I was watching a video on an Elitefts article with Dave and newest team member Nate Harvey on conditioning. They were talking about the various reasons for conditioning and the numerous ways to go about it. One thing in particular that stood out to me was how the body will adapt to it.
It made me realize I have gotten too comfortable with just getting on the airdyne or tredamill and just trudging along without much thought. I think I fall into this during the cold months of the winter. It's easy to get a little sexier with conditioning when it's nice out. There's so many choices between hill work, sprints, a sled, the prowler, farmer's handles, tires, etc.
The steady state work I have been doing is fine to burn a few calories and give the heart some work, but I'm certain I have adapted to it. With that, I don't have the ambition to keep dialing it up to get more results. There's nothing desirable about pushing myself on the treadmill. Also, is that really what I need as a strength athlete anyway.
With Spring coming I will be able to remedy this shortly. However, in the meantime we are still having some good cold spells back in the Northeast and there's no time like the present to make my work more effective. So while on the treadmill or airdyne I am going to start doing tempo work. Today I experimented with walking on the treadmill for two minutes and then jumping off for 10 squat thrusts. I repeated that for 20 minutes.
I didn't bother with the heart rate monitor ass I find it a pain in the ass to deal with. I just knew that when I was finished with the squat thrusts I was breathing a little more rapidly and starting to break a sweat. Then, by the end of the two minutes on the treadmill my breathing was back to normal. I feel this is indicator that I was in a nice moderate zone on the squat thrusts and more of a recovery zone during the walk.
The tempo work is going to help my work capacity while not hampering my recovery for strength training. Plus it's more useful than the steady state stuff I have been doing. Now I am not saying there's no place for steady state work or high intensity interval training. Much like training there's different seasons for different things. I will still be doing a little of both of them. However, on my off days, tempo work will be a staple.
So right now I know what I will be doing for conditioning work and why. Do you?
