True Fitness

A bit of Exercise Physiology July 24, 2009

Today, July 23, 2009, was a rest day.  So I thought I would take a moment to talk about exercise physiology.  Many people think working out means going to run for 30 minutes at the same pace every day or doing a few push ups and sit ups or the occasional weight lifting.  Many people don’t realize the science behind exercise.  Today new studies are coming out all the time and the science of exercise has been well studied.  A few things to know to help you design a better program for yourself:

Energy Systems, your body has various energy systems that it uses when you exercise.  Depending on your goal you should concentrate on a certain energy system.  If you want to train for your best 5K you need to train differently than someone running a marathon.  If you want to be a good sprinter or improve your vertical jump for basketball you need to train differently than a triathlete.  The body has 3 primary energy systems.  The phosphagen system, the anaerobic system, and the aerobic system.  The names may change depending on what you are reading but the ideas stay the same.  The phosphagen system is used for extremely short intense exercise like the shot put or 1 RM max lifts and is only good for about 10 seconds of energy.  The anaerobic system is used for high intensity exercise that lasts longer than 10 seconds and is the primary energy system for anything lasting under about 5 minutes.  Once you reach 5 minutes your body switches primarily to the aerobic system.  No one system is ever doing all the work.  They all continue to contribute and overlap, but depending on the duration and intensity of exercise one is predominant.

What that means to everyone is that you have to train specifically your goal.  For example to improve a 5K don’t just go out and jog 3 miles everyday.  Take a few days a week to do some speed work.  Run intervals with the fast ones at your goal pace, try to run longer at your goal pace as you improve and take shorter breaks between intervals.  By doing this you increase your anaerobic threshold and improve your ability to hold that fast pace to run a faster 5K. 

Another example would be improving your vertical jump.   Don’t just do squats over and over again, try using plyometrics.  Plyometrics add a load to your muscles and force you to overcome that load to perform the exercise.  Examples are box jumps, split jumps, depth jumps, or weighted squat jumps.  You don’t have to do a lot of reps, but focus on good form and exploding through the full range of motion on every repetition.

Just some things to think about when designing workouts for yourself.