WHOOP Podcast - How to Master Zone 2 Training: Chris Chapman Answers Your Questions

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

This week, we’re diving back into the inbox to answer questions from our listeners – thanks to everyone who has submitted questions so far. WHOOP Senior Sport Scientist Chris Chapman is here to answer your questions about the popular Zone 2 Cardio space and strength training. We had a number of questions come in after our Zone 2 Training episode with Paul Laursen, that’s Episode 222 if you haven’t listened yet. We’ve also received some great questions about strength training and our Strength Trainer product episode. That’s Episode 219 with our CTO Jaime Waydo. Chris discusses navigating strain goals and recoveries with Zone 2 (2:45), incorporating Zone 2 into marathon training (7:05), how heart rate zones differ from person to person (11:55), identifying your Zone 2 heart rate range (14:20), how heart rate zones can change over time (20:20), combining strength training and endurance training (24:00), and the difference between free weights and machines (38:00).Resources:Episode 222 - Paul LaursenEpisode 219 - Strength TrainerSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top performers, athletes, researchers, scientists, and more. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, and we're on a mission to unlock human performance. This week, we're diving back into the inbox to answer questions from our listeners. Thanks to everyone who has submitted questions so far. whoops, senior sports scientist Chris Chapman is here to answer your questions about the popular Zone 2, Cardio Space and Strength Training. We did a number of questions come in after our Zone 2 training episode with Paul Larson.

That's episode 222, if you haven't listened yet. We've also received some great questions about our Strength Training and our Strength Trainer product episode. That's Episode 219 with our CTO, Jamie Waito and myself. So check out those episodes. Chris joins us to discuss how to match strain goals with Zone 2 workouts, incorporating Zone 2 into a marathon training program, how heart rate zones differ from person to person. They can also change if someone gets more fit. How to find your Zone 2 heart rate.

The best ways to combine strength training and endurance training. The differences between lifting free weights and machines. Chris outlines the benefits of both and how you should focus on what works for you. Have you signed up for the Core 4 challenge? It's all about spending the month of August, uncomplicating your routine and feeling your best, log morning, sunlight, zone 2, cardio, breathwork, and intermittent fasting in the Woop Journal. And get up to 20% off your membership renewal. That is in the Woop app, sign up today.

Looking to join Woop, you can visit our website and sign up for a free 30-day trial. That's right. Free Woop 30 days. If you like it, keep it. Become a member. If you don't, send it back. Alternatively, new members can use the code will at checkout and get a $60 credit on apparel and accessories. That's the code will, W-I-L-L. If you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at Woop.com

or call us 508-443-4952, and we'll answer questions just like this episode. Without further ado, here is Chris Chapman answering your questions on Zone 2 and Strength Training. Hello, whoop listeners. Today's podcast is a follow-up from the Zone 2 episode that Kristen did with Paul Larson. We had quite a few follow-up questions from listeners. So we're going to take today's episode to dig into some of those questions and try and provide some answers. So we'll start off with Chris. Chris says, inspired by the podcast, I did a Zone 2 work out today.

Over the course of 90 minutes, I built just 7. 7.8 activity strain. Today was a yellow recovery day, so my goal was relatively modest, and yet I still didn't hit it. How do you juxtapose the benefits of a zone 2 workout with whoops encouragement to really add a lot of strain, particularly on a green recovery day? I'd imagine I'd need to spend three hours on a zone 2 workout to hit my strain goal on a green day. Or should I be doing, say, an hour of zone 2 and then 30 minutes of higher intensity to get my goal for the the day. It just seems that the strain goal is specifically designed to coax you out of zone too. So this is a great question and one we get a lot. First, understand that whoops strain

coach is an overall activity coach. It's suggesting the amount of cardiovascular strain you should target, but it's not telling you how to get that strain. What strain coach is actually doing is it's looking at your recent history of strain and recovery, comparing the overall relationship between the two, and from that, it's recommending an amount of strain that will keep you in the optimal training zone. That is, the amount of strain that will lead you to a yellow recovery. And the goal of this here is to prevent you from overtraining and under training. And for most, this zone is sustainable day and day out. So that's why it's trying to drive you towards an optimal recovery. I think the second thing to keep in mind here is that it's okay if you don't

always hit the target that strain coach is suggesting. So in this case, you didn't hit the target. And what that means is that tomorrow there's a higher chance that you will end up in a green recovery instead of yellow, which can be a good thing. That means tomorrow you're primed for a more vigorous or intense training session. Since you did a zone two aerobic workout, this is also an active recovery workout and will likely help you improve your score for the following day. Now, let's say you do want to hit the target, but you couldn't get there with your zone 2 training. As you suggested, one easy way would be to add in some sort of sprint interval work, high intensity work, to complement the low intensity zone 2 you were doing.

So what you could do is cut 15 minutes off your 90 minutes zone 2 and at the start do 15 minutes of sprint intervals. For example, say 15 on, full sprint, 45 seconds off, repeat. Then you could follow this up with 75 minutes of your zone 2. So you're still finishing with the active recovery portion. This should bump up your strain, get you a little bit of high intensity work, but still giving the bulk of that zone two training. Other ways you could also hit your target without adding high intensity training. You could do something supplementary, such as a resistance training session, maybe using the strength trainer feature that was recently added.

Other things you could do, you could go play a sport, maybe go play with your kids, do some manual labor such as yard work. You know, think of other ways you could potentially add some strain without doing more zone to you, as you suggested. There are many ways to accomplish the how part of the equation. So my suggestion would be to put the one that fits your lifestyle the best and the one that you enjoy the most. You know, we should enjoy training as much as we can. One thing to remember, in general, it'll be very difficult for you to get everything you need, health, fitness, and performance-wise from only doing zone. 2 training. Typically, you want this to be the majority of your cardio training, say 70 to 75%, as most polarized training models would suggest. But it's not the only cardio component that we need to hit.

Most health and fitness organizations, such as American College of Sport Medicine, the National Strength Conditioning Association, Canadian Society Exercise Physiology, all these exercise bodies, they suggest doing anywhere from about 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity. That means above zone 2 per week as a minimum to optimize health. Additionally, they all suggest at least two resistance training sessions per week. So you can play around with all this supplementary training, your strength training and your high intensity cardio to try and hit those strain coach targets as best as you can. But remember, some days it is okay to pain outside the line, so don't stress too much if you can't hit your strain coach goals by only doing zone 2 training.

Next question. Josh says he loved the Zone 2 episode with Paul. I am training to run a half marathon in October and want to incorporate Zone 2 training into my program. How much Zone 2 should I be doing each week compared to other workouts like lifting and sprint training? Is there a set percentage or number of days that is best? Thanks and appreciate all the work you guys do. So another great question here. I think first thing to understand, I'm not a marathon running coach. I'm a strength coach, physiologist, and sports scientist. So there will definitely be many ways you can tackle this based on differing coaching philosophies. But in general, if we look at the literature and we look at most of the high performance training models out there, polarized training models are generally agreed upon as having better performance outcomes for endurance support. So what is a polarized training model? Well, we can break this into three major training categories. The first one is high volume, low intensity training. This is exercise that you can sustain for prolonged periods of time. It's less than 80% of your heart rate max and less than

2 millimoles of blood lactate. This is the category that your zone 2 training fits into. Second, we have lactate threshold training. This is the training at or near that lactate threshold, which is the point at which you start producing lactate faster than your body can clear it or deal with it. It's about three to five millimoles of blood lactate. This will correlate around 80, 90% of your heart rate max. Then the third category is low volume, high intensity training. This is your VO2 max training, high intensity interval training, sprint training, anything where the heart rate is greater than 90% of your heart rate max. So we have those three categories. and then in the polarized training model,

you want to spend about 70 to 75% of your time in the high-volume low-intensity training, and then 15 to 20% of your time in the high-intensity low-volume training. And that leaves about 5% to 10% in that middle lactate threshold category. Now, again, these percentages can shift slightly to give you an example in World and Olympic Champion

endurance athletes, we see up to about 85% of their training in that high-volume, low-intensity category. And like I said, you can find other training models, and there are definitely coaches out there who will do things differently. But there's more than enough data and anecdotes to support these percentages in a polarized training. To get to the second part of your question, sprinting, as you mentioned, would come under the high-intensity portion, so that 15 to 20%.

Sprint training is super important as it increases, your top speed or top end capacity. And by increasing your top speed, you're increasing what's called your speed reserve. So running, swimming, cycling at any given submaximal pace will be a lower percentage of your top speed. And that should technically be easier to hold and require less effort to maintain that pace. Then as for strength training, I think the literature is pretty clear for endurance sport. And I can anecdotally support this through many years of training.

endurance athletes that anything more than three sessions per week has highly diminishing returns. So what that means is adding a fourth, fifth strength session. The gains are minimal beyond the third, but what it does is it takes away from the time you spend doing endurance training or just living your everyday life, whether that's work, family time, hobby time. Now, on the other end, two strength training sessions per week is the recommended minimum with three the maximum. So it's simple. Two to three sessions per week is where you should be for resistance training. Or you could switch it and look at it from a time on task standpoint. It could be three sessions at one hour. It could be two sessions at 1.5 hours. So you're getting around three to four hours per week of high intensity strength training.

This is low repetition, high load, working at greater than 80% of your 1 rep max, or moving weights with high speed, high power. And the three to four hours of that is a good amount for endurance athletes. So if we take all that, summarize it in short, Zong 2 will make up the bulk of your 70 to 75% of low-intensity high-volume training, and the sprinting will fall under your 15% to 20% high-intensity training. Strength training sessions, 2-3 per week or 3-4 hours of time on task per week, will be perfect to support your endurance training. Moving to the next question, Melanie writes,

I've been jogging recently and pretty consistently spending most of my time 15 to 20 minutes in Zone 5, which according to everything I've read should be an all-out effort. For me, this is an easy jog, and I'm intentionally breathing through my nose and could talk a little. I'm tired at the end, but I definitely wouldn't call it all out for 20 minutes straight. My question is, is it possible the zones vary pretty significantly from person to person, and my max heart rate is way higher than what's calculated. I'm a 28-year-old female, so I think my calculated max heart rate is about 192.

So yes, 100% it's possible heart rate zones do vary person-to-person. Your max heart rate, your resting heart rate, the different lactate thresholds can differ between individuals. However, based on what you're saying, given you could still complete a talk test and do nasal breathing, I would speculate that maybe you're having an issue with your detected max heart rate and that's why your zones are off. So the first thing I would do is check to see what your max heart rate is in the WOOP app. What you can do is click on your profile in the top left of the home screen on the phone app,

then click all time and this will give you your all time highest heart rate. If this is off significantly from your approximate 192 beats per minute that you calculated, then this could be the culprit of why your zones seem off. A second thing it might suggest is that you're wearing the whoop band wrong or not tight enough or for whatever reason it might not be getting a good signal. There's a YouTube video explaining how to wear a woup properly for best signal detection, so definitely check that out. If you do think you're wearing the band tight enough and in the proper sense,

position. My suggestion would be reach out to membership services and they can help you troubleshoot this problem. You can reach out directly through the app, go to the bottom right, more menu, scroll down to find membership services and click that and you can chat with them directly because it seems like based on what you're saying that something is definitely off with your zones. Follow up with membership services on that one if you find you're still having issues. Next question. Let's move to Leila. Layla reached out to the show and wrote, in the podcast, Paul Larson described Zone 2 as 70 to 80 percent of your max heart. But I noticed that in my Woop app, it's 60 to 70 percent. What accounts for this

difference and what should I use for Zone 2 training? Layla, this is another common question we see around Zone 2 training. Similar to the previous one, everyone's Zone 2 threshold can vary a bit based on factors such as age, height, weight, athletic ability, acting, activity level, and more. Even the mode of activity can vary training zones as well. To give you an example, the anti-gravity nature of swimming, because in water you're unweighted, typically heart rates are lower for the same zones, around 10 to 15 beats per minute less. Running uses a lot more muscle than cycling to produce the motion, so the zones will differ between the two modes slightly. your ability to drive max heart rate is different and the lactate accumulation in specific muscles

is different as well. So the more trained you are, the chances that the lactate threshold could be pushed to the right. And what that means is that that zone two occurs at a higher percentage of your max heart rate. You can go more towards your max and still clear lactate and not accumulate lactate faster than you can clear it. Now, without a lactate meter or laboratory testing or some type of new tech, it's hard to understand exactly where the lactate thresholds are and delineate specificity around some of these zones. So no measure of high rate zone estimation will be absolutely perfect for every individual.

However, when we look at the research, it shows that for the vast majority of people, including elite athletes, zone 2 will fall between 60 to 80 percent of their realized maximum heart rate. With that range, likely closer to 60 to 72 percent for the general population and the more elite populations will push it closer to the 8. The heart rate zones we use are the same zones that most other major heart rate monitors use as well. So that's 60 to 70 percent for the zone two. Now the benefit of using the 60 to 70 percent or the lower threshold when defining zone two is that you avoid one of the most common issues or pitfalls with aerobic training and that's getting up into the threshold zone or that higher zone unintentionally. This occurs when

you go too hard on your aerobic training or easy zone two training sessions. And there's evidence to show that once you get into threshold, it results in much more sympathetic drive. So related to our HRV heart rate variability, that's our fight or flight response, which factors into your recovery score. So it can drive you more towards fight or flight instead of rest and digest, which would impact your next day recovery to a greater extent. Another consequence of potentially going too high on your zone two days, is that it can force you to go easier on your harder days due to poor recovery. So you get into this cycle of driving your training towards the middle zones, which is not ideal, as we explained before with the polarized training model.

You really want to keep the high, high, and the low low. If you get stuck in this cycle of pushing to the middle, you're definitely not going to maximize your fitness gains, nor your recovery. So by recommending the 60 to 70% of max heart rate range for zone 2, we ensure that you're staying in that zone 2 and training easy enough to reap the benefits of high volumes of aerobic training without compromising your recovery. If you start playing closer to that 80%, you may accidentally be drifting into a higher intensity territory without realizing.

And again, without specific laboratory testing, it's better to play it a little safe. and stay in that low zone and accumulate more volume. Now, with that being said, if you did want to push into the 70, 75%, just do a self-experiment. See if you can do any of the manual check-ins to see if you're staying in that aerobic or zone too, and then watch your next day recovery as well. Does it go up or does it go down? Look at your HRV.

Does it go up, does it go down? What are the manual check-ins you might be asking? So there's a few. You should be able to do the talk test. So try talking to yourself or try holding a conversation with the person you're training with. And that should be relatively easy. You shouldn't struggle to talk. And the second one is you should be able to breathe through your nose or do nasal breathing. Assuming you haven't had any kind of nose injury, I broke my nose numerous times. And I wasn't able to breathe out my nose for years until I got a fix. So assuming you haven't had anything like that, you should be able to breathe only through your nose.

A third way of doing this is a rating of perceived exertion or RPE. If you ask yourself on a scale of zero to 10, what is my exertion or effort right now? It should be around a six. You know, if 10 is the fastest or hardest, you can go and zero is resting. You should be around a six if you're staying in that zone two aerobit, which is sustainable for long periods of time. So again, try those manual check-ins if you feel like the 60 to 70% is a little low. Try going higher and do your own little experiment with that. Next question. Sarah writes, I am curious to know about cardio zones and their ability to change.

I love tracking my HRV and seeing a change throughout the week month depending on my activities and strain. I have recently started working Zone 2 cardio into my weekly gym. routine and want to know if your cardio zones can change over time. I know everyone's zones are specific to the individual, but is it possible for them to change as someone gets more fit? How often might that happen? Example, after a couple months of steady state training, would my zone to be a different heart rate? In short, yes, your cardio zones can change over time. If you increase your fitness levels, you can increase your top and max heart rate. You can also decrease your bottom end resting heart rate so that I'll increase the total range at which your

zones occur. Since most cardio training works off percentages of max heart rate, some do work off heart rate reserve, which takes into effect your resting heart rate. The percentages will automatically adjust as your heart adapts. Now, even if your max heart rate and resting heart rate don't change, you can still have a right shift, so a higher shift or left shift of the middle zones in between depending on the training you're doing. So to give you an example, if you did a block of lactate threshold or lactate tolerance training or aerobic work where you're focused on clearing lactate or dealing with lactate and clearing it, you can push that zone 3,4, to the right and delay the onset of lactate accumulation. You know, similar like we

talked about in the previous question, how zone two can creep up into the 70s and closer to 80. If you do specific training, you can definitely push that zone 2 to the right and push your zones to the right. This can definitely be measurably different in a two month training block. So test today, do two months of training, test in two months. Those zones can definitely be shifted. So if you're training hard and training often, the zones can adapt pretty quickly. For most people, though, the shifts likely won't be large enough to make a massive change in your zones that won't be accounted for by the automatically adjusting your max heart rate. But as the previous question touched on, you could test by doing your zone two talk test, your nasal breathing. and your RPE, just to see how your aerobic training is getting along and if the zones match up.

If you are interested in knowing your exact thresholds and customizing your zones, you could do an incremental lactate test where they take blood draws from your finger or your ear after doing a workload stage and seeing where you start producing more lactate and where these thresholds are, or you could do a VO2 step test with gas exchange, and they look through ventilation as well. Both of these tests are usually done by a physiologist in a lab-based setting, so you would have to find one locally, but that would be the best way to get more dialed in with your specific zones for training. So that aside, the heart rate zones will automatically adapt to your max heart rate, and you're going to be using an estimation for the most part.

Moving to some more strength training focus questions. Deanna says, I'm seeing a lot of conflicting information about whether to lift weights before or after a workout. I'm an Ironman triathlete and incorporate strength training about three days per week. I know there's an element of what the goal purpose of lifting is. For endurance athletes, is it better to do my core workout fresh than do weights after? Or is there greater benefit to starting with weights? And in this case, by core workout, she means her endurance training.

I absolutely love this topic. This is a great question. One of the most common I hear from endurance athletes. I started digging into this over a decade ago when I was working at the Canadian Sport Institute. I was training Olympic endurance athletes. And I've spent many years perfecting this model for training professional endurance athletes as well. So this topic is a favor of mine. First, if you have technical training that is trying to improve stroke efficiency in the pool

or running technique, technique training should precede everything. While there is some value in learning and perfecting technique in a fatigue state, and this creates a very challenging training environment to try ingrained technique in a fatigue state. This should not be the norm or done on a regular basis. Learning highly technical work should always be done in the absence of fatigue. So if you're focused on technique, try to put those sessions first. Now, as for strength training for endurance sport, where the goal is to improve some physiological qualities that are going to support your sport performance, scientifically and pragmatically, the answer is pretty clear here. in the literature this is called concurrent training when you have to train both strength qualities

and endurance qualities at the same time typically there's interference between the two and they battle each other but let's talk about the why as you said before what is the goal I think the biggest misconceptions out there that I've seen and heard over the last 15 years of training endurance athletes is that strength training will hinder endurance qualities like VO2 max and it will put on unwanted muscle mass which will work against the out. These two couldn't be farther from the truth in my opinion. First, there's absolutely no research showing a negative impact on VO2 max from strength training, but in fact it shows the opposite. It supports VO2 max through increasing economy through increasing your maximum strength

or maximum output. What economy is, that is the energy required to perform a submaximal task. So think that'll stroke at 100 watts or rowing at a stroke rate of 30 strokes per minute or keeping a certain running pace. Those are submaximal tasks. They're not your max output performance. So the stronger you get in the gym in those specific movements, the effort, required for each submaximal stroke decreases because you're working at that lower percentage

of your muscle contraction capacity to create that motion. So this is called strength reserve or the strength reserve model of endurance. I first learned this from Digby Sale ages ago, one of the great North American neuromuscular physiologists. So when you're using less contraction capacity to maintain a submax pace, it means that you have more recovery time in that movement cycle. So less contraction time. Blood can deliver more oxygen and remove more waste from the muscles. Whereas if you're weaker, you're going to work at a higher percentage of your max each stride or stroke to maintain that pace. And that means your muscles are contracting longer for longer duration within that cycle and harder each cycle. So there's less time to deliver nutrients and remove weight.

Now, as for the muscle size piece, this definitely is a factor. Endurance athletes don't want unwanted mass. So you want to place the mass where it's going to be efficient. For example, for cycling, you want that mass in your legs. Maybe in paddling, you want that mass more distributed to your upper body. But in general, increasing muscle size is not as easy to do as you may think. can try and talk to any bodybuilder who does it professionally. Especially with endurance athletes, with the amount of volume that you're undergoing,

it's even harder to put on muscle nets. Now, there are some strategies here that we can do to mitigate this so we don't even have to worry about it as a problem. The easiest rule of thumb is do not train to failure in the gym. always keep two to four repetitions in the tank so that means feel like you can do two to four more reps but stop the set there don't do those two to four more repetitions um training to failure during a set is one of the biggest stimulators of muscle growth so if we avoid training to failure will avoid one of the the main stimulus for muscle growth but we can still build strength it's still

easy. So we're going to focus on strengths without size, which is ideal for the endurance athlete. One last thing to think about as an endurance athlete in the gym is think about the qualities that you aren't getting on the bike, on the run, in the pool, in the boat. And focus on those qualities in the gym. Typically, it's heavy load, max strength, time under tension. Because the movement cycles are so short, there's little time under tension. It's a rapid rate of force development. It's not maximum loading. So you're not getting that maximum motor unit activation. It's mostly a fatigue, endurance-based motor unit activation. So focus on maximum strength in the gym. That'll be your best bang for your buck time on task. A secondary thing to think about is focus on some

accessory movements that are opposite to the cyclical motions of your sport or using the opposite muscles. This will help balance out all of the contractions and postures that you're most definitely overusing in your endurance sport and just help keep some balance and help prevent overuse injuries. Now, let's get back to the main crux of the question here and let's go back in time. The science of concurrent training dates back to about the 80s with, the first study I'm aware of, R.C. Hickson, he did a few studies on the topic that basically what he showed is that if you do your endurance training session first, it will have a negative effect on the strength session performance and you won't get nearly as much out of the

strength session. A little bit more of a waste of time. However, if you flip-flop that and you do the strength training session first, you maximize the gains of the strength training session and it has little to no negative impact on the endurance session. Now, that's the simple answer, and obviously it gets more complicated. But if you want to keep it simple, you're only doing strength two to three times per week. Do your strength training before your endurance. You'll have lots of other days where the endurance comes first and the endurance of the focus. Now, if we go a bit deeper here, there are a few other specific things we can do to optimize this.

If you're doing both sessions in the same day, a strength session and an endurance session, try to separate your endurance session and your strength session by six hours, if not more. And what this will do is this will give you enough time to recover so that you can get the most out of both sessions. So do one in the morning and then do one at night or afterward. Also, by training not to failure as we discussed, that is doing a set of a strength, exercise making a weight you can lift 10 times but only lift it five six eight times you are leaving repetitions in reserve or repetitions in this in the tank and this method not only helps prevent

muscle mass as we gain as we talked about before but it also helps prevent prolonged residual fatigue from the strength session there are multiple scientific studies that show that if you complete that lift six hours later it's back to normal or it's even better at the six hour mark whereas if you do training to failure in the gym that lift can be depressed up to two days and even longer so just by leaving some repetitions in the tank you can speed up your recovery on that specific strength lift to about six hours and again that aligns with that six hour separation between your strength and your endurance session. There's a lot more in there around refueling glycogen recovery and stuff like that,

but all you need to know is that try to separate them with six hours. One other thing we discussed in a previous question is the amount of sessions per week. You said you're training three sessions per week, and that's about the maximum you should be doing as strength training as an endurance athlete. It's definitely more than enough to get the stimulus you need, and as we decide, discussed, anything more than three sessions a week has greatly diminishing returns. And at that point, it becomes interference of time on task. So essentially, that's time you could be spending endurance training or doing other aspects of your life. One session, one strength training session per

week is the absolute bare minimum required for maintenance. And it definitely needs to be heavy compound lifts where you're going high intensity, getting banged for your buck. Ideally, two strength training sessions is ideal for maintenance, and at that point, you're starting to make some gains, but three is the ideal if you want to make good gains in strength and power. So another strategy you could do here is maybe you split the difference in which sessions come first. So maybe you have a max strength or power gym session that is very high in neuromuscular demand. And when I say power gym session, that's where you're focusing on the speed of the movements in the gym, you know, doing things like Olympic lifts where it's very power focused. Those types of sessions I would do before endurance training 100%.

You know, if you measure the output, whether it's power, speed or strength, before an endurance session and after an endurance session, even the performance will be greatly diminished. you'll be able to lift a lot less weight and you'll do it with a lot less speed. So those have to come first within the same day. But maybe you have a strength workout that's more submaximal, it's more movement-based, accessory-based, pre-abilitation, injury prevention-based. That could come second in sequence because it's more submaximal in nature. So you could do that after your endurance session. Or if we think about it in reverse, think about your endurance training.

If you have a steady state aerobic workout, so a long, slow distance, zone two, you could do that after a weight session, no problem. It's going to be easy to maintain technique, and you're more focused on accumulating volume, it's low intensity. But if you have a high intensity session, say, sprint interval pieces, maximum aerobic, you know, max sprints, maybe do that one on a day you aren't doing strength. training or put that one prior to your strength stress and then try to give yourself that six hour gap in between if you're doing them within the same day. But this is where planning of your weeks becomes important. So again if it's high intensity, whether that's the gym or the endurance, try to put that first within the session. We could over

complicate this. There's obviously more layers if you want to get more advanced where you align the strength and endurance adaptations based on are they occurring centrally in your body or are they occurring peripherally? You know, one example of this would be doing your max aerobic power work with your maximum strength gym work within the same phase or block because they're both centrally driven by the body. You know, this is where you start to get into biochemical signaling and all kinds of biochemistry. That goes far beyond the scope here, but I more just wanted to explain that, you know, it's easy to get lost a day on a rabbit hole, the more you dig it.

So most people don't need to go to this level. So in general, if we sum up everything I just said, keep your strength before your endurance within the same day, try to separate them by six hours if you can, and keep your technical work in high-intensity work before any strength session or ideally put them on separate days where they can be the primary focus. Okay, Oscar. So Oscar says,

I've always focused my workouts on cardio. I ran cross-country in college and would like to spend a little more time for strength training. I still run, but I'm wanting to use the strength trainer more and to try and switch up my workouts. Is there a benefit to lifting more with free weights

versus on machines. Also, what are the advantages and disadvantages to want? I ask because some of the workouts are all free weights and others have the machine workouts mixed in, but the gym in my building has very limited types of lifting machines. So free weights versus machines. This is another common question that I hear. First, the easiest thing is use the equipment that is available to you know you don't have a lot of machines so you're not going to do a lot of machines both methods are great and both provide forms of resistance using gravity so both are great for strength training with free weights gravity is always acting towards the ground so most exercises you're required to lift the weights up where machines differ they use pulley systems to redirect the weight stack or redirect

gravity, so you can get lines of force or resistance in different directions than up and down. Machines also tend to be very purpose-built, and that means they can create resistance in very specific ways that you cannot get with free weights. It's usually to focus on specific muscle groups or isolate certain movements or joint motions. This can be good or bad based on your goals. One example, so let's say you have a weak link in your chain. And you need to, or you need to achieve a very specific task goal. You can focus on creating strength in that weak link or focus on creating strength in that single area to support your goal.

And here's an example. In elderly populations, sit-to-stand task is a very important one for quality activities of daily living, you know, the ability to get up and down from a chair. increasing quadriceps strength is directly related to improve performance in this task so using a leg extension machine to increase capacity in the primary driver of this task the quadriceps can directly improve performance in the sit to stand without having to practice the task so it gives you some variability and also takes the balance away from increasing capacity in quad strength That's just one example of a very specific reason why you might use a machine.

You know, using machines for isolated movements or muscles could also be a good check-in to see if that specific muscle, muscle, group of muscles, or joint movement can function properly when you remove all the other moving parts. So you isolate them. You know, a good example I learned from a mentor of mine is that. that it's like an orchestra. If you have an orchestra playing and something sounds off, you're not going to figure out where the problem's coming from

by having the whole orchestra play. You get each instrument or person to play one by one by one, and that's where you can find out which one isn't working right. So when you have a whole muscular system, sometimes you want to isolate individual muscles to see if they're working right. So that's a good reason why you might want to choose isolated machines.

With free weights, you are required to orchestrate all of the muscles into a gross movement or a whole movement. And you're required to stabilize all of your other body parts and joints to perform the movement. This tends to make free weight exercises more technically complicated, which could be a barrier for some if you don't have a coach to provide feedback or spotter to help you out. you might not be able to go as heavy just because of the risk of getting buried under a bar, which you do that once and you probably won't do it again without a spotter. But we should avoid that altogether.

Always ask for a spot if you're lifting a weight that you're unsure you can completely using free weights. With machines, you can focus all of your mental energy onto the isolated muscle contraction. And you don't need to worry about balance or stabilization. So they're usually less technically demanding, although as a caveat, I'd say proper setup of the machine and intention does matter. You can't just mindlessly hammer away on machines. Technique is still very important. So conversely, the biggest downside of machines is that you need a lot of them to do a full body workout and they take up a lot of space. Like you said, your gym doesn't

have a lot of machines. They're typically reserved to your general fitness, big box gym types of settings where they have lots of floor space and they have lots of machines and you can have people on different machines because you have a lot of them. So if you only do machines, you might be missing some of the benefits of stabilizing all your joints and of doing complex movements where you're linking muscles together, doing different compound lifts. Using free weights also typically involves using more muscles. So this could be more beneficial if you're looking to a save time or be burn more calories during a resistance training session. Also, if you're more focused on task performance, such as sport performance or physical

occupation or tactical fire military, you'll likely see more transfer to task doing freeway compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, and electric lifts, then doing isolated joint movements using machines. Free weights take up less space and are more versatile. So you can even get adjustable free weights these days for your home gym, which give you endless possibilities with very little footprint or investment. So you could do a lot more variety with a lot less, with a little bit of free weights. So all this to say, in general, as a regular person looking to do health or looking for performance, do a healthy balance. Do a healthy balance of both. Do what you have available to you, but maybe do a month where you focus a little more

on machines, if you have access to them, and maybe do a month of free weights. Or maybe within your week, do a machine workout and do a free weight work. See which one you like more. Strength training should be enjoyable. Maybe you gravitate towards free weights, and you like that throwing barbells around a lot better. Personally, as I get older and I've spent 20, 25 years in a gym, I actually get excited to go use machines again and I find them enjoyable. So I just like doing that more just to mix things up. Also, see which one makes you feel better. Maybe you have a preference. You feel a lot better after a certain workout, whether that's free weights or machines. If you're short on time, you may see more bang for your buck using free weights

because you're using more muscle doing more compound movements. So that would be the other other caveat there if time is an issue for you. Regardless of which one you use, be sure you learn proper technique. If you don't have a coach, go to YouTube, look at videos.

If you're in the strength trainer portion of the Woop app, there's videos within there. And the primary thing to remember, as long as you're doing resistance training on a weekly basis, you're improving your strength and your health. And both of these are super important to a long. First, I'd like to thank everyone for their questions. They were great questions. I love talking about this stuff. I could go all day. So keep sending your questions in, listen to our podcasts and fire them our way. We're definitely going to have more follow-ups from different podcasts. My name's Chris Chapman, senior sports scientist at Wu.

If you want to reach out, Christopher.chatman at woup.com. And as always, love our users and listeners. So keep on listening. Thanks to Chris Chapman. And thank you to all the listeners out there who sent in your questions. A reminder if you want to ask questions in the future to be answered, podcast at woup.com or call us 508-443-4952. Check us out on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed.

Make sure to subscribe to the WOOP podcast. check out the whoop.com website where you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. New members can use the code will get $60 credit on Woop accessories. And that's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on The Woop Podcast.