When you are training there are some things to remember.

Most people train at too high an intensity so what happens is that they might get fast quickly (if they are lucky), but over time they will plateau much more quickly and will have a hard time getting any faster. If you truly want to reach the potential of your body, you must build it slowly.

The way to build the structure of your body is by staying in your aerobic slow twitch muscle fiber zone. The only way to do this is by staying 20 below your lbp. This is your fat burning zone. Anything higher than this you start burning carbohydrates or glycogen.

As most of us are aware you have way more fat stores than glycogen stores, therefore we are more efficient the more we can burn fat.

The other key thing is the structure changes. To build your blood vessels (responsible for blood and oxygen transfer) to their max size and numbers you need to be in the aerobic fat burning zone. This also is where the growth of mitochondria are the largest. A perfect example is to look at a heart patient who is fit that has a heart attack and didn't even know it. Reason being is that they have the main artery clogged with hereditary reasons and because they are fit the blood vessels have grown around this clogged artery to continue supplying blood, until the clog just gets too big.

If this was an unfit person the probably would have had a heart attack way earlier and could have been way more devastating.

My dad had a triple bypass surgery and this is a guy who is super fit marathon runner, cross country skier. He didn't even know that he had previous heart attacks, he thought it was indigestion. The heart surgeon was the one who said when he operated there was evidence that he had a couple heart attacks previously.

Mitochondria are the engines of your cells and responsible for your performance as an athlete. The more time you can spend 20 below lbp the better your body will adapt. As you move faster you are still aerobic, but you are burning more and more carbohydrates. As you hit your lbp, you move to anaerobic and your ability to hold that pace diminishes considerably. You have about 45 minutes to an hour of ability to go above your balance point and is obviously dependent on how high above your lbp you go.

What happens over time is your main muscles start accumulating acid so your other muscles that are not prime movers in that exercise are forced to compensate to the point that all your muscles are gone. You see this happen in most long distance races.

How many times do you hear the term "ironman shuffle" this is caused by the muscles shutting down. You see many people's hip flexors shutting down so they are bent over forward.

Obviously how busy your life is affects your zones of training. If you don't have a lot of time you just need to make sure your long stuff is all done 20 below lbp. Eighty percent of your training should be below your lbp though with only 10-20 percent above which is basically one day a week should be above your lbp.

One more thing that I learned was that your resting heart rate is not the best tool to tell you if you are over training. You have to look at the Auto static Heart Rate. This is looking at your resting while you are in bed, and then looking at your heart rate while standing. These will be different, but if you take these a couple times a week and you see a big up rise in both of these you know you are over training and in need of some time off. If you only look at the resting in bed heart rate, you can get warning signs, but you need to look at the standing heart rate as well. Another sign of over training is if the heart rates at both points are significantly lower than usual.

I hope this helps you understand why the lactate balance point test is such a good test and key to understanding what heart rate zones you should be in and why the old methods like threshold testing and 220 - your age just do not work.

For further information and/or personal testing, contact CMS Coaching