Aerobic training

Aerobic training can be considered as any prolonged activity that gets you breathing more deeply. The most common examples being walking, jogging cycling etc.

The most fundamental key to aerobic activities is getting out of breath. It is essential you examine your exercise to see if it is achieving this. In my experience I have met many people who do hours of swimming but never get even slightly out of breath, or play hours of tennis but say to me they cannot lose weight.

These two examples show how exercise can be misleading. When swimming, your technique may limit you from being able to reach an intensity to achieve the real health benefits of exercise. Tennis, by nature of its design is stop start and very often does not challenge the aerobic system at all. i understand it takes 2 hours to play a match but more often than not the exerciser is spending considerably more time standing around than running.

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The above examples are not a criticism of tennis or swimming but rather just making you aware of what really is an aerobic activity and what is not. For your health to be maximized you must reach an intensity that you are breathing more deeply than usual for a prolonged amount of time.

In the gym it is also very common to see people on machines but not reaching the required intensity level. If your body can handle level 10 and you are gong at level 3 it is going to struggle to really make gains in fitness and health. However, do not be mistaken that level 3 is useless. It is still exponentially more beneficial than the person who never does any aerobic activity, but more often than not will not get you the results you desire.

To gauge how hard to do exercise you should use the rate of perceived exertion scale (RPE). This is a subjective measure you ask yourself about how hard the exercise feels, from easy to very hard. Once you have learnt this you can set the intensity on the machines to equate to this exertion level.

RPE scale:

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20 - About to collapse the exercise is so hard, gasping for breath,

15 - Hard effort, could do 3-5 minutes max, breathing deeply.

10 - Comfortable, could do 15 minutes at this level, breathing a more
       deeply than usual

 5 - Easy, could do 30 minutes at this level, very slightly out of breath

 0 - At home watching telly with the feet up.                                   

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The aim is to build up to be able to do more exercise at the higher exercise intensities. You should aim to exercise at between 13-16 out of 20.

Please note you DO NOT need to go into the 17 – 20 end of the scale, you are not Olympic athletes just yet, so you do not need to train like them. Regular exercise at 17-18 out of 20 is difficult to maintain long term.

What happens instead is that your perception of what a 15 out of 20 feels like changes so further down the line you are working at a harder effort level but you perceive this as easier than an untrained counter part.

Using this scale allows you to control your exercise intensity and maintain motivation. The key is to find that 15 out of 20 level and then use different training techniques.

For example a 15 out of 20 for a 4 minute sprint may be at speed 13 on the treadmill, but at 15 out of 20 for a 20 minute jog may be at speed 11.5. Using different stimulus for the training will increase your fitness levels and maintain motivation.

See my article on hitting an exercise plateau for more on how to vary your training programme.