No Zone Training: Part 1

The relative importance of training volume, frequency and intensity are in seemingly constant flux. The popular training pendulum swings wildly in different directions depending on various factors, including specific athletes' performances (think Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, Dara Torres), a compelling coach's articulation of a training theory (think Arthur Lydiard, Chris Carmichael, Joe Friel, Tim Noakes) and finally widely circulated articles such as those that appear in the popular press (think NY Times, sports magazines, etc).

A recent article in Outside Magazine, called Beware the Black Hole, addresses a training intensity that, it is suggested, is way overused and under-productive. Reading this article prompted several rowers in my club to ask: am I mis-training?

Synopsis of the Black Hole
The article starts out describing world champion rower, Olaf Tufte. After acquiring a new boat, the Norwegian apparently found himself eager to experience some speed and ended up going a bit hard on his rest days, thereby undermining his recovery efforts. He was apparently training hard and then training medium hard, with fewer really true easy days. After mending his ways ("After being told to cool it with his new boat"), Tufte went on to win the 2003 World Championships and the Athens and Beijing Olympics in the single. Stephen Seiler, an exercise physiologist and rower, argues that "To get better, you have to go really hard and really easy—but not in between." It is the medium intensity workouts, according to the article that are the bane of competitive athletes.

The so-called No Zone
This medium intensity black hole is described in an accompanying article as "a narrow no-go range, a span of about seven to ten heartbeats per minute" that can be calculated in a couple of different ways:

1. use 75-80% of maximum heart rate. E.g, if your max is 180 then 135-144 is your "no-zone"
2. increase exercise intensity from talking to the point to where talking becomes difficult. At that point your heart rate is the lower bound or your threshold. Add 6% to that number for the upper bound. Example: lower bound/threshold is 140, then add .06 x 140=8.4, so upper bound is 148.
3. Do an all-out 30-minute effort and use the heart rate of the last 20-minutes as your lactate threshold heart rate. Add 6% of that to calculate your upper bound.

Personally, I find these 3 methods result in dramatically different ranges to the point of being useless. I've had my lactate threshold and a bunch of other measurements tested in a lab. Done on 3 different occasions, the lab tests offered fairly consistent data. My heart rate at lactate threshold was calculated to be around ~178 and my max heart rate was ~200.  I also have some recorded race heart rate data from that time as well. Plugging those numbers into the above methods results in the following:

Method (all data in beats per minute)	Calculated "No Zone"
Measured Lactate Threshold= 178	178-189
75-80% of maximum heart rate. Max = 200	150-160
Talking becomes difficult guesstimate: 165	165-175
HR during last 20-minutes of all-out 30-minute effort: 185	185-196

Which "no zone" is the right one? 
Clearly, my "no zone" calculations result in vastly different results ranging from a low of 150 to a high of 196 beats per minute. Which methodology is the right one? I have no idea. Your results may be more consistent than mine, but personally I'm not sure I would know where to begin with this information. I certainly wouldn't want to base my training on this.

Still, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. In the next post in this series, I'll take a look at some of the science behind the "black hole."