[dominicpnw]

I’ve been playing with the idea of mixing strength and Zone 2 training in the same workout. For example, Do a set of deadlifts, 3 min of Z2 box steps/treadmill/stairmaster, a set of pullups, followed by 3 min of Z2 box steps/treadmill/stairmaster. Although heart rate might be elevated at the end of the strength set, the cardio is at a pace that would be at a Z2 pace without doing the strength.  This way, I can give the muscles involved time to recover and at the same time get my cardio in. At least that’s my theory.

My question is then, if we did 5 sets of the above would it be equivalent to 30 min of cardio?  Is this a non-optimal approach?

 

Thanks!

• This topic was modified 1 month ago by dominicpnw.

[Seth Keena]

Hi, Thanks for writing in.

This sounds like a circuit for alpine climbing or some similar sport.

Assessing optimal approach: You might be negatively effecting recovery for pull-ups, but to what degree it hard to say. The intended training stimulus should be considered. For example, you have roughly three phases for pull-ups; muscular endurance, hypertrophy, and maximal strength, ordered by increasing weight and rest time, respectively.  (All. these have other names.) If you intend to do a lot of these ‘combo’ workouts I suggest you ‘test’ pull-up performance without combining into a Z2 workout so you have some idea of performance without the load of Z2 during rest period. You can then decide if, and this could be phase dependent, the performance change is worth it for you.

I do suspect that the closer you are to your 1rep max pull-up weight or to the limits of your pull-up capacity, your performance will suffer greater.

If you’re accounting for the propulsion muscles’ duration in Zone-2 then you account for the time those muscles are producing Z2 cardiac demand level. Using lactate, you’d probably see about the same; elevated levels while doing Z2 stuff and not very much elevated doing DLs and pull-ups. Probably easies to wear a HRM and use the % of time you’re in Z2.

-Seth

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Seth Keena.

[dominicpnw]

That’s a good idea regarding testing without the cardio. I’ll give that a go. I am doing both heavy deadlifts and weighted pullups in this particular set. My exercise selection when doing this has been to filter out quad dominant movements.

I don’t want to stray too far from my question but, at what point though is it enough, as far as progressing strength? Should we always be trying to increase? I feel my strength level is intermediate for a gym rat.  Should that be enough to just maintain that for the rest of my life/career?

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