By Jared Packer

Good movement reduces the chances of injury. When our joints and our bodies are in the right positions, forces are being placed optimally throughout the body. With any movement, being able to do this for a few repetitions is a good start. But what about the 50th time? Or the 500th? When we push ourselves in athletic events, either competitively or recreationally, moving with integrity protects us from injury. Good movement requires energy, and it requires the nervous system to coordinate an intricate dance of contracting and relaxing muscles, making micro-adjustments far beyond what you can concsiously control. When fatigue sets in, there is not enough energy to coordinate the same quality of movement. Take for instance the epic MMA bout between heavyweights Kimbo Slice and Dada 5000:

These guys were totally gassed mid 1st round. You can see that neither of them could complete any intended movements, which leaves them wide open for injury.

The more your aerobic system is developed, the less likely you will get fatigued, and the faster you will recover from spurts of intense activity. What does it mean to develop your aerobic system?

3 Ways to Produce Energy

To understand what aerobic development is, first get to know the 3 different ways the body can produce energy. These are:

• the aerobic system

• the glycolytic system

• the creatine-phosphagen system

  
  

Imagine you have a solar powered hybrid car with turbo. Here is a rendered prototype:

Going up to 30 MPH, with slower acceleration, this car can run off of energy converted from the solar panels. If you want to drive faster than this, the turbo kicks in. The turbo runs out very quickly, but has the quickest acceleration. The turbo takes time to recharge, but can be replenished over time by the solar panels.

If you want to sustain higher speeds, the car starts using gasoline to supplement, as the energy from the solar can’t keep up. There is a limited supply of gas, and it is way less efficient. It also produces a lot of pollution, and puts more wear and tear on the car.

ATP - The Body’s Energy Currency

Let’s look at how this relates to the human body. Our body is powered by ATP. You can think of it as energy currency, which can be cashed in at muscles and organs (or any cell) to provide the energy to do things. The body exchanges other currency into ATP through the aerobic system (solar panel), glycolytic system (gasoline), and creatine- phosphagen system (turbo).

Aerobic System

The body’s most efficient way of producing ATP is through the aerobic system, which uses oxygen. As long as energy demands are low, the body can be powered mostly by this system.

Anaerobic Systems

The other 2 systems of the body are anaerobic, meaning “involving the absence of oxygen”. The body switches to these when the aerobic system can’t create ATP fast enough to meet the demand for it. If you need a quick boost, the creatine-phosphagen (turbo) can provide energy the fastest. Operating at full speed, this system will run out of energy in about 12 seconds. This type of fuel is slowly restocked by the aerobic system.

If you need to sustain intense activity beyond this, the body starts using glycolysis/glycolytic system (gasoline). In this process, cells quickly create ATP without oxygen, but it’s an inefficient process. This would be like selling a bunch of stuff at a discount to get money fast. The body can do this and sustain it for about 1 minute if used to its full capacity, and for much longer if used partially.

During human movement, all 3 systems are likely working to varying degree, how much depending on the intensity of the activity.

Cost of The Glycolytic System

Though the glycolytic system is high powered and useful, keep in mind that it is easy to overtrain, and comes at a price.

Your muscles will be operating in a low oxygen environment. This places a greater amount of stress on both the muscles working and the body as a whole. It results in the accumulation of waste products, which the body has to work hard to clear out and process. Too much glycolytic training will delay muscle repair, decrease immune function, and increase inflammation (by release of cortisol, the “stress hormone”). If you are doing other types of intense training as well, you might be crushing your body and leaving it wide open for injury.

While training this system is important in some sports, it should be done intelligently. Its capabilities can be maxed out in 3-4 weeks. Attempting to do so for longer can put your body through unnecessary stress, and take away resources that your body needs to recover and improve in other ways.

What System Are You Using?

So how do you figure out when you are using which system? The best way is to get hooked up to a bunch of fancy equipment in a lab and get tested. This is expensive and not available to everybody. Another option is to buy a Moxy Monitor, which will monitor the level of oxygen in one of your muscles while you exercise. If oxygen levels drop, you know that the non-oxygen systems have kicked in.

Monitoring Heart Rate

If you don’t feel like forking over a whole bunch of cash, there are other methods involving heart rate monitoring. You can get a chest strap device for $50 or less, which can sync to your phone. Fitbits and Apple Watches can do this as well. Keep in mind these won’t be quite as accurate, but provide at least some level guidance.

• Use a Smart Watch or Whoop Strap to figure out your max heart rate, using your resting heart rate and Heart Rate Variability.

• Calculate your max heart rate and stay within specified zones. You can learn how to calculate your max heart rate here.

• Read this quick article about heart rate zones if you are interested in using them to

  improve the following.

Most of the following suggestions and parameters are adapted from Joel Jamieson’s Ultimate MMA Conditioning, which I would highly recommend to anybody who wants to learn more about improving conditioning.

Improve Cardiac Output

This is where we are increasing the amount of blood the heart can pump with each beat. More blood pumped means more oxygen delivered to the rest of the body. Work at 60-70% of your max HR, or somewhere between 120-150, for a sustained 30-60 mins, 1-3 times a week.

Alactic Power Intervals

Short bursts of energy are required in most sports. As mentioned previously, the aerobic system replenishes the turbo, so we want this process to be as efficient as possible to prepare the body for the next burst. Get your heart rate to 55-65% of your max HR. Work as hard as you can for 10 seconds and actively rest for 2-5 minutes so that your heart rate drops to below 65% of max HR before your next rep. Perform 5 reps. Give yourself a 10 minute rest while maintaining 55-65% max HR. Perform another 5 reps. Cool Down.

Threshold Training

Your anaerobic threshold is the point at which at which the body starts using more anaerobic processes than aerobic processes for energy. Basically it means you are working at the limits of your aerobic system. Training here will raise these upper limits, so you will stay primarily in aerobic energy production for longer. Work within 80-90% of your HR Max for 3-10 minutes, active rest for a few minutes until your heart rate is back in the 60-70% HRMax range, and repeat 2-5 times, 1-2x/week.

The more efficient your body is at using oxygen for energy, the less fatigued you will be towards the middle and end phases of your game. The less fatigued you are, the more coordinated your movement will be. Your body will be more capable of reacting to your environment, and maintaining good positions to reduce the likelihood of injury.

Do you want to continue to train hard and not get the results you want or do you want to take your conditioning to the next level and work with a physical therapist/strength and conditioning coach with experience in conditioning and athletic resiliency?

If you chose the latter, we here at Move Strong Physical Therapy inside of Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA are the right fit for you! Take that first step and click HERE to get started.

This post was written by Jared Packer. He is one of our Performance Physical Therapists here at Move Strong Physical Therapy. If you’d like to learn more about him, click HERE or if you want to work 1:1 with him, get started by clicking HERE.