WHOOP Podcast - The Emergence and Benefits of Zone 2 Training with Paul Laursen

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by author and endurance coach Paul Laursen. Paul is the Co-Founder and CEO of HIIT Science, the Co-Founder and Head of Product for Athletica, and co-host of the Training Science Podcast. Not only has he published over 150 scientific manuscripts and had his work cited more than 15,00 times, but he’s also competed in 17 Ironman triathlons. Kristen and Paul will discuss how Paul got started training and teaching (3:05), the relationship between the cardiovascular system and the nervous system (6:15), defining the different training zones (10:50), creating a weekly program with cardio zones (25:40), staying balanced with your training (29:10), autonomic recovery and Zone 2 as an active recovery tool (31:25), how Zone 2 can be linked to hormone levels (37:33), Paul’s paper on metabolism and burning fat (41:30), the best medium for Zone 2 training (47:15), training for longevity and VO2 max (50:15), and how Paul thinks about sleep with his athletes (52:05).Resources:Paul's WebsitePaul’s TwitterHIIT ScienceAutonomic Recovery after Exercise in Trained AthletesAthletes: Fit but UnhealthyFat Oxidation during HIITSupport 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 are on a mission to unlock human performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP. Got a great episode this week. Woop VP of Performance Science and Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes, is joined by author and endurance coach Paul Larson. Paul is the co-founder and CEO of Hit Science, the co-founder and head of product for Athletica and co-host of the training science podcast. Not only has he published over

150 scientific manuscripts and had his work cited more than 15,000 times, but he's also completed in 17 Ironman triathlons. He's a guy who practices what he preaches. Kristen and Paul discuss Paul's transition from competing in triathlons to becoming a premier performance coach. The different cardio zones give an in-depth look into each zone and what methods to train in them so those of you looking at your activity details after a workout you can see the different zones the emergence of zone two cardio training this is where you can burn the most fat and see significant weight loss how to say balance with your training and how you can use technology to monitor your VO2 max when training.

If you're looking to try whoop, we're offering 30-day free trials of the platform. This is pretty innovative. You can literally go to whoop.com and sign up and get a free whoop in the mail. It's 30 days to figure out whether you want to become a whoop member. If you have a question, you want to see answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast at whoop.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, cardio zone 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 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 a 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, I, got a scholarship to where you're at at the university.

Yeah. Yeah, that's that. And I did my PhD down there. 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 their 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. And 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, I just dive, try to dive into that area. So that, I guess, explains my history and my, 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 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, 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 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 the 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 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, I guess, the strength of the fat burning system and the not burning system to, 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.

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 if I, you know, 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 Mish building there. And every day we would be, you know, flowing down our coffee with two sugars and a muffin. 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, 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 how again 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 the 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 with it. 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 can talk about it and feel free to insert your point of view and, you know, in terms of polarized training versus, you know, there's thoughts of different ways to think about these zones in 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. And that's where we have on WOOP. So, yeah, if we talk, keep in the, yeah, talking down the contents 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 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 one. Right.

Yeah. And it is kind of where life lives. 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, this, this one sits around. Yeah, it should feel really easy. And then now we're moving into the now popular zone too. 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 is it is good good place to kind of hang out and spend spend some time is and that's in in your zone two and it's this is where probably your um your fat max occurs as well so you probably

have a lot of fat oxidation kind of happening to to fuel that exercise and yeah i mean you can you can go one to three hours you can know i mean i've got guys i'm working with right now talking about seven our 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's 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 why this is kind of trending right now is because people are 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 too. And all these sorts of things. And it's just a fundamental sort of principle. So yeah. Yeah. I said it, as you know, we have access to 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 two effort, their next day recovery is almost always. We always see kind of a rise in parasympathetic. There seems to be a very clear periscenthetic effect after zone two. 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 two 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. And your zone two work will actually even feel easier as well too. You'll be able

to go longer without needing the sort of the sugar cravings will subside. Right, right. So kind of keeping blood sugar as stable as as you can, as often as you can, you're going to get more out of that zone two work. You will. Yeah. 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 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 in, 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, if you,

those of us that are doing 70.3 races, Iron meta races, you're going to 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 some time in that zone, but it's a specific time. What the problem is is that for many of us

and 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 lens. Right. This is where the process of wearing a heart rate monitor and knowing where that heart rate sits

is very powerful because you can put a clamp on fun when you cross over that one. And so 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 and hydrogen ions. 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 VO2-Max type carcass. 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 of 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 sort of through our hard rate marker. And do you get, did you get buzzed when you're getting outside of that zone two, or if you're going below your zone three, depending on what your intention is. Yeah, there are technologies, yeah, that do that, right? So the frontier we monitor does that, for example, there's the, 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, that are into this whole. thing. So for the lay person, so we're going to kind of keep going through the zones, but as 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 four. 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 what's the time frame that is where the magic happens one to three one to three hours is the effective time dose uh okay textbook kind of say but there's um with training as you know there's so many different ways to skin the cap right sure so it's not it's not impossible to do you know infinite varieties of of training within all of these sorts of things but a good

organization is to do um you know do uh specific work that's that's in itself but sometimes like you You know, you've got to go up a hill and whatnot. Right. And your intensity is going to rise for a bit. So you're not going to crush your Zone 2 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 a little bit.

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? Right. We wear these monitoring devices and then we retrospectively look back and we can see what is 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 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 sort of that zone too or below. But of course, with the context and the caveat that we just said where there's small rises and stuff. And would you say, so for someone who, again,

isn't kind of hooked up to anything, talk test, is that a good? Perfect. 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 too. 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, there's some of the 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 a great, another great one. So our 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, talk test. Those are 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 race base. These are the types of areas where we're talking. This is actually the point also about, you know, 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 sort of, this. zone 4. So, so you're, this is your, your lactate threshold. Four millimoles. You used two before.

So now we're, we're at four mili-moles. You're at this kind of this balance point. And, yeah, between lactate production and lactate removal. And it's not, and above zone 4, it's not sustainable. We go through this thing called the VO2 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 VO2 max pace.

And I think these ones, this is, you know, 94 to 100% of your, you know, hard rate max is right at the top. And it's, if anyone that's done so-called VO2 max intervals, you know, your breathing rate could be, yeah, they heard it, Paul. I know. I try to do one every 10 to 2 weeks. Perfect. Perfect.

And that's great. And it's great to get, if you can, it's great to get a good, a good. dose of this in unique training, the right amount, the right amount, right? Not all of it. We have to be careful with that. No pain, no gain philosophy. And the, you know, too much CrossFit is going to is going to be hurting someone, but not, you know, a small amount every so often. You know, that 10% or 20% of your trading is very healthy. That's really great to, you know, it's a solid stim. So, okay, so let's say you have, uh, is there, as a coach and an expert in kind of all things training, you have a client come in and they want

to maximize health and longevity. And they're relatively new. 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 saying, like,

Do they appear that they have any issues with, you know, fat burning? Or do we see some overfat sort of tendencies in their appearance, say, for example? And that's basically the deposition of, you know, too much fat in the abdomen sort of region, right? That's where the body will start to begin to store a lot of fat if stress or sugar levels or, you know, are ultimately kind of out of control. Circadian misalignment. Is that a place to start? Exactly.

Balls and Queens, and I mean, like, and this happens to all of us, right? I'm sure it's happened to you first, 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 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 two. It really does have 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 two work in that, you know, that weekly microcycle. Because we know it's probably going to increase your ability to oxidize fat 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 in all those other various different things that we that we spoke about the you know um strength training in accordance with what the goals of the individual um 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 there is a zone six as well that really hits the large fast-twitch muscle fibers. 10 seconds of work, yeah, where you're just going as hard as you can, flat out. Perfect, perfect. Yeah. So all those various different things. Yeah. Even the context of the individual, what they want to want to achieve.

Yeah. So before we kind of continue to go down the zone two rabbit hole, just, you know, I suppose what's your point of view? you know, I think if the zone two is becoming way more popular, people are talking about it a ton. And as a result, as an industry, I feel like we kind of overindex. And now it's all about zone two. 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 a 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 in yeah 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 and you know advanced minimum viable yeah again I'd say whatever you can do like it's yeah it's just um you have to walk before you run, you know what I mean? And you have to do some push-ups before you should be doing bench press and all things. 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 do more or be a better self, be your better self relative to where maybe you've been before what are 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 and maybe you can think about it it just principally like you know there's no really there's no you can't do too much zone two i don't think from what i've seen in the literature like you can't really overdo it 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 thread um 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 too. 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. 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 it really, I mean, if you go back to the Dan Pleu's podcast that you did, it's, you know, it's, this really kind of leveraged a lot of the work that Dan and I did in the whole in each or a beat 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 trained,

60, 60 mills per KG kind of on the VATIMX. And he got them to do basically four different exercises. is he got them to do an hour at Zone 2 or below. He got them to do two hours of Zone 2 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, 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 too. 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 case. folks but but yeah they could the elite guys could get away with as much zone two training as they want and again this goes back to 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 two on it on a given session um so yeah like that's but no yeah i'm kind of dodging the question and i should know

so i should i should finish finish this paper when they were in the mid zone, it was, HRV was basically bad. It didn't matter if they were elite or well trained. It was still sort of kind of bad. And it was no different than 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 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. 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 stables. 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 2 in the bucket with those other modalities. Would you say that that's, is that fair? It is. Yeah. It is because in all of those, all of those things 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, the 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. Lakers. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So I, you know, I want to talk about women for a second because, you know, I think the, depending where you are and your kind of reproductive, the spectrum of reproductive journey, you know, you have, you know, kind of different responses to training. And, and again, if I kind of put zone to even, I don't even put it in the training bucket. Again, I put it in the recovery bucket. But, you know, I kind of worry, again, as an industry where now we're, I think for women where I'm 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 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 perimenopause 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 um 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 zone two training in that because you're ramp again back to you're ramping up the fat metabolism um this is going to kick back to your HPA axis, hypothalamic pituitary adrenal

adrenal axis, this is going to kick back into the hypothalamic genital 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, in the whole genital

actions, right? Yeah, you're the sex hormones, et cetera. So, and probably the same guys, too, right? So the guys can run into these problems too. Yeah. And I think, you know, 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 2 training and its impact on HPA access activation is, you know, 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 and that I think people get so dogmatic about one way and kind of forget that, hey, there's, there, 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, and what these different types of the cadence and the different types of workouts and the, and the frequency and the time and all of that really ladders up to, um, 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. But, yeah, I would think, We would almost think that females even have a better barometer, sort of than males. Oh, totally. You've got a menstrual cycle. With the cycle, yeah. If your psychoske's 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 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, is there any,

just, you know, any, 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 uh yeah and it's in a week we titled it um athletes um 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 um and i meant i meant phil because actually um i did a paper with stephen and it was on basically showing that um the fat oxidation at high intensity exercise was actually really important and we hadn't thought that before we thought it was all was all only about car of 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 and this whole thing all of his life, he emails me up and he says, congrats on the paper. Now, I'm a triathlete, 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 epitonee health. They look good on the outside, but the insides, all this stuff. Actually be unhealthy in means. And many aren't.

And this is what we're, there's, sorry, I forgot the name of the author. It just came out, basically showing that sometimes even athletes presenting with, in studies, they're coming in and they're wearing these continuous glucose monitors, right? Like Super Sapiens for X-Com and whatnot. They are 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.

But they did exactly what I did. They would meanline Coca-Cola or whenever it would be, and just not thinking that they, 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 necessarily. up the HPA axis, messes up the gonadal axis. And we go into these various problems. Even though when you'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, 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, it, I know it can feel like that's a lot, but, um, but what's really, what would really suck though is getting diabetes. So it's, it's, it's, I think, um, for folks listening who are like, oh, yeah, look good on the outside, but internally am I really where I need to be? Um, you know,

these are, you know, period is a great, you know, signal. Um, you know, I think getting a continuous glucose monitor for a month just to see what you're fasting glucose levels actually are. You know, So 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 the 10%, three of four were pre-diabetic. But also to your point, this is the cool thing. So they begin the study, they did a high carb and they did a low-carb diet.

So 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. Yeah. Well, 100%. So those three. individuals, they'd be 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 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 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 an elite runner in the Netherlands. So I've got a podcast as well. And he was chatting him on it. And he also leverages for him. So 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 like you know 100 kilometer uh yeah yeah hundred and what about 160 kilometer weeks you know 100 mile weeks right so um yeah so he's doing uh and he's in order to uh facilitate that whole fat oxidation stuff that we speak spoken about in the podcast um he is leveraging that through his cycle training. And the reason why he's moving that out is you can imagine the neuromuscular stress and strain on the tendons, the ligaments, 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. Context matters, but you can leverage Zone 2 training in a variety of different ways. I also think about a a troughlete 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 was so powerful. And she won numerous championships. But she was kind of leveraging Zone 2 training in the swimming to facilitate the whole system

and allowed her to become one of the world's best cyclists. Wow. That's a cool story. It is, yeah. The whole Trafforn kind of concept has been really useful for me in terms of understanding the fact that you can move these things around with your zone 2 training what would you so with your athletes are just with 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 VO2 max you know in theory we want to try to have the best VO2 max possible well can you train for improvements in VO2 max and how does zone 2 play a role in that Well, I think, 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 Havlad. We'll link to all these as well in the show notes. Sure. And it basically, basically, it showed that the higher your 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 hindsensitable training. Because we're more effective bad oxidizing fat. Yeah, you're getting more ATP through the fat stores and you're recovering better between the two as well. So this is why the everyone's figured it out now, right? Because I've heard, you know, is that Zone 2 training is trending. It's trending because people are

getting results with it and they are, they're 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. Yeah, I, 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 just critical.

And, you know, this is probably a good place to just review for all of us some of the things that we want to be making sure that we're doing for good sleep hygiene 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. Having clean sheets is just so simple, but it's, you know, some of us are, 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 in the room for all of us is the technology we've got to turn the technology off at least an hour before we kind of winding down I read a good

a good old fashion book made a pinker is 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 gray jeans nestor. Yeah, yeah, to tape. I read his book. I read his book. I tape my nose because, we're sorry, I take my nose. I'm like, don't do that. But I tape my mouth.

Yeah. Of his, his work. Yeah. And that's really. That's huge. That is huge. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a bar. My wife looked at me, and she saw it. 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. Yeah. For that as well. But I would start always, even with training, I start with the, 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 that when 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. Yeah. And everything just continues to link back to, it's really all the same stuff. But fat, oxidizing the fat that 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 an anabolic state. We can't, 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 shut out exactly and as soon as we um we unlock that you know um that pattern and that of those and often it is the often it is the the carbs the stress the zone two you get all of that and the sleep um when all of that kind of fat comes out and people are just they're blown away it's like oh my gosh i leaned right up and and uh feel so much much better. I'm sleeping so much better. And, and yeah, and then your, your brain health is so much

better. Like you're, you know, you're firing on all cylinders. Yeah. 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. I, I, you know, And 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, well, you wanted a upward trend over time, you know, I think, I think all the things that you just mentioned are the things that move around are our hearts 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, 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 supports that. You don't forget to get the regular dosage in smaller amounts of the high-intensity stuff, too. Don't neglect that because that's still important sounds for you. But, 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 living. And then maybe just, again, in the interest of just balance and reminding people that, you know, Zone 2 and Zone 5 and Resistance training are also important. You know, how do you advise 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 traffleet too, right?

So I like to do swim bike run and, 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 mention 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 to mention that. Yeah. And that's getting your skin, your skin exposed to 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 big one of your whole, it's linked to all of these things. It's actually not just a vitamin. It's actually a hormone. So it's kind of that way. So get your vitamin D dose is super important. But yeah, so outdoor zone two stuff in the forest even as well. It's great. If you can, if you're, if you're.

if you can get out of the city. And then, but yeah, and then a good stimulus of hit training in there as well. And maybe we can do another podcast on hit one day as well. Yeah, I would love that. Yeah, I'd love to talk to you about sprint interval training versus hit. And, yeah, really go, really good teeth on all the different ways that we can get into that zone and how to think about it. So, yes, we'll 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 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.com 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, I can keep, keep focused on the business sort of side of this. 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 is going to really, really, really value the, the conversation. conversations. So thank you. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, no problem. Big thank you to Paul Larson for coming on the show today. Talk zone to cardio and training and everything heart rate zones. 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. Have a question you want to see

answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast at Woop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Don't forget. You can sign up for Woop with literally a free trial, 30 days to decide whether you want to use Woop, you get a free Woop in the mail. 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.