For distance runners, aerobic endurance is everything. Sure, speed and agility training has its place in running, but if you are seeking out ways to better your performance, then you must improve aerobic endurance.
Your aerobic metabolism is your barometer. In general, it shows how healthy we are. It is directly correlated with our fitness, endurance and stamina to complete every run we do. Increasing aerobic endurance workouts, proper nutrition, and core strengthening will definitely better your performance.
What is The Definition of Aerobic Endurance?
In general, aerobic endurance is how long can you sustain a given pace with the amount of oxygen you have. The term ‘aerobic’ is Greek and literally means ‘with air’. Aerobic exercise then increases your energy production systems and cardio-respiratory functions. All your energy is based on the amount of oxygen you can bring into your system, and how much you can store.
Though your psychology and physical characteristics have some determination in your overall aerobic abilities, there is no doubt that every one of us can increase our levels of oxygen through exercise, both aerobic and anaerobic. Anaerobic, worthy of an article by itself, is employed to help strengthen the deliver system of our oxygen.
Physically, we have several requirements for oxygen, but possibly the most notable is from muscle fibers. Our muscles use what is called myoglobin, which is an oxygen-storing protein, and is what gives our muscles the red color. Within this group, there are varying types of muscles, including slow-stitch, fast-twitch muscles.
The slow-twitch muscles help in fighting off fatigue, and can be found in such areas as our neck and back. Fast-twitch muscles come in two flavors as well…those which act much like slow-twitch muscles in that they help fight fatigue, but also have a large amount of myoglobin, which provides the oxygen for aerobic endurance, such as our leg muscles.
Fast-twitch B muscles are different i that they do not rely on myoglobin. Instead, they rely on glycogen, or sugar, for their energy. These muscles are what helps us develop faster leg turnover and speed, but as you can imagine, they fatigue easily.
What is The Definition of Cardiorespiratory Endurance?
Cardiorespiratory endurance is simply the ability for our bodies to deliver, supply fuel and oxygen during sustained physical activities. It is a combined action of our circulatory and respiratory systems, the delivery of blood and oxygen, respectively, through our body.
For our cardiovascular system, it is the heart and the pumping action which is improved through aerobic exercise. There are over 60,000 miles of blood vessels which extend through our body from the heart, supplying blood to main parts of our body, such as our legs, head, torso, and arms.
Our respiratory system handles controls our oxygen, pulling it into our lungs, filtering it, and delivering it accordingly into our bloodstream through vessels called capillaries.
Benefits of Aerobic Exercise
Please remember, I am not a doctor, nor look to play any roll in providing you advice related to your health.
The benefits from such activity is enormous, including strengthening of all muscles associated with our respiration, to control air intake and deliver. Strengthening and enlarging our heart muscle. It improves the delivery system of our heart, reduces our resting heart rate, which is also known as aerobic conditioning. Increases the number of red blood cells, which is directly related to the deliver of oxygen throughout our body, improves circulatory systems, and reduces blood pressure.
Other benefits may not seem as tangible, but are critical…improvement of our mental health, reduction of stress, and lessen the incidence of depression, diabetes and heart-related diseases.
Types of Aerobic Endurance Training Exercises
There is an abundance of aerobic endurance activities, each with varying degrees of difficulty, duration, and can be sport-specific. In general, aerobic exercise is repetitive, sustained activity, such as running, swimming, cycling, and walking. Just so you know, activities such as tennis, sprinting, weight lifting, and yoga are not aerobic exercises.
Most aerobic endurance exercise will be performed at moderate intensity, over a longer period of time, designed to build your stamina. An example would be running a long distance, at a reduced pace, as apposed to all-out sprinting intervals. There are also other activities which are aerobic in nature, such as fartlek training and even dance classes can be aerobic. They all carry the benefit of improving your aerobic capacity.
Though it may be tough for most to place certain exercises in the proper categories. An example would be interval training. This type of activity could be aerobic or anaerobic, all depends on the intensity level and durable of each session. I have put together a short of those activities which are considered to be aerobic exercises. They include the long slow distance run, pace or tempo runs, interval training, repetition, and fartlek training.
Long slow distance run: As you may surmise, this is typical of the distance runner. Your intensity will not go above 80% maximum of your heart rate, and less than 70% of your VO2max. Basically, you want to run at a conversational pace.
The duration of such endurance training should be at least thirty minutes, but no longer than two hours, as you will certainly deplete your reserves. Long distance training is low intensity and do not rely on this type of activity too much, as you need other forms of endurance training to balance out your systems. In general, you want to make sure to have appropriate rest in between such runs.
Tempo training: This also referred to as lactic threshold training, designed to improve energy production for both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. Your pace is going to be slightly higher than your normal race pace, with a duration of twenty to thirty minutes.
Interval training: Though these runs can be performed as intervals on the track, I prefer to run them intermittently. Intensity level is no different than your tempo, or pacing, runs, except the sessions include a series of short bursts of energy, followed by same duration i recovery. You want to keep your intensity at or higher than race pace. You can run progression runs, but do not increase your pace too much, as this is not anaerobic training.
Repetition training: This is the most intense of all aerobic training exercises, performed at a pace greater than your VO2max. It is borderline anaerobic system training, with sixty to ninety minute intervals, with five minutes of rest in between each session. This type of training improves your speed and overall running efficiencies. Take care in starting this type of activity, as it increases your risk of injury, and should be left to the more-advanced athlete.
Fartlek training: With fartlek’s, you can combine any or all of the previously mentioned exercises into one activity. The idea is to break up your runs into segments of varying durations and distances, never exhausting your energy reserves.
