Zone 3 Triathlon Training: Should You Train in Zone 3?

okay Fraser here's a question for you should you train in zone three well my you mean that whole gray zone that area that we've been told that no we should really ever train in and avoid that dreaded zone B Plateau no I guess we shouldn't train zone three yeah I mean you're absolutely right j-3 it's got a pretty bad rap but I'd say mostly because it's often used in about wrong way actually zone three can be hugely beneficial and today we're going to show you how [Music] okay mark I think we should look at reasons why there's on three trainings being given such a bad name can we yeah definitely and actually I think it's mostly through our own actions I mean if you ever fall into the trap of constantly wanting a high average speed a higher average power or even a high average run pace I definitely have and I'm sure many of you out there have tea and in small doses it's absolutely fine but if you're constantly doing it for every single workout that's not quite so good yeah and I guess what happens is we start to hit this plateau don't we whereas we're always going quite hard but we're never really just going easy and I suppose it means we always feel like we're accomplishing something in a training session and we come away from it feeling quite happy but we're not giving ourselves any time to recover which means that we can't then go harder and faster when we need to so for example if we're going out for a club ride and our meets the psych accelerate up a hill we just don't have the ability to go with them because all we've done is between this middle of the ground fitness yeah and this is actually really dangerous area because if you're not giving yourself that adequate recovery you're constantly training at zone 3 well you can easily burn now and this is why it's kind of given the name such as the grey zone or the zone free syndrome ok Mike so so what you're saying is that is actually an advantage at times to it though yeah absolutely they're actually training in zone 3 can be a really good thing and can be hugely beneficial to us providing it's specific to the type of race we're doing say for anything over two or three hours it's very likely that you're going to be hitting zone 3 for some extended periods of time yeah so what you're seeing mark is we're talking about Ironman 70.3 and above right yeah absolutely although what I will say is zone 3 is quite a tough intensity so for some athletes particularly novices then hitting this zone for extended period time is really quite hard in fact we might find is that for shorter distance of ents such as Olympic distance then racing a zone 3 is much more preferable for these distances however on the flip side if you look at the pros then they're racing quite long events I'm a Centerpoint 3 and I'm and events and hitting zone 3 throughout and above zone 3 for those races yeah and aside from these certain specificities for those race distances it's also proven to really help with muscle endurance and strength and with that increased muscle endurance we're gonna have more ability to cope with racing longer and not get fatigued and we'll also be able to deal with intensities better when we're out training all right phrase it so what is sewing through it's a good question Mike I really think we should go and have a coffee at each other this [Music] so you're saying Fraser yeah well it is often described as an effort that's comfortably hard or the fast four speed that you can do while still feeling relaxed yeah I guess if you in training terms if you're trying to chat to someone well you could say a few words but you're gonna struggle to have a full blown conversation if you look at this on like a rating of perceived exertion or RPE scale then this is going to be somewhere around six maybe even a seven out of ten and with swimming well we we tend to talk less about zones in swimming we tend to use times and paces but you will be probably quite surprised how often you hit zone three during a swim session so the swimming it's roughly seventy to eighty percent of your maximum heart rate or critical swim speed of plus five seconds per hundred meters in cycling this is seventy five to eighty two percent of your maximum heart rate or seventy five to eighty nine percent of your functional threshold power then in running this is almost a marathon running pace it's seventy to eighty percent of your maximum heart rate or a ninety to ninety four percent of your threshold run pace so so far in this video we've mentioned could swim speed FGP and threshold run pace and you might be wondering what those things are or how you can work your numbers I don't worry if you want to see videos that we've done on those before we'll throw to them at the end of this video yeah now what is really important to realize with zone three is that it actually incorporates and intensity work that we all love to talk about and that is sweet spot now sweet spot is that intensity to just above tempo and just below our threshold and it actually crosses over between our upper end of zone three and lower end of zone four now it's a term that has been thrown around a lot within cycling and triathlon it's a very popular training method because it's hugely beneficial and although it is actually just a fraction below our FTP or a lactate threshold actually has very similar physiological adaptations because well with it being less taxing we can do more of it we can recover better between them yeah and the angle being essentially to bump up our threshold or FTP level and simply food that means that we can go harder faster and essentially it takes less energy for us to do that yeah now we're not focusing specifically on sweet spot in this video but it is really important to realize that zone 3 does incorporate that so actually zone 3 does not deserve the bad name that is great to have so now let's take a look at how you'd actually use zone 3 in your own training yeah so you wouldn't instinctively set out in swimming perhaps to try and target your zone 3 and we've mentioned that already in the video but it's actually something you've probably done quite a lot when you've been swimming let's take example a progression or build swim set that you would do and for the bulk of that middle portion of that workout you're more than likely been hitting that zone 3 right yeah phrase is absolutely right and a good example of this build or progression set is for 200 an easy aerobic pace with an RP or rating of perceived exertion of 4 to 5 then into 3 to hundreds at this zone 3 intensity it's comfortably hard an RPE of 6 to 7 and then we're going into two 200s pushing on just above this pace to an RP of 7 or even 8 and then finally finishing with one 200 add an RP of eight or even nine although you may feel well a little bit fatigued by this point they don't be disappointed if you're not smashing amazing times up this is the idea of this session yeah and for the bike I'd often start people off with a session along the lines of five times ten minutes of six minutes at zone three with four minutes at zone two as a recovery this would then progress into five by ten minutes as eight minutes at zone three with two minutes at zone two as recovery and then start building these into longer sustained blocks along the lines of three by 15 minutes at Zoo and three with five minutes at zone to recovery between or two by 20 minutes at zone three with ten minutes ozone to recovery between [Music] yeah and of course you can follow a very similar format for the run to start off with a three times ten minutes at five minutes zone three with five minutes zone to recovery progress this to three times ten minutes has seven minutes at zone three three minutes at zone two recovery then up to three by 10 minutes at zone three with three minutes add some zone to recovery and even extend this out to two by 15 at zone three with three minutes at zone to recovery now finally to really make sure that you getting the most out of these workouts and actually make sure that you don't overdo it - then it's important that you're monitoring your effort as accurately as possible I'm sure and if you don't have any other means of doing so rate of perceived exertion is a perfectly good way of tracking how you're feeling just do remember to try and keep that an effort of about six or seven out of ten on a scale of your effort you're gonna be working fairly hard and beating quite deeply yeah but if you can then using heartrate pace or even power is obviously far more accurate and actually is going to make your session a lot more specific and effective and ultimately hoping to get the most out of yourself yeah so hopefully you've learned a little bit about going through today you've liked this video please give it a thumbs up and don't forget to click on the globe subscribe or other videos on the channel if you want to see a playlist that has the videos that I talked about previously in the video the Arabic swim speed threshold FTP then you can find that here yeah and if you'd like to see that standalone critical swimmer speed video and how to work out that pace for you soon you can see that by clicking just here

Channel: Global Triathlon Network

Views: 131,892

Keywords: GTN, Global Triathlon Network, triathlon, Triathlon (Sport), tri, ironman, Sports, zone 3, zone3, Zone 3 Plateau, effort level, grey zone, middle ground, sweetspot, sweet spot, ftp, css, lthr, functional threshold power, critical swim speed, lactate threshold heart rate, maximum heart rate, maximum hr, hr, heart rate, swimbikerun, triathlon training, triathlon skills, iron man, tri bike, triathlete, traithlon, ӱ, 3520, Վ, Ꮽ, Ᏹ, Չ, Ջ, Ꮲ, Ꮛ, Ꮡ, Ꮨ, Ꮦ, Ꮞ, Ꮥ, Ս, ད, Ր, К, ཌ, ཎ, ཥ, की

Id: I_qY9UczTGg

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019