Are you stacking wins in your favor every day? That’s wins that will make you healthier, happier, more successful (however you define it)? These wins are habits that you have intention to do everything single day to keep you on track. This could be your workout, preparing your meals, sending emails and messages to people you are accountable to, communicating to the people important in your life clearly and transparently.
I’ve been making it a priority in my own life with all the chaos of running a business and having a family of 5 to be a healthier person. Yes that’s right even people in the fitness world have to work on their health, it doesn’t come easy for us too. One of my wins on a regular basis is to perform zone 2 conditioning at least 2x a week for 20-45 mins.
Zone 2 conditioning gets over looked when it comes to health, as well as performance. We put too much weight on HIIT training and even just strength training, when it comes to health and performance you need to have a base of aerobic strength that feeds all the other qualities of fitness and performance. Not only that this does something that no other training modalities do, it actually increases the amount of blood you heart can bump per beat. It increases the space in your ventricle to hold blood. This will contribute to lower blood pressure and a lower resting heart rate. This is something that I actually need to work on, I have had high blood pressure in the past and a history of it in my family.
Just strength training all the time can have an aerobic effect and help enhance the aerobic system but the effect on the heart is totally different. It actually thickens the walls of the heart and produces a more forceful beat. This is actually a good thing and will help to have a stronger healthier heart but only if you can use zone 2 training with it to increase the amount of blood you can fit in your heart. Therefore just strength training alone can actually contribute to higher blood pressure if your aerobic base is not developed
This is great for adults as well as younger athletes!
If you want to develop better health, have more energy and be a better version of yourself that answer is not to just work yourself to death! Here’s a great habit to develop, Zone 2 conditioning 2-3X a week for 20 mins-45 mins. Zone 2 should be at about 65%-75% of your max heart rate. Not sure what this is? Take 220-(your age)= your max heart rate. If you don’t heavy a heart rate monitor, it should be at an intensity in which you could maintain a conversation. Roughly a 4 out of 10 difficulty.
My personal favorite form of zone 2 conditioning are sled dragging forward and backward for either distance or time!