It’s a fancy name that simply means the point, determined by a specific heart rate, at which your body switches over from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism.
Get A Heart Rate Monitor Rule #1 of aerobic fitness: Get a heart rate monitor.
Rule # 2 of aerobic fitness: Get a heart rate monitor.
Doing cardio or intervals without a heart rate monitor is like doing squats or bench presses without knowing how much weight you are lifting.
There are cheaper and more expensive ones but any Polar monitor will do as long as it gives you real-time feedback of your heart rate.
Measuring Your Aerobic Fitness So now that you have a heart rate monitor, we are going to use a few tests to determine how aerobically fit you are.
Test #1 – Resting Heart Rate Your resting heart rate is one of the most valuable pieces of information you have regarding your fitness and state of recovery.
When you wake up in the morning, put on your heart rate monitor and take your resting heart rate.
Having a resting heart rate in the 50s is what you should shoot for.
You may notice your resting heart rate is elevated following a hard workout from the previous day.
I personally feel best when my heart rate is in the 50s. I find my endurance, sex drive, and general sense of wellbeing is on these days.
Conversely, if my resting heart rate is in the high 60s or low 70s then I know I better back off on whatever I decide to do that day.
Basically you wear a heart rate monitor during grappling training or intervals and see how fast your heart rate comes down in one minute after you stop.
If your heart rate is dropping 30-40 beats in one minute after and intense bout of exercise, you’re recovering well.
If your heart rate stays elevated and only seems to come down a little, you may aerobically unfit, training too hard or possibly not fully recovered from your last workout.
Here is how to do it: * Use any piece of cardio equipment; you can also use shadowboxing or grappling drills * Keep your heart rate in between 100-130; the more fatigued you are, then lower you should keep your heart rate; strictly follow this guideline * 20-45 minutes of continuous work Method # 2 – Aerobic Endurance This is an actual training session on it’s own.
Use this when you need to lower your resting heart rate and develop aerobic conditioning.
Here’s how to do it: * Use any piece of cardio equipment; you can also use shadowboxing, grappling drills or light circuit training * Keep your heart rate in between 130-150; the better your fitness, then higher you should keep your heart rate; strictly follow this guideline * Use this as a training session on it’s own when you are developing your aerobic conditioning * 20-60 minutes of work Method # 3 – Fartlek “Fartlek” is roughly translated from Swedish to mean, “Speed play.” You literally “Play” with your pace to raise and lower your heart rate throughout the session.
Here’s how to do it: * Use same guideline of work and exercises as the Aerobic Endurance method * Start exercising and bring your heart rate up to 130 * Slowly increase your pace while monitoring your heart rate until you reach 150 * Gradually slow down your pace while monitoring your heart rate until you reach 130 * Repeat for 20-60 minutes Method # 4 – Aerobic Power Intervals This is another one of my favorite methods to use.
It involves getting your heart rate up as high as you can and keeping it there for a minute or two.
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