Interval Breakdown, 3 min/1 min
If you regularly do intervals at the GAIN, the following interval may be in your program soon. I use something like this while building my running base, and I’ve found it to be a sweet spot to get a nice training effort to improve your aerobic capacity, or endurance. I want to break down this interval, go over its intent and provide context to you so you can get the most from your workout.
4-5 sets:
3 min @ easy to moderate pace
1 min @ recovery pace
First, let’s add up the total working time.
16-20 minutes
It’s duration tells us that it’s an endurance-focus workout.
The work interval is 3 minutes long. Without also knowing the rest period, the work time doesn’t tell us much about the intent of the workout.
The rest, or specifically in this case, active recovery, is 1 minute. Active recovery means you’re going to keep moving, as slow as needed during the “off” interval.
Now we know working duration is 3 times a long as resting. Now we can contextualize our pace.
You’re not going to be able to go that fast.
We want to see you use a sustainable pace. Something you can repeat round after round, after round.
The trick here is avoiding coming out too fast in the earlier intervals, then getting slower and slower. That’s something we see often with aerobic workouts and specifically what we’re trying to avoid when training endurance. The active recovery plays into that, if you’re starting to slow down, maybe you’re not going slow enough during the recovery interval.
The goal with a sustainable pace workout is to improve your endurance by staying at the right intensity. This will elevate your heart rate, but not spike it really high. You should be able to talk, though it should be slightly labored. You’ll be able to answer a question I ask, but if you took a phone call your friend on the line would know you’re exercising.
So how fast do you go?
You should complete the same amount of meters or calories in each set. Knowing a specific pace, like per 500m splits on the rower would require having other knowledge, like from a test or other recent workout. Some of you recently did a 5 minutes for max distance finisher. If we start there, we know that was a maximum effort, not a sustainable one. So to start, it’ll be slower than that.
We can also assume your pace will be faster than if you did 16-20 minutes straight. The recovery interval, while you’re still working, makes it easier to hold a slightly faster pace compared to a straight effort. Going a bit faster lets us increase the intensity to get a better training effect by staying in that sweet spot zone of ‘easy,’ but not too easy.
TL;DR
It’s takes some practice to get into the sweet spot of an endurance interval. Each time you’re on a machine however, is an opportunity to take a look at your paces/rpms/watts to build more context and gather information. Keep in mind the goal is sustainable paces, and matching the total work (meters or calories) done in each on interval. Spending time here will build endurance and stamina, will feel good on your muscles and joints and promotes longevity and heart health. Get to work!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
