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Common Conditioning Mistake:

1. Too frequent high intensity training
2. Intensity limiting total training load
3. Only practicing race pace at high RPEs
4. All-out effort in hard sessions
5. Excessive training variety
6. Starting workouts too hot
7. "Always ready" approach to training

Best Practice:

1. High-low model
2. Large training loads with more low intensity training
3. Practice race pace at submaximal RPEs often to lower perception of effort
4. Controlled effort in hard sessions, save all-out efforts for race
5. Week to week control
6. Incremental effort
7. Peak for race day

Join us for the live training "Conditioning for Fitness Athletes"

This Thursday, October 23rd, 3pm MT

If you sign up today, you'll get permanent access to the recording.

Tap to save your spot: https://www.paulbweber.com/conditioning-for-fitness-athletes

Send us a text

In this episode, I discuss:

• The confusion among health and wellness leaders and coaches about the utility of Zone 2
• Zone 2 for living long and healthy
• Zone 2 for performance
• Why your time is the most important factor in how much Zone 2 you should do
• The energy intake-training load relationship
• Comparing low intensity training to high intensity training
• Exceptions for people at physiological extremes

For those who want to dive deeper, join us for the live training Conditioning for Fitness Athletes.

Thursday, October 23rd, 3pm MT

Tap here to save your spot.

If you sign up now, even if you can't make it live, you'll get permanent access to the recording.

I hope to see you there.

Send us a text

Join us for the live training: Conditioning for Fitness Athletes.

Thursday, October 23rd, 3pm MT

Tap the link to save your spot: https://www.paulbweber.com/conditioning-for-fitness-athletes

If you can't make it live, all good, you'll get permanent access to the recording.

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When I start working with a new athlete, the first question we ask is:

"What are our training priorities?"

To help decide, we look at their:

1. Competition results
2. Training metrics
3. Physical characteristics

Elite fitness athletes often have exceptional strength and muscle mass talent.

As a result, the majority of people who want to compete in fitness sport spend their entire career chasing strength.

They may condition, but in amounts that still let them make meaningful gains in their strength and muscle mass.

But a few athletes who have exceptional strength and muscle mass talent must focus on their conditioning.

How do conditioning-biased athletes train?

Most of my conditioning-biased athletes condition 6 days a week, with their quality sessions confined to 3 of those days.

A quality session is any session that includes medium or high intensity exercise. All other conditioning is done at a low intensity.

The goal, in the long term, is to chronically increase training load.

This can come in one of two ways:

1. Improved fitness - as you become more conditioned, you can sustain higher relative intensities, so you can achieve larger training loads in the same amount of time
2. Adding hours - usually in the form of more low intensity training. For context, Olympic endurance athletes condition for ~15-25 hours per week, the vast majority of it at a low intensity.

All else being equal, if you become more aerobically fit, you can recover faster from all types of exercise.

A Note on Nutrition

Depletion is extremely common among fitness athletes.

I know it was for me when I was competing.

I had a whole food bias, so I thought that the only carbs I could eat were from rice, oats or fruit.

I simply couldn't eat enough whole food to meet my energy needs.

As a result, by the third event of a multiday competition, I was wiped out.

If you're training with a conditioning-bias, preparing for a multiday competition, or competing in one, your carbohydrate needs range from 6-12 g/kg per day.

In most cases, this will include some processed foods.

This is because processing usually makes food more condensed. So the food takes up less volume in your GI system.

Here are a couple examples:

50g Carbs = 200g White Rice vs. 60g Rice Chex Cereal

50g Protein = 200g Sirloin Steak vs. 75g Whey Protein

Here are condensed foods I use myself and with my athletes to help them meet their energy needs:

• Baby food (fruit and vegetable puree)
• Energy waffles
• Cereal
• Gummies
• Karbolyn
• Cyclic Dextrin
• Egg White Protein
• Whey Protein

As you get more fit and your training load increases, so will your energy expenditure. Use these guidelines to help you fuel your training.

Resources

[1] Physical and Physiological Characteristics of Elite CrossFit Athletes

​https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/12/6/162​

[2] FFMI Calculator: calculate your genetic muscular potential

​https://mennohenselmans.com/ffmi-calculator/