WHOOP Podcast - Paul Laursen: How to Improve Your Health with Zone 2 Training

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

After a number of inquiries about heart rate zones and the best ways to train, we brought back a very popular episode featuring WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes and endurance coach Paul Laursen. Paul is a Zone 2 cardio expert and has competed in 17 Ironman triathlons. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of HIIT Science and co-host of the Training Science Podcast. He’s published over 150 scientific manuscripts and had his work cited more than 15,00 times. Kristen and Paul will discuss how Paul got started training and teaching (3:05), the relationship between the cardiovascular system and the nervous system (6:13), defining the different training zones (10:48), creating a weekly program with cardio zones (24:51), staying balanced with your training (29:08), autonomic recovery and Zone 2 as an active recovery tool (35:17), how Zone 2 can be linked to hormone levels (36:57), Paul’s paper on metabolism and burning fat (41:51), the best medium for Zone 2 training (47:49), training for longevity and VO2 max (50:51), and how Paul thinks about sleep with his athletes (52:38).Resources:Paul's WebsitePaul’s TwitterHIIT ScienceAutonomic Recovery after Exercise in Trained AthletesAthletes: Fit but UnhealthyFat Oxidation during HIITFollow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramTikTokXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInFollow Kristen HolmesInstagramLinkedInSupport 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

We're seeing a return of health with that Zone 2 training. People have realized that this goes towards building your fat max. Your Fat Max goes towards building your immune endocrine systems. It facilitates recovery. You're going to sleep better if you get a lot of time in your zone 2. It's just a fundamental sort of principle. What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast.

I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you think about joining Whoop, you can visit Whoop. Sign up for a 30-day free trial and unlock your insights today. Everything around strain, recovery, sleep, you get the whole experience for 30 days for free. We got a special episode for you today after a number of increase about heart rate zones and the best ways to train. We brought back a very popular episode featuring Woop Global Head of Human Performance, our principal scientist, Kristen Holmes, and endurance coach Paul Larson. That's right.

Paul is a zone two cardio expert and has competed in 17 Ironman triathlons. He's the co-founder and CEO of Hit Science and co-host of the Training Science podcast. He's published over 150 scientific manuscripts and had his work cited more than 15,000 times. Kristen and Paul discuss. Paul's transition from competing in triathlons to becoming a premier performance coach, the different cardio zones, the emergence of Zone 2 cardio training, is where you can burn the most fat and actually see significant weight loss. How to stay balanced with your training.

You can't always be operating in one zone, need to keep the body guessing, and how you can use technology to monitor your VO2 max when training. If you have a question, let's answer on the podcast. Email us, podcastof.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Without further ado, here are Kristen Holmes and Paul Larson. In addition to being a world-renowned specialist in endurance training, high-intensity interval training, nutrition, hurry, variability, thermophysiology, health, and artificial intelligence,

Paul is also a Ironman competitor, so he has truly lived the applied side of things. Today, we are going to leverage Paul's deep experience and expertise in training himself and as athletes to help us understand the cardiometabolic benefits of Zone 2, as well as the very practical ways to train in this aerobic threshold. Paul, a big whoop welcome. Kristen, thanks so much for having me on. It's, yeah, I'm an honor to be here. We're thrilled.

Yeah, my team follows your work and is just a huge fan. So we're so pumped to be able to have this conversation. And, yeah, and just be able to kind of go deep on just all things, training zone, really. So I'd love to start, you know, you've had this just insane career as an athlete and an academic. and, you know, what was kind of the inspiration behind the passion and just kind of, you know, teaching and researching, you know, Cardi's own training specifically, but, you know, whatever direction you want to take that. Yeah, I think that's so important, right? Like, and kind of for me, it starts with the, the whole Simon Seneca, start with the why. My why kind of happened to me when I was maybe in my early 20s, struggling to be kind of.

a triathlet, an Olympic triathlet, and I didn't make it ultimately. I'd beat my head against the wall, or maybe, you know, good eight years trying to become professional. And I didn't, but that was a real good thing because that anger or frustration with not being able to reach the top. You know, I reached a good level and not the top. And then that got me into studying the sports sciences. And I did that in Vancouver, UBC, and then I got a scholarship to where you're at at the university. Yeah. And I did my PhD down there. And amazing. And again, just kind of kept the whole journey going down there with understanding, trying to understand training in the whole process of training. And maybe, you know, again, so fast forward 20 years down under, you know, 10 years in

Australia, 10 years in New Zealand, worked with our Olympic program. But all the while, I'm always still, you know, just fascinated with training. And I always did what my supervisor, some of my supervisors told me not to do. And that's not, they told me to specialize in an area and just become an expert in one area. I just, I couldn't do it. And I came like, you know, you gave the intro and stuff. I just kind of, whatever was interested, I just couldn't help, but just try to dive into that area. So that, I guess, explains my history and my why. And I'm just, I'm just super passionate about trying to understand how to help athletes now, not as much myself, but just try to help athletes get the most bang for Bach out of their training and reach their

maximum potential, kind of what you guys profess. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I, you know, I think, you know, folks are busy, right? And I think that what we could do as scientists is really you know, help folks understand how to apply their effort. How much time do we need to spend in zone two, for example, or zone five, and how much time do we need to spend strength training? And, you know, what are the things that we need to actually be doing in terms of dose and frequency and all that? But, you know, what does that structure actually look like? I think is, I don't know that it's confusing, but I think there are a lot of different ideas out there on what you can do. And I think, you know, pulling that together for folks so they understand, you know, how to apply their effort, I think is, is really important and reducing a lot of the noise that exists out there.

So people kind of understand, you know, what is the path to, you know, if we want to maximize interplay between our nervous system and cardiovascular system, you know, what does that actually look like from a training perspective? And maybe we can kind of just start there really broadly. you know, how do you think about the relationship between the cardiovascular system and the nervous system as it relates to programming? Yeah, well, I'm a big profess, I mean, where you sort of started out is excellent. I like it because first and foremost, you know, there's a big, I guess, term or concept that it's context before content. So before we'd go in and put any pen to paper on anything, we have to really appreciate it.

the context of the individual. So whoever you are listening, you've got your own certain context. But one of the fundamental tenets that we can consider, and again in the context of this conversation, is the whole concept around the strength of the fat-burning system and the fat-burning system. It enhances both the endocrine, nervous system, immune system, and the stronger your fat-burning system is, the healthier you tend to be.

So that's a great place to kind of start with you, whoever you are sitting here listening, you really want the opportunity to be able to oxidize fat, especially at rest, and because it's going to facilitate everything that you do, your work performance and certainly your exercise performance and your training. Yeah, that's a real, that's a real big, important concept in place to start. So what does it take to get into that threshold where that fax oxidation is happening? Yeah, yeah. And again, back to context. If you are, In the situation where maybe you're highly stressed, maybe you haven't paid great attention to your diet throughout your life, and I'm putting myself there as well. I started with way too much. I had the wrong start to my life in terms of my nutrition. And I was a big believer that carbs were the most important thing and that I could eat as much sugar as I wanted. And I'm an athlete. I can handle. I'm burning it off. And unfortunately, I believe it, like, you know, I was, I know you've had Dan Plews on the podcast before.

So Dan and I were back training at the New Zealand Olympic program in the, in the, in the Mish building there. And every day, we would be, you know, plowing down our coffee with two sugars and a muffin. And, and I started getting a gut ultimately. And so, I think, something was going wrong. even though I was training with Dan Ploos, it was like a, you know, Kona World Record holder now for the age group. But, you know, it was kind of, you know, we were training everything. And still, I was getting metabolically, I wouldn't say, again,

it was getting kind of overweight or overgaat, I like to call it. I was depositing too much fat around my, in my abdomen kind of area. And that was a really, and then I have high blood pressure as well. So my fat oxidation was, I was losing it. I was in my late 30s going on 40s. So it kind of caught up to me. I couldn't outrun a bad diet. So, yeah, and there's a bunch of things, as you know, go too well to change the game.

And it's not just the Zone 2 training, which we're going to get into today. But it's all of the other things, it's sleeping well. And it's lowering stress and whatnot in your life. It's circadian rhythm and all these sorts of things. and these go back towards making you a healthy athlete. And then your fat burning ramps off. And then you start to, yeah, you start to be able to absorb your training and recover well between sessions. And, yeah, I'm kind of ramping on.

I think I've even forgotten. No, it's great. Yeah, no, you're just kind of talking about the role of just how to think about fat in the context of, you know, and maybe we can talk about just the different training zones. So maybe just for our listeners who might not be familiar with the different. training zones and what is actually happening in each zone, maybe just a quick overview of the training zones. And we could talk about it and feel free to insert your point of view in terms of polarized training versus, you know, there's lots of different ways to think about

these zones and the context of how we train and what we're trying to get out of it. So feel free to just, you know, kind of give a definition and kind of insert your point of view around what is most efficacious. Sure. So it's always difficult. And again, this is from listening to, I love listening to podcasts. But when I listen to podcasts, sometimes it's hard to kind of picture these sorts of zones, but many of us are familiar with either a three zone model or a five zone model. I think most of us are probably more familiar with a five zone model. And that's where we have on Woop. So, yeah, if we keep in the, yeah, talking in the context of five. Let's go through the five zone model. And let's just go one through five to start, right? Let's just talk through. So your zone one,

this is your, you know, your warm up or your recovery kind of. kind of pace, or your cool down kind of pace. It's where life happens, right? It's for the most part. Yeah, you could go for a nice, just a nice walk or a stroll. And a lot of us will be kind of hanging out in Zone 1. Right. Yeah, and it is kind of where life hangs out.

And it's, yeah, they, you know, 55 to 72% of your heart rate max is kind of where the textbook would say that this, this someone sits around. Yeah, it should feel really easy. And then now we're moving into the now popular zone two, this is, this is steady work. So if you're, and this is a, it really is, you know, it is the trend at the moment, but it truly is kind of where it is good, good place to kind of hang out and spend, spend some time is, and that's in your zone two. And it's, this is where probably your, your fat max occurs as well. So you probably have a lot of fat oxidation. kind of happening to fuel that exercise. And yeah, I mean, you can go one to three hours. You can go, I mean, I've got guys I'm working with right now talking about seven-hour rides

in their kind of their zone too, right? But it's context, right? So this is really where you get a great stimulation of the fat oxidation. And that's why you think it probably becomes so popular is that we are seeing all these physiological benefits from extended time in this particular zone is it yeah that is that is probably it so if you want to know you want to know why this is this is kind of trending right now is because people are realized that this goes towards building your your fat max your fat max goes towards building your immune endocrine systems at it facilitates recovery you're going to sleep better if you get a lot of time in your zone too and and all the all these sorts of things. And it's, it's just a fundamental sort of principle. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I said it. We, as

you know, we have access to, you know, a lot of data. And as a result, we do a lot of research with those data. But really, just because N1, well, and definitely a lot of my friends who are, you know, doing a lot of this kind of very intentional zone training, see that, you know, when they do engage in a zone to effort, their next day recovery is almost always. We always see kind of a rise in and parasympathetic, there seems to be a very clear parasithetic effect after Zone 2. Of course, when you're still getting, you know, you're going to get your sleep and you can't, you know, you're not, can't drink alcohol and you've got to be eating properly. But when all those kind of confounders are pushed away, you know, we see that Zone 2 really

seems to have some sort of positive impact on the nervous system. Yes. Yes, the research is quite clear on that. And it's great that the world is, is recognizing that. And of course, the, now, the other thing that really goes into doing that too is the nutrition standpoint too, right? So back to my example about with Dan and I having all the sugars in our coffee and drinking Coca-Cola and all that stuff. That's a big one that also,

I was probably even a bigger one, that's the best place to start. Pull the sugar out of your diet. Increasing, and your zone tuberk will actually even feel easier as well, too. You'll be able to go longer without needing the sugar cravings will subside. Right, right.

So kind of keeping blood sugar as stable as you can, as often, as you can, you're going to get more out of that zone to work. You will. Yeah. Because bad oxidation will ramp up. And it just, it'll support everything. Everything you do, you'd be more stable in your energy, more stable in your mood,

more stable with your emotions. Yeah. Perfect. All right. The middle child. Yeah, the middle child. The middle child gets us in trouble often because it's very difficult to detect when you go into the middle child zone three.

Sometimes they call it no man's land. but it's also there is effective work that can be done in this as an athlete again back to context right where we started

so this is your tempo your sweet spot training if the work is intentional on there like you like if you those of us that are doing 70.3 races iron meta races you're gonna spend your day

if you have a good day you're going to spend that in your zone three right that's what that is where you're going to hang out so if you are training to race in those in that sport you do need to spend uh some time in that in that zone but it's it's a specific time what the problem is is that for many of us and then when you start out is it's really without monitoring it's really hard to feel when you move from zone two to zone three

into that you land right this is where the process of wearing a heart rate monitor and yeah knowing where that heart rate sits is very powerful because you can put a clamp on when you cross over that one. And sweat, but your lactic level needs to be below two minimal? About two, exactly. It's kind of about that spot. It's individual, but it's like, yeah, it is the lactate threshold or the first ventilatory threshold in is, yeah.

So all of a sudden you get a little bit more blood lactate, being released relative to lactate, I should say lactate and hydrogens. They get released relative to what is being, I guess, removed. And then all of a sudden, your breath picks up a little bit more. So we can detect this either by a blood lactate marker, or we can detect this in the lab, if you're wearing a

ventilation kind of monitor, you know, the V-O-2 max type car. And it's very exciting, but we're actually moving to the place now where different technology companies are actually being able to take a marker above respiration. So there's shirts that are being developed that are actually being able to mark this point as well. So there's a few, but generally speaking, we should be able to get this, you know, sort of through our hard rate marker. And do you get, did you get buzzed when you're getting outside of of that zone two, or if you're going below your zone three, depending on what your intention is, physiologic.

There are technologies, yeah, that do that, right? So the frontier we monitor does that, for example, there's the, what is it called? The time wear life, time wear shirt is working on this innovation. There's lots of really cool companies, people that are into this whole thing. So for the layperson, so we're going to kind of keep going through the zones, I just thought of this, and I think it's kind of, it's important, you know, for, you know, for someone who does not have, you know, these types of technologies to monitor, you know, when they're kind of going in and out of these zones. And we know that being in zone two, for example, and continuously is important, right? We don't want to go from zone two to zone two, like if, in fact, we're trying to maximize the effect of being in zone two, we want to try to make it as continuous as possible. Maybe I'll stop there. Is that correct? just to yeah

do we yeah we want to the we don't want to bounce in and out of zone two if we're trying to to try to train in zone two and kind of maintain that threshold and get maximum benefits

we we want to try to kind of be continuously in that zone for how many what's the time frame that is where the magic happens one to three one to three hours is the effective time dose, a textbook kind of say, but there's, with training, as you know, there's so many different ways

to skin the cap, right? Sure. So it's not impossible to do you know, infinite varieties of training within all of these sorts of things, but a good organization is to do you know, do specific work that's in this cell.

But sometimes like, you know, you've got to go up a hill and whatnot. Are you, right, and your intensity is going to rise for a bit. So you're not going to crush your zone two session when you're kind of, okay. Definitely not. We can't get too robotic about the whole thing. You've got to go to the flow. But it's like, you know, when you go back and you analyze everything,

it is nice when things are sort of sitting up. And that's what a lot of the research has done, right? Where we wear these monitoring devices and then we retrospectively look back and we can see what has kind of been done, what's effective to reach to good outcomes. And this is where we get to the whole polarized trading method. that was, I think it was really keyed by Stephen Siler, a colleague, and, yeah, it's really when you have about the bulk of your training, 80% of your training in Zone 2 or below's. It probably counts for Zone 1 as well, but 80% of your training for well-training to elite

athletes tends to be effective when they have at least 80%, sometimes 90% of their training in that, you know, sort of that zone to work below. But, of course, with the context and the caveat that we just said where, you know, there's small rises and stuff. And would you say, so for someone who, again, isn't, you know, kind of hooked up to anything, talk test, is that a good, just and be able to breathe? Mainly through your nose is maybe another good way to kind of train that zone. Brilliant.

No, you hit it. Those are the two practical ones. So if you can talk to your mate when you're off on a run or whatever, then you're probably, and it's comfortable, you're probably hanging out in your zone two. And if you're having trouble doing that, you're probably drifting into zone three. And then likewise, if you've been nose breed, if you've got, I mean, some of us are inhibited in terms of structures in our nasal, you know, bones and our nose that is, just going to inhibit our ability to nose breathe, but for the majority of us, we can do this, and it's another great one. So heart rate in a known one where it's kind of sitting below about 70%, or sorry, it's like 70 to 80%, and then nose breathing and talk test. Those are the

key, the key markers and tools you can use. Perfect. And features of Zone 4. Zone 4. Okay, so now we're talking about, we're talking threshold. All right, we're talking, a lot of people will know, like, FTP in the cycling context, your functional threshold power. We're talking about like a time trial pace. We're talking about, you know, something like a 10K, your 10K race base. These are the types of, the types of areas where we're talking. This is actually the point also about, you know, zone. zone four and above where your high intensity interval training actually starts to take place. You're starting to recruit more of your fast twitch muscle fibers. Conversely, we had the bulk of our muscle fibers being sort of the slow twitch muscle fibers below. But now we're really digging into our larger motor units above this sort of this zone four. So this is your lactate threshold. Four millimoles you used two before.

So now we're at 4 million rules. You're at this kind of this valid point. And, yeah, between lactate production and lactate removal. And it's not in above zone 4, it's not sustainable. We go through this thing called the B02 Slow Component, where eventually if you hang out here, you just, heart rate is now going to keep rising all the way to the top if we hang out there above that too much.

Below that, we can kind of maintain for, you know, about, you know, 30 to 60 minutes, your critical power or your critical speed. But that's, that's, that's our zone for benchmark there. And zone five. And zone five is hard to get into zone five. And zone five is, is another very effective intensity. And that's your VOTMX pace. And I think these one, this is, you know, 94 to 100%.

of your, you know, heart rate max is right at the top. And it's, uh, if anyone that's done so-called the VO2 max intervals, you know, your breathing rate could be, yeah, they, stay hard. Paul. Hey, coroner. I know. I try to do one every 10 to two weeks. Just perfect. Perfect. And that's great. And it's great to get, um, if you can, it's great to get a, uh, a good dose of this in your neat training, right amount of the right amount, right? Um, not all of it. Uh, we got to be careful with that. No pain, no gain philosophy. And the, you know, too much crossfit is is going to, is, is going to be hurting someone, but not, you know, a small amount, uh, every so often, you know, that 10% or 20% of your trading, uh, is very healthy. Um, that's really great to, uh, you know, it's a solid stim. So, so let's, okay, so let's say you have, uh, as a coach and an expert, uh, in kind of all things training, you have a, uh, uh, a, uh, uh, you have a, uh, uh, uh, a, uh, uh, uh, uh, client come in and they want to maximize health and longevity. And they're relatively do. Have done some lifting and have done some cardio, have done some high intensity. And you need to

kind of put together this optimal weekly program for this individual. What would, how would you recommend they toggle between these different zones and, you know, and kind of talk, you know, kind of dosage and frequency and, yeah, what would that, like, beautiful program to maximize longevity and this interplay between the nervous system and the cardiovascular system look like? Yeah. Well, first thing I would do is I would just, I would really try to get some more insight into this individual, really appreciate their context. Are they, you know, we've just been through this whole thing, like, did they appear that they have any issues with, you know, fat burning or do we do we see some overfat sort of tendencies in their appearance say for example

and that's basically the the deposition of you know too much fat in the in the abdomen sort of region right that's where the that's where the body will start to begin to store a lot of fat if stress or or sugar levels or you know are ultimately kind of out of control so circadian misalignment is the best place to start exactly. Balls and Queens and this happens to all of us, right? I'm sure it's happened to you and I know it's happened to me because

we're type A kind of individuals right? So we go out of balance and then we come back in, right? So we want to kind of come back in and that's probably what the personal trainer is trying to help them. So yeah, I mean all these kinds of tools that we're speaking about are important to do first

maybe to the context of the of the podcast is zone too. It really does have a a good place here and it could it can be a very important lever for that trainer to kind of now pull is to say hey you know let's let's see if we can do some zone to work in that uh you know that weekly micro cycle um because we know it's probably going to increase your ability to oxidize bath throughout your life and it's going to it's going to have a um cascading kind of effect on on everything um so yeah that's that's the first one and then you can add

add in all those other various different things that we spoke about. The, you know, strength training in accordance with what the goals of the individual and then some of the other zones potentially as well. So, you know, a high intensity interval training workout potentially that targets your zone fours or zone five or even potentially above that. And, you know, there is a zone six as well that really hits the large fast-twitch muscle fibers. Yeah, like 10 seconds of work, yeah, where you're just going as hard as you can. Yeah, flat out. Perfect.

Perfect. Yeah. So all those various different things. Yeah. Even the context of the individual and what they want to want to achieve. Yeah. So before we kind of continue to go down the Zone 2 rabbit hole, just, you know, I suppose what's your point of view? You know, I think if the Zone 2 is becoming way more popular, right?

People are talking about it a ton. And as a result, as an industry, I feel like we kind of over index. And now it's all about Zone 2 and we kind of are forgetting some of this other work that's really important for brain function and overall health, you know, like getting into these higher zones, we know there's relationship between, you know, cognitive functioning and, you know, and the release of really important chemicals when you're in these really kind of high-intensity zones. What would be just your kind of your PSA, you know, to folks in terms of stay balanced in terms of training? And then maybe just what does the, if we're to think about, you know,

for a beginner intermediate advanced, how much time are we spending in these different zones and, you know, kind of throw in the time with weights as well? So again, just kind of looking at it from a weekly block perspective. It's, you know, well, it's such a tough question for me to kind of go and answer because, and I'm sorry to keep going back, so it really depends on the context of that. If I've got five hours or maybe, you know, two hours of training. Yeah. Maybe think about it as a beginner, what's the minimum viable for a beginner? You know, as intermediate, minimum viable, you know, advanced minimum viable. Yeah. Again, I'd say whatever you can do. Like, it's just, you have to walk before you can run, you know what I mean? And you have to do some push-ups

before you should be doing bench press and all things. So, but it's like, whenever level that you're at, start adding on a little bit more. If you're a listener right now, so, What are you at? Are you, what do you, and where have you been before? I would ask you to reflect on that. Is there room for you to, to do more or be a better self, be your better self relative to where maybe you've been before? What are where you, where you can dream and you want to be?

Because I never want to go and do too much to seem. I never want to go and, you know, yeah, like over, you don't want to, do too much too soon right that's going to mess you bad yeah yeah for sure um and maybe we can think about it it's just principally like you know there's no really there's no you can't do too much zone too i don't think from what i've seen in the literature like you can't really overdo it and unless you're you know just starting out and you know don't have a fitness space and and i think you need to probably think about it in the context of back to kind of the original kind of threat in terms of you want to be able to do other exercises as well and other types of training in

addition to zone two. So the extent to which if you're doing so much zone two that you're excluding other types of training, then that's a good indicator that I need to back off a little bit of my zone two. But for beginners, aiming for maybe roughly two hours a week in that zone two, you know, intermediate three to four, you know, and advanced is kind of different because those folks probably have performance goals and coaches. But some sort of framework like that, could be good, potentially. Yeah, I actually, I want to reflect on a paper that Stephen Siler did, and this really started, it's such a fundamental one, actually, and it really relates highly to the Woop product as well.

So it was titled Autonomic Recovery After Exercise and Trained Athletes, Intensity and Duration Effects, and it was a 2007 paper. And really, I mean, if you go back to the Dan Ploos podcast that you did, it's, you know, This really kind of leveraged a lot of the work that Dan and I did in the whole in each of the kind of area. And the reason why this paper is so important is because what Stephen and his colleagues did was they exercised. They took basically groups of elite runners, you know, really high VATIMX is 72 mils per KG. And they also took like sort of a still weekend warriors while training 60, 60 mils per KG kind of on the VATIMX. and he got them to do basically four different exercises.

He got them to do an hour at zone two or below. He got them to do two hours of zone two or below. He got them to do the mid-zone training that we spoke about, the no man's land training. And he got to do hit training as well. So four different sort of sessions. What do you find? Well, he found that in the low intensity,

the, like, either the one hour or two hours below Zone 2, it didn't matter. So the HRV, it was kind of, it wasn't sort of affected when they were well-trained. So to your point, you can't get it. You said you can't get enough. You really can't overdo the Zone 2. Well, you're kind of right. At least, you know, there'll be some sort of level. It weren't quite, like, the more well-trained they were.

So the group of well-trained individuals, they had the better HIV kind of response. compared to the lesser, the weekend warrior kind of 60 mils per KG folks. But yeah, they could, the elite guys could get away with as much Zone 2 training as they want. And again, this goes back to, you know, me and Dan, we might be prescribing for our elite trathletes. We might be prescribing six or even up to eight hours of Zone 2 on a given session. So, yeah, like that's, but no, you know, I'm kind of dodging. the question and I should know so I should I should finish this paper when they went in the mid zone it was HRV was basically bad it didn't matter it was if they were elite or or well

trained it was still sort of kind of bad and it was no different than can then when they did hit so again this goes back to the whole importance of the zone to cut off or the threshold wherever sort of that that may lie, your first ventilatory threshold, your lactate threshold. That is the cutoff. So you can kind of get away with doing as much as you want down there within, you know, within limits, I guess. But it's a great place to kind of hang out. So you could do back to your initial question. Depending on where you are. If you're just starting out, you could get away with one to two hours in there. what's up folks if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health performance fitness you may really enjoy getting a whoop that's right you can check out whoop at woup dot com it measures everything around sleep recovery strain and you can now sign up for free for 30 days so you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free you get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests.

Yeah, at Woop, you know, we're coaching actively on our platform. And, you know, when I think about recovery specifically and, you know, what are the behaviors that really move the needle with recovery, I mean, I throw zone two in there, you know, in the same way that I, you know, someone wants to make sure they hydrate and do mobility and keep their glucose level stable. You know, I think there's all these kind of recovery, you know, express gratitude and, you know, do breathing, cold therapy, sauna, you know, these are all kind of recovery modalities that, you know, really do kind of, you know, put very minimal stress on the body. In fact, I think, enhance our ability to repeat effort and recover. And so I kind of throw zone two in the bucket with those other modalities. When you say that that's, is that fair? Sure. It is. Yeah. It is because in all of those, all of those things that you, that you put forth, you're reducing the stress in the body. You're lowering, let's call it, I mean, just the fighter flight sort of response. And we know with that, we get a large surge in cortisol. What's cortisol? Glucocorticoid. What's the word glucose need? Glucos lots of sugar, right? So it's the same, and so the less glucocorticoids, less, cortisol that you have, the less glucose that's going to be in your system. And it's the same thing with the zone too. It's like more fat oxidation, you're kind of stimulating. So with whether it's, yeah,

yoga, cold water immersion, sleep, better circadian rhythms, zone two, you put it in that bucket. Absolutely. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So I, you know, I want to talk about women for a second because, you know, I think depending where you are and your kind of reproductive, the spectrum of reproductive journey, you know, you're, you have, you know, kind of different responses to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, and again, if, if I, if I, I kind of put zone to even, even put it in the training bucket, again, I'm put it in the recovery bucket. But, you know, I kind of worry, again, we're, I think for women who are in perimenopause, menopause, again, kind of that overindex to just, it's all about strength and high intensity. And now we're, actually, I think in that ecosystem, they're like, you know, no cardio, you know, no cardio, you know, no. You know, No long, slow runs, like get that out. What would be, you might not have an answer to this, but, you know, in my instinct is that zone two is still going to be very, very helpful for a woman who is in parimenopause and a menopause.

And that should still be built into the program, given that everything that we understand in terms of the parasympathetic effect and, you know, just the benefits of just spending extended time in this zone. What would be your take on that? Well, I'd say it's more important even than the high intensity stuff that you get the Zon 2 training in that because you're ramped, again, back to you're ramping up the fat metabolism. This is going to kick back to your HPA axis, hypothalanic pituitary adrenal axis. This is going to kick back into the hypothalamic gonadal adrenal axis, right?

So that one's all linked as well too. And a lot of what we're seeing is we're seeing a return of that menstrual cycle. with more zone two training. We're seeing a return of health with that zone two training. So it's the suggestion that a more better fat metabolism is kicking back to all those differences. It should be no surprise, right? Everything's kind of related, right?

The healthier you can feel and B, that's going to be reflected in the whole gonadal act is, right? Yeah, you're the sex hormones, et cetera. And probably the same guys, too, right? So the guys can run into these problems, too. Yeah. And I think you nailed it. I think in terms of HPA access activation like that, you know, when that is, you know,

that has an indirect effect on melatonin, on our reproductive hormones, on uteroreceptivity for women. So, you know, when you think about HPA axis activation and reproductive health for men and women, it is so central, right? And just understanding this link between zone-to-training. and its impact on HBA access activation is, you start to put together the puzzle, right? And I know that that's what we do is our research is all about putting this puzzle together. But yeah, I guess I just get a little worried in that I think people get so dogmatic about one way

and kind of forget that, hey, there's, there's, it is truly about balance, I think, you know, and just in understanding, you know, that what we're actually trying to achieve kind of mechanistically. And what these different types of the cadence and the different types of workouts and the frequency and the time and all of that really ladders up to improving our tolerance for stress, you know, and really putting us in a position to, you know, be much, much healthier individuals. And I think our reproductive health is this incredible signal in terms of, you know, are we training correctly, are recovering correctly? And I think if those signals are off, then I think going back to our training and our nutrition and our sleep and circadian, you know, all these things are kind of foundational. Yeah, I would think, I would almost think that females even have a better barometer sort of than males. Of, totally. You've got a menstrual cycle.

With the cycle, yeah. If your cycle is going off, then that's probably a really key indicator that maybe those stressors are getting out of hand. Remember that stress can come in so many different forms, right? It can come from that exercise that we're doing. Like too much high-intensity training, you'll feel it there. Nutrition is a stress. So if we start, if our nutrition is way out of whack, you're going to start to feel that as a stress on your body. Circadian rhythm, sleep, all, you know, emotional stuff, problems of the home, whatever.

It's all going to kind of link back. It all links back to stress. And, yeah, you'll definitely see that. Yeah. Is there any, just, you know, any literature that you can kind of think of that that ties, you know, this zone to work, you know, to reproductive health? You know, maybe it is via HPA access. Yeah, I just wondering. Well, again, I think, I think this is going to come out in the study that we're doing right now. I'm sure there is a lot of literature. There's probably some good literature out there that's showing this. my bias and my awareness, I'm reflecting on a paper that I did with Phil Maftone. Oh, wow. With, yeah, and we titled it, athletes fit but unhealthy. And it was basically, it went back, it was all cycling around the HPA axis stuff

that we're talking about right now. And I meant Phil because actually I did a paper with Stephen, and it was on basically showing that the fat oxidation at high-intensity exercise was actually really important. And we hadn't thought that before. We thought it was all only about carve oxidation at high-intensity exercise. Well, what we showed with Stephen was that basically when you're that same sort of group that I talked about before, the guys that were killing it on their intervals were big fat burners. So they could, they were, and they were doing the extra hit work with,

fat metabolism. That was what it kind of explained it. So Phil, who's been about fat metabolism, this whole thing all is like, he emails me up and he says, congrats on the paper. Now, I'm a traffleet, so I'm a huge fan of his, because he's coached Mark Allen, the Simon

Chan of Kona and stuff. I can't believe it. And then anyways, we go on to write at least 10 papers or more in all the various different areas after that. But this was one of the key ones, and a lot of people talk about this one. Athletes fit, but unhealthy. So that's kind of a, you know, you don't think that, right? We think of our athletes.

We think they, you know, bronze, you know, amazing. The epitoneed health. You look good on the outside, but the insides, all this stuff. Actually be unhealthy in means and many aren't. And this is, you know, this is what we're, there's, sorry, I forgot the name of the author. It just came out But basically showing that sometimes even athletes presenting in studies, they're coming in and they're wearing these continuous glucose monitors, right? Like Super Sapiens for XCOM and whatnot. They're actually in going into the unhealthy kind of phase where they're almost pre-diabetic. Oh, yeah.

Blood glucose levels peering in a study with big VO2 maxes. Yeah. They did exactly what I did. They would mean-line Coca-Cola or whenever it would be, and just not thinking it's not going to harm them. And then their fat metabolism gets out of whack, and it's a stressor. And all these things we're talking about, it messes up the HPA axis, messes up the gonadal axis.

And we go into these various problems. Even though we're doing the exercise, we haven't paid attention to all these other things. Yeah, yeah. And I think for anyone who might be listening and thinking, oh, no, is that me? You know, you can actually, you know, even if you're trending towards pre-diabetic, you can reverse that in like a month, you know, just by reducing your sugar intake or just eliminating sugar, being, you know, just really mindful of, you know, no packaged anything. You know, just eat from the earth, lots of protein, you know, at least 30 grams per meal. and then get out and, you know, do some zone one, zone two work. And literally at a month, you can reverse your, your metabolic issues. So, you know, it's not, you know, it's, I know it can feel like that's a lot, but, but what's really, what would really suck though is getting diabetes. So it's, it's, I think, for folks listening who are like, oh, yeah, look good on the outside,

but internally am I really where I need to be? You know, these are, you know, period is a great, you know, signal, you know, I think getting a continuous glucose monitor for a month just to see what your fasting glucose levels actually are, you know, if they're in that, you know, what is it, like 110, 115 fasting glucose, you're pre-diabetic, right? You know, and you want it. That's what he found, three of the 10, 20%, three of four, were pre-diabetic. But also to your point, this is the cool thing. So they, in the study, they did a high carb and they did a low-carb diet. And in a low-carb diet, they reversed it within the 30 days. So they were no longer pre-diabetic. So just to your point, you said, you can change this in 30 days. Well, 100%. So those

three individuals, they completely reversed it within only 30 days. So you can reverse it very, very quickly if you can get to break the habit. Yeah. Another tip, too, is just literally focusing on the timing. You know, early eaters versus late eaters. You know, early eaters do. way, way better in terms of metabolic health than late eaters. So really try to bias your calories, you know, earlier in the day and, you know, try to stop eating once the sun goes down. You know, you want a 10-hour to 12-hour window at the very most. That will also really help, you know, decrease your blood sugar tolerance, you know, reduce cortisol and just get you aligned, you know, from a circadian perspective. But there's some really, really good research

on early and late eaters and kind of how that impacts metabolism and kind of weight and just, again, that concept of internal fitness. But yeah, I think a really powerful lever as well. You mentioned just the different mediums of just like running, rower, swimming. In terms of Zod too, is there one that is better than the other or are they all created equal? What would be what would be your take on that? I think they're all, I think they're all pretty fairly equal in terms of, you know, if you isolate any sort of given sport. But, you know, I was speaking about this with Baz Van Huron as well. He's a, he's an elite runner in the Netherlands. So I've got, I've got a podcast as well. And it's, he was chatting him on it. And he also levered.

for him, like, so he's, he's one of the top runners in the world, and he actually leverages cycling as a training. He wouldn't necessarily think of that, right? But he actually gets more of his zone two training in from cycling. So he does zone two sessions around. He's doing, you know, 100 kilometers, yeah, 160 kilometer weeks, you know, 100 mile weeks, right? So on yeah so he's doing and he's in order to facilitate that whole fat oxidation stuff that we spoken about in the podcast um he is leveraging that through um his cycle training and the reason why he's moving that out is you can imagine the neuromuscular stress and strain on the tendons of ligaments and and muscle features now is reduced using the concentric cycling as opposed to

just plugging out more miles. So I would say again back to the context. It context matters. But you can you can leverage Zone 2 training in a variety of different ways. I also think about a a traffleet I used to train. She was having she was having issues in her lower limbs. You know, I received the athlete and she was kind of overtrained and overcome. And one of the, so she went and still kept doing her swim training as a trathlet, and then she only just did cycle training. Well, she, that formula of kind of balancing the whole thing, she could, she, she was so powerful and she, she won numerous championships by, but she was kind of leveraging

zone two training in the swimming to facilitate the whole system, and, and, and, and, and, and, allowed her to become one of the world's best cyclists. Wow. It's a cool story. It is, yeah. The whole trifling kind of concept has been really useful for me in terms of understanding the fact that you can move these things around with your own two training. What would you, so with your athletes, just anyway, it doesn't need to be professional

athletes, just layperson, just trying to live long. There's obviously an association between longevity and V-O-2 max. You know, in theory, we want to try to have the best V-O-2 Max possible. Can you train for improvements in VO2 Max? And how does Zone 2 play a role in that? Well, I think, and again, this goes, I touched on this one with that study that Phil Maftone reached out to me on. That's the one I did with Stephen Seiler, Ken have lad. We'll link to all of these as well in the show notes.

Sure. And it basically, basically it showed that the higher your fat oxidation levels were the more that actually facilitated high intensity interval training. So these guys are doing VOTMX intervals and fat oxidation was making up the balance of the energy that was being put into those efforts when we compared that to a recreationally trained group. So we had two groups, elite guys, weekend warriors. The lead guys were doing more work. They had the exact same response in terms of their rating perceived exertion, the amount of carbohydrates oxidize. What was different?

The gap was the fat. So back to zone two, the zone two training links back and allows you to do better high-sensitive internal training. Because we're more effective, bad oxidizing fat. Yeah, you're getting more in-tebring. through the fat stores, and you're recovering better between the two as well.

So this is why everyone's figured it out now, right? Because I've heard is that Zone 2 training is trending. It's trending because people are getting results with it and they are recognizing the importance

of that out oxidation. Love it. Yeah. You know, Paul, with the athletes that you train, I'd love to hear how you talk about sleep with those athletes? It's one of the key fundamentals or tenants of the whole performance process and it's one of those things that it just needs to be prioritized right and off here I remember we were talking about

the circading rhythm and going at the right time and all these things so you know it's it's just it's just critical and you know this is probably a good place to just review for all of us that some of the things that we want to be making sure that we're doing for good sleep hygiene and um and getting you know getting a good sleep so even break some serious basics or just like a well-ventilated room like you know having a window crack if you can um having clean sheets is just so so simple but it's but you know some of us are uh we're busy people so we don't go in our sheets so you think about how you feel when you go into bed and you've got a clean, clean bedding, clean bedding,

well-ventilated room. The obvious one, the obvious elephant to the room for all of us is the technology. We've got to turn the technology off at least an hour before we're kind of winding down. I read, you know, a good, a good old-fashioned book made a paper. It's just an awesome, awesome for me. I just love that and it kind of calms my mind. Dark, dark room as well as another one. And then there's other little ones, too. I'm sure some of you've probably interviewed other guests and stuff, and I've learned this one. But like things like if you know you're snoring, a really good method.

I think you had Daniel Nestor or a brave jeans nestor. Yeah, yeah, to tape. I read his book. I take my nose because, we're sorry, I take my nose. I'm like, don't do that. But I tape my mouth. Yeah, this of his work. Yeah. And that's really...

That's huge. That is huge. Yeah. Yeah. It's a barque. I have my wife looked in Newark. And she saw it back. She just... You're in that, but it... No, that is a path to just better overall quality of life and, you know, just when we're not breathing properly. And this was very clear. Just interviewing James and having read that book and read the oxygen advantage by Patrick McEwen, like, yeah. I mean, it's like you want to fix that first. And once you fix your breathing... things right itself, your sleep rights itself, you're just even how you use energy, just everything.

Yeah, so those are all the things. And then, yeah, I think, I mean, those are the main ones. It doesn't always necessarily solve it. Sometimes you still will have a hard time going to sleep or waking up at night. And maybe you need a specialist or there's, you know, nutrition things you want to manipulate. You spoke about some nutrition timing stuff that's probably important. for that as well. But I would start always, even with training, you start with the basics and the fundamentals first. Yeah. It's always a very good, good strategy to kind of take. Yeah. And I think

people consider this concept of internal fitness, you know, that you've got to get the foundation right first. And if, because it's a foundation, I would say this, the foundation's not there. You're kind of layering inefficiency on top of inefficiency. You know, so, you know, in order to kind of maximize these different, you know, training modalities, you really want to have the sleep, the nutrition, and the requisite amount of recovery in play in order to make sure that you're, you know, really maximizing the time that you're putting into your, you know,

the workouts, you know. Yeah, and everything, everything just continues to link back to, it's really all the same stuff, but fat, oxidizing the fat that's, we're ingesting, or is stored in our body is the fundamental kind of principle here. Being able to have the hormonal, you know, milieu or organization that allows that fat to come out of our body, that, you know, insulin isn't sitting super high. If insulin's high, we're in anabolic state, we can't get fat out because that hormone

is telling all of the, you know, the fuel substrates to be stored. in our body. It's not getting shuttled to the cells. Not being shuttled out, exactly. And as soon as we unlock that, you know, that pattern and that of those, and often it is the, often it is the carbs, the stress, the zone two. You get all of that and the sleep, when all of that kind of goes, then the fat kind of fat comes out and And people are just, they're blown away. It's like, oh, my gosh, I leaned right up and feel so much better. I'm sleeping so much better.

And, yeah, and then your brain health is so much better. Like you're, you know, you're firing on all cylinders, you know, like we are right now and whatnot. So you want that, that energy and stuff in life. Yeah. So, yeah, I just, again, I wish, yeah, I wish that for everyone listening. Yeah, that's beautifully said. And I, you know, and I think, I think the other thing folks can expect, and we get, you know, because we measure hearty variability and we tell folks it's an important metric to track and, you know, you wanted a upward trend over time, you know, I think, I think all the things that you just mentioned are, are the things that move around are, our heart's responsiveness to our autonomic nervous system, which is expressed, you know, as an HRV. So, you know, I think that's, you know, is there anything else, you know, you've touched on it, you know, throughout the podcast?

But there's anything else you want to say about heart rate variability and zone two training specifically? And I don't think really, I think that, you know, we've got the fundamentals here that, you know, the bulk of your training should be in that zone two area. When it is, as we spoke about with Stephen Siler's study, it's, you know, you really kind of can't get. too much of this and within reason relative to the context of the individual it's where you want to maximize the most time the research the research supports that you don't don't forget to get the the regular uh dosage in smaller amounts of the of the high intensity stuff too don't yeah don't neglect that because that's still important sounds for you yeah but um yeah like if again if you get the bulk of your training in that zone two area and below, you will maximize your fat oxidation. Your

HRV should be maintained or elevate. And yeah, that's healthy, that's healthy living. And then maybe just again, in the interest of just balance and reminding people that, you know, zone two and zone five and resistant training are also important. You know, what would you, how do you advise? you know, individuals just to build that into their programming each week. Yeah, well, for me, I want to have a, I'll just speak to myself. And this is, yeah, I want to have component of all of those things. Every day of the week, so you see my gym behind me. So I've just part of the podcast, I got all revved up and I, you know, I like, I like to lift

heavy. Nice. But of course, I'm a, I'm a troughly too, right? So I like to do swim bike run and all those sorts of things too. So it's, and I will just be, the bulk of the training will be zoned to sort of work. I love a long aerobic stimulus in the sun too. Actually, vitamin D is another really key one too. Yeah, I kind of really mentioned that in the podcast, but, you know, if you can get outdoors

and get into the, get into the sunshine, that vitamin D is a big stimulator of your fat oxidation as well yeah so I'm glad I was able mentioned that yeah and that's getting your skin your skin exposed to the the sunlight it's very it's really important obviously do it safely and all that but yeah of course of course but it really really is it's a it's a big one of your whole it's linked to all of these things it's it's actually not just a vitamin it's actually a hormone so it's it's kind of that way so you get your your vitamin D dose is super important um but yeah so outdoor zone two stuff in the forest even as well as it's bright if you can if you're you know if you can get out of the city and then but yeah and then a good stimulus of of hit training in there as well and maybe

that we can we can do another podcast on on hit one one day as well yeah i would love that yeah i'd love to talk to you about uh sprint interval training versus hit and yeah really go really go deep on all the different ways that we can get into that zone and how to think about it so yes take you off on that. So Paul, where is the best place for folks to follow all the good work that you're doing in this space? So I've got a few little businesses called, so yeah, if you, I'm really only on one one social platform, and that's Twitter. So it's Paul B. Larson at Twitter. And I've got a personal website, Paul Larson.com. And my main two businesses are athletic at AI and hit science.com. Amazing. You can check those out there.

Perfect. I need to get on Twitter. I kind of, you know, I haven't gone that path yet, but I don't know. That's okay. I scared on Twitter. I try to stay off most of the socials because it, yeah, they just, just can keep focused on the business sort of side of things. But I know, I know they're important. Yeah, exactly. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for your time. You've been so insightful. And, yeah, I know I remember it's going to really, really, really value the conversation. So thank you. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, no problem. Thank you to Paul for coming on the WOOP podcast and his insight on Zone 2 training. Reminder, you can check out your Zone 2 training in the Woop app. If you enjoy this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed at Kristen underscore Holmes 212. If you have a question to answer on the podcast, email us, podcast at Woof.com. Call us 508, 443-9.52. If you're thinking about joining Whoop, you can visit Whoop.com.

Sign up for a 30-day free trial. That's a pretty great deal. Check it out for free for 30 days. New members can use the code Will. W-I-L-L, get a $60 credit on W-W-A accessories. And that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WooP podcast.

As always, stay healthy and stay in the green. Thank you.