes are a different ball game altogether. What they can handle and what they need is different, their recovery needs are different. I would not recommend copying them. So the 80-20 rule is probably not good uh for many uh hybrids, I would say, or for the majority of hybrids. So one of the other adaptations, sorry, that zone two causes is uh it can increase your heart strength. Your heart rate, okay, or your stroke volume, which is the amount of blood your heart can pump, maxes out at about 60 to 70% of your heart rate max anyway. Everything beyond that uh is basically your heartbeat increasing. So your heart rate is getting full, or your heart sorry, is getting full and then squeezing everything out of it every time you beat, right? Or squeezing as much out of it as you can. This is called your stroke volume, how much blood is being pumped. That actually reaches its limit when your heart is actually at 60 or 70% of your heart rate max. When it goes beyond that, when your heart rate goes faster, sometimes one, the the stroke volume isn't as high because it needs to beat faster, although it usually is, or the heart muscle doesn't get chained, uh trained as much because it's not as much stretch on the actual heart. So we know that heart is a muscle, we know that stretch is required for um strength or or muscle gain to occur, hypertrophy, stretch the muscle needs to stretch, okay. The heart is a muscle that needs to stretch, it stretches a lot when it is at 60 to 70 percent of its maximum beating potential. Okay, zone two is in that range, and zone two is very good at strengthening the heart. That is one thing I don't want to miss. Okay, so how much uh what people don't realize is that higher rep compound work, short rest periods, circuit style finishes, all that kind of stuff uh that you might do in your training or you might do in an F45 or yard class. Um they're great at helping build your fitness. I wouldn't say though that they're they're sustained long enough to be able to be considered uh zone two, and they often aren't cyclical enough for you to be able to get a consistent stimulus out of them. So I would not say that doing those is in any particular zone, heart rate zone, and I definitely would not put them in the zone two category, even if they are at a low intensity. I find that, say for example, if I'm on a ski erg, okay, I'm going up and I'm down, pulling up, up, pulling down, letting it go up. The effort moment is actually only the way down, okay? And I'm doing effort maybe once or half a second at a time. Half a second at a time, do that for 10 minutes. Maybe you've only got five minutes of actual work in there. Compare it, compare that to something like running. This is a bit of a tangent, by the way. Can compare that to something like running where you've got a can or cycling, you've got a continuous cyclical motion going on where one leg or one part of your body is always working. Ten minutes of work is 10 minutes of work. Okay, so it's really important we evaluate what kind of cardio modality we're using, not only the heart rate zones that we're using. Okay. I don't think all cardio uh modalities are created equal. Yeah. Doing things like ergs, which a lot of people love, I don't think are the best way to build your cardiovascular fitness. I think they are a great and excellent addition, particularly for higher intensity stuff. But if you want to be doing the long continuous stuff, stuff that requires you to be on it for a long period of time, i.e. zone two, I don't think I'd be looking at that. I'd be looking at running or cycling or something thereabouts. Anyway, how much zone two should you be doing? Look, it really depends on you and how much you can do. But good things about zone two is you can generally do a lot of it, costs a lot less fatigue. You know, at least 60 to 90 minutes a week, I think is great for everyone, even if you're a lifter. Uh, doing that much really won't inhibit your recovery that much. Um, if anything, I feel like it can improve your cardio, it can improve your overall fitness, uh, reduce your rest times, and actually make you perform better in the gym, in my opinion. Okay. Other things uh to consider here. I think you can also put your zone two training on almost any day of the week. Um, if you have a heavy lifting session that night or that day, I wouldn't put a long aerobic zone two session on in the morning, but you could definitely put zone two on the same days as you lift if it's going to be afterwards, or um, if you're gonna do like a shorter run, for example, something less that that is relatively easy for you in zone two in the morning, say for me an easy 10k in the morning, and then I want to do weights that night or later that day, it normally won't inhibit me that much, so I'm still able to back it up and I should be fine. Okay, so zone two is great because it can generally be paired with other forms of exercise and not inhibit your recovery or your ability to perform uh other modalities of exercise, such as weight training. Okay, and obviously the benefits you get from it are exceptional and excellent overall. Um, it won't really cause that much leg fatigue unless you're doing it for really long periods of time, uh, and you should be able to still back up your heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, and everything else. Most of the time, even if you do it on the same day if you if you fuel correctly, okay. Um, you can also, I even get some of my clients to do it as part of their warm up and cooldown. So, like maybe I'll get them to do two kilometers at like you know, zone two equivalent, whatever pace or whatever on a bike at the beginning of their workouts because I know it's not gonna inhibit them, but if they're doing that four days a week, that could be an extra, you know, 45 minutes or something of cardio that they're getting in their training, and they're already in the gym, warming up, ready to go anyway. So it can be useful in that instance as well, and it's not gonna cost them anything away, or it's not gonna take anything away from their gym sessions afterwards, okay. Um what I generally recommend for a client will obviously depend on their goals, but the way I look at it is when I'm when I'm kind of putting zone two in a client's program, I actually think you should be putting zone two last. Uh, and this is why, and I This, I think, I'll leave this after this. Say I'm working with a hybrid that wants to get stronger button faster or whatever at the same time. Okay, so I'll get them to do their primary strength training sessions. Bang! Map then it map then it map them out in their training week. Then I'll have their primary uh running sessions. When I say primary running sessions, these are the sessions that you need to be fresh for and you need to feel good. So I'll look at their training week and I'll be like, okay, I need them to do really hard and fast intervals on this day, and I need them to do uh, you know, a really hard tempo run on this day. Hypothetically, it could be a Tuesday and a Friday with a gym day on either side of those or something. I'll then at the end of that be like, okay, now I'm gonna plug my zone two in because I know that I'm gonna put my zone two uh work after I know where all of my basically the main work of my week is, and then my zone two can then go on top because zone two can almost go anywhere, so you don't need to think too much about where to put it. It can almost go anywhere. But those hard sessions, the hard gym sessions, the hard running sessions that you need to do, the ones where you need to have fresh legs, you can't carry a lot of fatigue for, I would be looking at putting those in my program first, okay, because they're the ones that are gonna move you the move the needle further in most cases, and then I'd be looking at that zone two training afterwards, okay. So on these days I can then do my zone two because I know I've got my hard interval session on Tuesday and I have uh you know my hard uh squat session on Thursday or Friday. So I can put an easy zone two session somewhere in between both of those, and it shouldn't inhibit anything at all because it's not gonna cause much fatigue. Whereas those two bigger sessions will cause quite a lot of fatigue. So I need to make sure that I've planned for them first. Okay, something to consider. Anyway, uh, one of the benefits of zone two as well, I will say, is that you can generally add a little bit of volume. So if you find you're not getting enough time on your legs, your fitness isn't improving. You can slowly add a little bit of volume to your zone two training, shouldn't cause that much fatigue, and you might find that your fitness improves. Again, endlessly adding volume isn't going to be the answer. Sometimes you need the opposite where you need to get more intensity in. But for some people, that does work as well. Anyway, I feel like I've touched enough on zone two training. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I will see you guys in the next episode. Uh yeah, hockey half marathon this weekend. As always, DM me for coaching, like, comment, subscribe, do all that stuff. Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next time.