Conditioning work

Conditioning work is a lot like lifting for muscle and strength. In both cases, improvement in function is an adaptation to imposed stress. If the stress level is insufficient to present a challenge, the body has no reason to spend resources adapting.

The best comparison is lifting light weights, but not to failure. If you’re completely sedentary and have no lifting experience, even this type of low stress, comfortable training will be enough to get cause some improvements. But once you’re past that detrained stage, you need to challenge your body. Either use heavier loads or go to failure to keep progressing. It’s the same with metabolic conditioning work. Whether you focus on building an endurance base, VO2 max, anaerobic capacity, or lactate threshold, you need to make it hard. It needs to hurt, at least a little.

At first, very low-intensity work like “talking intensity” (an intensity level where you can still have a conversation) might be enough if you’re completely detrained. But pretty soon, you’ll need to get uncomfortable to improve cardiovascular function and conditioning. Walking is awesome for health. But if that’s all you do, even if you do it four hours a day, it won’t make you any better conditioned.

True metcon sucks. Even steady-state cardio to improve cardiovascular function sucks because it needs to be done at an intensity level that’s higher than talking intensity. If you can chat about your weekend, you’re not going hard enough to improve function (though that’s fine for active recovery). At the most, you might be able to say “F**K OFF!” to someone who talks to you while you’re training.

The key point: Regardless of the physical training you do (cardio, strength, hypertrophy, power), you need to challenge yourself and be uncomfortable. That’s how your body forces adaptation and improvement.