How To Build Aerobic Fitness

If you want to build your aerobic fitness: long slow workouts are not the only way. A lot of people think long cardio workouts = low intensity. And short cardio workouts = high intensity. Instead, I use this framework:

• Sustainable - If you can repeat the pace, and effort, time and time again, then you are doing aerobic work, also known as cardio.

• Unsustainable - Higher efforts at a pace that you purposefully cannot hold on to. Eventually, you start to see your power decrease. This is anaerobic work.

Sustainable work helps you:

• Build cardiovascular health

• Increases energy output

• Improve recovery times from all types of training

• Feel good rather than smashed

• Preserve muscle tissue when combined with strength training and a proper diet.

The aerobic system is like gears on a car. We have different gears for different situations. We don’t just turn the car on and off. We travel up and down gears depending on the terrain and the conditions.

The same is true for your aerobic system. You have lots of gears. You have the long 60min sustained effort gear. You have the short 30 seconds on/30 seconds off for 30 sets gear. You also have the gear that does 2 minutes of work with 45 seconds of rest in a sustainable fashion. Each gear needs to be trained to improve.

So doing short AND long is key. And that is precisely why I structured The PR Power Endurance program with both short and long intervals. Make sure you do a little bit of both on your own to develop all gears or check out The PR Training App to remove the guesswork.