[Scott Johnston]

I’ve listened intently to both those Drive episodes and feel San Millan does a great job of explaining the physiology around training the aerobic base. From my experience, I would say that where you place the higher lactate portion of the session depends on the training effect you are trying to achieve. If the workout is meant to focus on developing speed-endurance or power-endurance where the quality of movement, speed, and power is the focus then put the higher lactate portion soon after the warm-up. If the intention is to train mainly endurance like developing a kick at the end of a race put the higher lactate well into to the workout so that glycogen is somewhat depleted when the taxing bit comes on.

I have used both these methods extensively. In the overall training cycle, one must first develop the ability to: pull hard (in climbing), run fast (in running), ski fast (in XC skiing/skimo) when you are fairly fresh (like early in a workout) before trying to ski fast, run fast or climb hard when you are fatigued late in a workout. If you can run fast when fresh how are you going to run fast when tired? Like Tony Yaniro says: If you can’t pull the move, you have nothing to endure. So, the timing of these different stimuli is important.

The only exception I had to the way San Millan presented his whole Z2 talk was his failure to differentiate between how an elite athlete with a very well-developed aerobic base/high AeT would train vs how someone with aerobic deficiency would approach their training. Very different approaches are needed.

Scott