The Blue and Green Zones
These are two zones that you won’t be too familiar with as they aren’t given too much attention to unless you feel like you aren’t working “hard enough”.
Typically (obviously depending on the individual) you will see this colour if you are working within 60-75% of your maximum heart rate.
Cool.
What does that mean though?
So when you are working in this zone, you are working predominantly aerobically. So you will be using your AEROBIC SYSTEM.
This is your baseline energy system for everything. I like the term for it to be known as your “SUSTAIN” system.
This system is the primary source of ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) at rest and during low-intensity activities. So, this is the energy system powering you during your grey, blue and green zones.
How do you improve this zone?
The time domain of this system varies depending on the intent but, a common example would be a 60-minute row or long-distance running. Any activity over 2 minutes really, but done at a low intensity. So spin doesn’t count.
This is the zone you want to develop if you have entered into any long distance races or 10k races for example as this is the zone that will be powering you for that event, and sets the basis for the other energy systems to work from and how well you recover!
Remember, I will go into more detail on energy systems after this series to explain this in more detail!
Jack Coxall