You’re not getting faster and you’re not able to go for longer. Your endurance has plateaued. You’re consistently training, and you think you’re doing the right things to improve. But you aren’t? What in the heck gives?

 

It might be that you’re chasing exercise feelings while skipping out on the most important aspects of endurance training. Expect to learn how to avoid following your feelings into the “messy middle” of training intensity, what aerobic capacity training is and how to do it, and when to add in aerobic power training.

 

Put the lessons in this article to good use, and you’ll bust out of your endurance plateau.

 

 

You’re Spending Too Much Time in the “Messy Middle”

You end up in the “messy middle” when you train solely to chase feelings. This happens when you want a workout to feel a certain way, or when you think that every workout has to feel difficult to make progress. So you mentally flog yourself into running harder, or you turn every gym conditioning session into an acid bath. The problem is that you perceive that you’re working at high intensity, but the truth is you aren’t. Here’s what’s actually happening.

 

As you accrue fatigue, it feels like you’re pushing hard, but you’re working at a middling intensity, likely somewhere in Zone 3. While some time spent in Zone 3 is useful, if you spend most of your time there you end up over-developing your anaerobic glycolytic energy system. This causes your heart rate to rise too quickly when training. It also trains your body to preferentially burn carbs, which means you can burn pretty hot, but you can’t burn for long.

 

If you’re wondering why your heart rate jumps as soon as you start moving and why your pace tanks but your heart rate stays up, that, my friend, is why. You’re spending too much time in the messy middle and over-developing one energy system at the expense of conditioning the systems that build aerobic capacity. Let’s talk more about that.

 

 

You’re Not Doing Enough Aerobic Capacity Work

Good endurance and hybrid coaches and trainers break their training into two categories based on how physiological systems work. Each system has capacity and each system has power.

 

Capacity is how long the system can generate energy.

 

Power is how quickly the system can generate energy.

 

In most instances, capacity training builds the machinery necessary for building power. It’s like building infrastructure in your body. Think of it like a highway system. You can’t drive fast on shitty, gravel roads. But you can on freshly paved, well-maintained roads. Aerobic capacity training builds the well-maintained highways of your body.

 

It increases the number and quality of your mitochondria, where aerobic energy is generated in your muscle cells.

 

It improves your vascular network, especially by increasing capillary density. Capillaries are the smallest blood vessels that transfer oxygen and nutrients to working muscles while also carrying away metabolic waste products.

 

It increases your cardiac output or the amount of blood your heart pumps out per minute.

 

All of this infrastructure is necessary for stamina and endurance. It’s what allows you to go for hours while keeping your heart rate at a reasonable pace. And it’s also necessary for you to develop aerobic power.

 

What’s more, it is your recovery system. Aerobic capacity training shifts your nervous system tone more towards parasympathetic, which helps you recover faster. And it improves the delivery of oxygen and nutrients at rest. Pretty important stuff if you want to consistently train and train hard.

 

At this point, you’re wondering how to do aerobic capacity training. Well, you’ll spend a lot of time in Zones 1 and 2. You can do it by running, hiking, rucking, biking, swimming, circuit training, etc. The important thing is to keep the intensity down so you stay in the correct heart rate zones. It’s also important to not use weight lifting as a training method in this context. The thoracic pressure caused by lifting artificially increases your heart rate while also limiting how much blood returns to your heart. This messes up the cardiac output adaptation.

 

 

You’re Not Doing Long Aerobic Capacity Sessions

If you want the ability to do stuff for a long time, well, then you have to do stuff for a long time. That’s how training specificity works. But also, staying in the correct heart rate zones for longer periods enhances aerobic capacity adaptations.

 

It takes at least 30 minutes of continuous work in Zones 1 and 2 to elicit aerobic capacity adaptations. But the magic really starts to happen when you stay in those zones for an hour or more. Then things really get good when you do sessions that last 90 minutes or more. You drastically improve your body’s ability to use fat as fuel, enhance your metabolic flexibility (ability to switch between fat and carbs for fuel), and improve all of the aerobic capacity infrastructure we described in the previous section.

 

The problem is that most folks do conditioning sessions that last 30 to 45 minutes. While they’re great and you should absolutely use the time you have, those sessions just aren’t long enough to build real endurance. You need to do some longer aerobic capacity sessions.

 

Hiking is a great method for these longer sessions. You’re outside and moving among the trees, noticing critters and plants. All of this defeats the drudgery of long gym aerobic sessions. At times, there’s no getting around doing these sessions in the gym. Frame them as an opportunity to work on your mental skills.

 

One 90-minute session per week for most of the year is a solid practice. You’ll do more during some training phases, and less during others. But you’d do well to be consistent with long aerobic capacity sessions.

 

 

You’re Not Doing Enough True High-Intensity Work

There comes a time when you need high-intensity training to improve your endurance. It helps raise your lactate threshold to maintain aerobic energy contribution at higher heart rates. And it improves your V02max, how much oxygen your body can uptake and use. Lactate threshold and V02max contribute to the power end of the training spectrum. Improve your aerobic power and you decrease the relative intensity of all your aerobic capacity training. (But it’s important to build the infrastructure first. Remember that.)

 

Some folks are intimidated by high-intensity aerobic training. Others think they’re doing it when they aren’t – they’re stuck in the messy middle. True high-intensity aerobic work is done at near-maximal intensity and is interval-based. For example, lactate threshold intervals are done at or near your lactate threshold for 8 to 12 minutes with 3 to 5 minutes of rest between intervals. V02max intervals are done at maximal intensity for 3 to 5 minutes with the same amount of rest. The rest is active; you keep slowly moving as you recover.

 

The problem with messy middle training is that there isn’t adequate rest to maintain the necessary intensity. It feels hard, but it isn’t truly intense. True intensity is necessary for developing the aerobic power that improves endurance.

 

If you’ve been doing hours of aerobic capacity training for months, it’s time to add in some aerobic power training – especially if you’ve seen yourself plateau.

 

One session per week of lactate threshold training or V02max training should be enough to move the needle for you.

 

 

Better Training, Better Endurance

Stay (mostly) out of the messy middle, do enough aerobic capacity training while including some long sessions, and add in some aerobic power training when it’s time. Follow these tips and you’ll get past your endurance plateau.

 

Does all of this make sense but you’re not sure where to start and want the guidance of professionals that have been writing hybrid training programs for a decade? Sign up for your free intro below.

 

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