Zone 2 Cardio Made Fun: 3 Ways to Keep It Interesting & Effective

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Is it three ways to do zone two cardio?

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to my YouTube channel.

If you're new here to my channel, I'm Dr. Lysloneck,

I have a PhD in exercise physiology.

I'm a lifting, running cardio, and hybrid training coach.

And today, I'm going to walk you through three different ways

that you can do zone two training,

as part of your own cardio training routine.

Zone two has become all the craze recently,

and everyone's obsessed with doing enough zone two,

and or thinking, well, this is kind of boring and mundane,

and I don't really love doing this.

So I'm going to walk you through three different ways

that you can implement this and your own training routine

for the most simple, classic form of doing zone two training,

to making it more variable or more interesting

so that you're more likely to do it.

Now, when I'm talking about zone two training here

in this video today,

I am talking about lower, easy year study day,

continuous cardio modalities,

where your heart rate is roughly between 60 to 70%

of your heart rate max.

Now, that isn't perfectly true for everyone

and the exact zone for everyone,

and recognizing that that might be variable person to person.

If you're interested in learning more about zone specifically

and or zone two training,

be sure to go and check out my other videos on those topics

or the link for my zone's mini guide below,

which will walk you through all the zones

and applying that specifically for your training

and are helping you find your unique

and specific training zones,

including your zone two.

But for all intents and purposes of this video today,

we'll be thinking about that 60 to 70% of your heart rate max

or training below your lactate or ventilatory threshold one

for my physiology nerds,

or an effort of 4 to 5 out of 10 roughly in your training.

So more of an easier,

talkable, continuous style of training.

And that's what we mean when we're talking about zone two.

So the first way to do zone two training

is your classic, boring, continuous,

steady state training.

When we think about doing true zone two training,

this is what we're going to be thinking about

or referring to most often.

You're going to be either sitting on a bike,

going for a run,

the rower, skier, swimming,

incline walking, hiking,

maybe power walking depending on your own pace and effort

if your heart rate can get high enough.

And doing just some sort of cardio that is continuous

in steady state for somewhere between let's say 20 to 60 minutes of time.

Now recognizing that zone two can be lower,

you know, maybe going below 20 minutes

might not give you enough of a dose to really get in

what we're looking for from a training adaption,

but we know any dose of exercise is good for you.

And you can go up to hours and hours.

I'm a self-runner and I am the queen of going out

for a zone one to zone two effort for hours and hours.

So it's not like it's only time-capped at 20 to 60 minutes,

but I think that's a really good guideline

for the most average or regular people

looking to implement zone two and their training and the gym.

So you would simply hop on your urd or cardio machine of choice

and keep your heart rate or effort level at that steady state

continuous effort for that period of time.

You'll free to entertain yourself with YouTube videos

such as my own TV or other things that distract you,

listen to a podcast, chat with a friend,

it's supposed to be an easy conversational steady state way of training.

However, some people tend to find this way of doing zone two training boring.

Personally, I recommend going for a run

or doing a bike in front of a TV

because I think that's the easiest way to pass the time.

But I recognize this might not be for everyone,

but you might need some easier cardio days

as part of your cardio training

because we're starting to recognize that we all can't do

hit every single day of the week

and get the adaptations and or a cover that we're looking for.

And you might be wanting to implement zone two

and to other styles of training that you like

in a more interval style fashion.

So number two and three are both going to be different forms

of interval based training that can allow you to break up

the monotony of that zone two training

and make it more enjoyable

and still get the same adaptation, stimulus,

or training goals from that training session

as you would a steady state session

that might be a little bit boring for you.

So the next one is going to be interval based zone two training

on multiple ergs or multiple forms of cardio.

So this might look like for something like 20 to 60 minutes

similar to that in the steady state session before.

You are moving between a bike and a skier

in a row or a runner or something like that in a gym.

Now this might work a little bit better for home gyms,

more functional fitness spaces,

your cross hit boxes,

and or gyms that do have access to a lot of machines

and ergs.

It might not be as ideal for other training situations

but if you're in a regular commercial gym

this might just look like a 20 minutes on the stair step

or 20 minutes on the elliptical and 20 minutes on the treadmill

if you're really just looking to break up the monotony

and add some variety to your training.

But you can make this fun and creative

and you can do something like a hundred calories on the bike,

a hundred calories on the ski,

a hundred calories on the runner

and repeat that for as many rounds as possible

until you get to your 60 minute time cap

or similarly you might do two minutes on each one

and rope plate between those every two minutes.

You can get as creative as you want

going calories, distance, time,

every minute on the minutes,

anything that keeps you moving and cycling through

those different ergs,

one at a time and going from machine to machine

or exercise to exercise,

keeping your heart rate and intensity effort in that zone

but breaking that up.

You can make it fun, you can do stack calories

so you're doing, you know, 50 calories,

40 calories, 30 calories each of each machine,

five, four, three, two, one minutes,

just keeping that intensity there

so you can just break up the machines

and make it a little bit less boring

and creative and flowing and moving between those.

And last but not least,

you can simply take more of a MetCon style approach

or a more CrossFit style training approach

and take those types of training sessions

and apply it to a more zone to specific effort.

So instead of taking sessions

and doing them in an all-out effort

for max work capacity or max power or as hard as you can,

you wouldn't then just pull back the intensity

of them across the board

and make sure that you have a large cardio component in that.

So that might look like something

where you're doing a workout

where you're going from a bike

to something like farmer's carries or sled pushes

or kettlebell swings or med ball cleans

or something just allows you to break up

that continuous cardio component

with something a little bit more interesting and variable

that keeps you moving in a cyclical fashion.

And while things like kettlebell swings

or farmer's carries or sled pushes

aren't exactly specifically cardio in itself

in the true sense,

the idea is that that cardio component

in that training piece there itself

being zone two or cardio in itself

is giving you that stimulus

while you continue to keep moving

and keeping your heart rate elevated

and keep being active during that say,

again, 20 to 60-minute time window.

So while this in itself

isn't quintessential true strict cardio,

it's giving you most of what you need

in a way that makes it interesting and fun for you

to keep you active,

give you what you're looking for

but also allow for those of you

that love the interval training

to scratch that itch

while also pulling back that intensity

and knowing that we don't need to go

all out every single day of the week.

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Again, with a style of training,

there are almost unlimited ways to program this

to make this interesting working with things

like every minute on the minute

as many rounds as possible,

as many rounds for a time cap,

calorie-specific, distance-specific rep-specific

or doing X amount of distance.

So maybe you're doing, you know,

2,000 meters on the bike

into 10 pedal bell swing

into farmer carries for a specific distance

and repeating that into you reach your time cap

or for so many rounds.

There's a lot of ways that you can approach

and program this and programs

like the list method itself

on our on-demand cardio library

give you unlimited ever-changing weekly options

so you can apply this to your own training

in a way that makes it more fun

or more variable for you.

Remember that in the day,

the cardio that you do

only needs to be super-specific

if you have a super-specific goal.

So if you are training for a race

and you need to do easy effort runs,

you're going to have to do easy effort runs.

You're not going to be able to sub all of your zone 2 days

only for non-running forms of cardio

because you're bored with the effort.

You're going to have to run to get better at running.

But if you're looking to cross train

or add in different forms of cardio

across the week or different ways

to get in zone 2

because you find it hard

even with your running to stay in zone 2,

you might be able to sub in these options

and for those of you who are just trained

for general health and general fitness

and you're looking for a way to get this in

that makes it interesting and fun

but also allows you to get in the cardio

that you're trying to get in

for your goals.

Then you can do any of these modes of fitness

rotate through them,

change them out,

make it fun,

make it interesting,

the biggest goal

and the biggest thing that you should be doing

is just simply getting it in.

If you enjoyed this video,

let me know below what kind of zone 2 is your favorite

or which one of these you're going to try.

And if you found this video helpful,

make sure you hit subscribe and like this video

so you can catch all the future tips and tricks

for your cardio training.

And otherwise, I'll catch you guys on the next one.

Thanks for being here.

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