Most men who exercise regularly fall into one of two camps: muscle chasers or endurance enthusiasts. The former enjoy strength training in pursuit of a certain body type; the latter want to be as aerobically fit as possible. The reality, though, is that to reach your true fitness potential – in or out of the gym – you need a healthy balance of both.
If strength training is your primary pursuit, both performance and aesthetics will be hugely improved by having a better engine. And making aerobic fitness integral to your routine will also set you up for a longer, healthier life. With that in mind, here’s your guide to becoming a stronger endurance athlete in the months ahead.
1. Be Mr Consistent
Like any other training adaptation, improving your aerobic endurance and enjoying the health benefits that come with it requires regular, sustained work. A study published in the Journal oftheAmericanCollege of Cardiologyfound that between 60 and 144 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise – split across two to three sessions per week – was optimal in terms of both quantity and frequency to start to see benefits.
Running coach Steve Bateman sums it up as, “Use it or lose it.” He says: “The absolute fundamental is regular running. Without that, you’re going to provide a stimulus from a run, your body’s going to make some adaptations if it’s good enough, and then if you’re not going to run for a bit, it’ll start to lose those adaptations again.”
2. Fire up fat reserves
Endurance-focused cardiovascular exercise is powered by the body’s aerobic energy system, which uses oxygen to transform your body’s fat and sugar (glycogen) stores into ATP. Your body has limited stores of the latter, but it’s possible to train it to use the former, saving glycogen stores for when you need them most. One study found that the sweet spot for metabolising fat was around 55% of your maximum effort, meaning you don’t have to flog yourself to start seeing the benefits.
3. Switch the twitch
Your muscles are made up of three types of fibre: slow oxidative (SO), fast oxidative (FO) and fast glycolytic (FG). SO responds well to slow, easy training and is slow to tire, while
