The Problem With Zone 2 Training Most People Aren’t Aware of That Easily Makes You Run 1 Min Slower
Knowing this would have saved me so much time and effort
When I first heard about Zone 2 training, it sounded like the miracle pill that would propel my 5 km race pace and 10 km race pace to the pace that I’ve always wanted to achieve.
I mean even Olympic athletes were already doing them and there were even stories talking about how effective prioritizing Zone 2 training really is such that 80% of their training was purely in Zone 2.
Some people on Reddit even talk about exclusively training in the Zone 2 region and a few months later, they managed to run a 21:26 5 km race and a 1:41 half marathon which is pretty insane. The athlete even dropped his zone 2 pace from 11–12 min/mile to 9–10 min/mile which is a pretty significant improvement after a couple of week.
To top it off, fitness influencers have been talking about it on social media for the longest time so I thought why not give it a shot?
I’ve tried it for quite a while and I’ve made some progress but the progress soon faltered pretty fast. Surprise surprise, improving your aerobic base with Zone 2 training is not that simple.
Yet in the past 2 months, I’ve made an effort to experiment with something a little different and my pace has dropped from 7 min/km to 6.35 min/km and my long easy runs feel a lot easier now.
But first, let’s talk about the problem with Zone 2 training.
What’s wrong with Zone 2 training?
Zone 2 training in itself makes sense.
You train at a sustainable pace, usually at 70–80% of your max heart rate and your max heart rate is roughly 220-age. For me, since I’m 26 this year, my max heart rate would be around 220–26=194 and my zone 2 heart rate limit would be roughly 155. This means I’ll try to keep my heart rate to be lower than 155.
So the plan is to constantly increase your weekly mileage by 10% each week and the bulk of your runs, usually 80%, should consist of easy runs at your Zone 2 heart rate.
That’s where the problem lies.
I’ve tried running at that pace for a really long time and most times it gets pretty damn frustrating. After running for just 1–2 km, my heart rate would quickly spike up to the Zone 2 heart rate limit of 155 and I would need to slow down my pace significantly to avoid my heart rate from staying at that high level.
Even after 6 months of training in this manner for a long time, my heart rate did not change all that much.
And this made running longer distances even more tiring because I couldn’t run at a fast enough pace to get into that flow state and I was basically trying my best to maintain my heart rate at that slow pace.
It’s only after I changed 1 thing in my training that I started seeing results.
The change
With the results that I was seeing and comparing the results that people were talking about on the Internet, I didn’t know what the problem was and it became clear to me that I needed to do something different.
That’s when I started to revamp my workout split from an upper-body focus split into a full-body split.
And yes that means I started spreading my time out and allocating some of it to my legs instead. This means doing mobility training and strength training, where I have run specific leg exercises like Bulgarian Lunges and single-legged deadlifts to build strength and stability.
And guess what, that’s what made the difference.
After just 2 months of full body, workout splits 3x a week and continuing to do my Zone 2 training, my Zone 2 pace started to decrease while my heart rate maintained its rate.
I realized I was heavily underemphasizing my lower body strength training and overemphasizing the Zone 2 runs itself. Sure those runs were helping me to build my aerobic base but it wasn’t getting me to run any faster. It’s like a chicken or egg problem:
Do you train your aerobic base first, and then do lower body strength training?
Or do you build your lower body strength and then improve your aerobic base?
And looking back to 5 years ago when I was running much faster and longer at around 4:40 min/km for my 5k race, then I realized something. I was just as active in the past in terms of time on my feet and I was hitting the gym constantly while doing my PPL (push-pull-legs) split. But today, since I shifted to home-based workouts, I’ve stopped focusing much on lower-body training.
So what should you do?
Running slow makes you fitter since it builds your aerobic base but running fast is a different ball game and both running styles use different muscles and movement patterns.
Running fast requires strength, power, and stiffness.
To achieve that, you’ll need to train with lower-body running-specific exercises to build strength in those muscles. You’ll also need plyometrics and interval sessions to train your speed and power.
And of course, they will also help to improve your Zone 2 training because you’ll be exerting less effort over time as you get more efficient with your runs.
So don’t just focus on the run itself, but rather focus on building a well-rounded body that will help you run faster for longer and that involves:
Lower body strength training
Interval training
Long easy runs
In short, don’t just run more, run smarter.
Wrapping It All Up
Being able to improve my runs has helped me to achieve that runner’s high experience once again and I’m starting to learn how to enjoy my runs more and more now.
Even though I’ve not reached my goal yet, I know I’m on the right track to doing so.
And hopefully this article can help you in some way too.
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