The training and improvement of endurance events is a systematic project. When it comes to endurance training such as long-distance running, we can find various training items and plans online. Many people have asked me what kind of training plan I use, but I don't want to talk about any specific training methods here. I want to talk about the macro theory summarized by Dr. Phil Mafeton based on my reading experience and personal experience. Understanding endurance training from a more systematic and strategic perspective can lead to a more suitable, scientific and healthy lifestyle and training method.

1. Health and Fitness

Health and fitness are two different concepts. We usually run or do physical exercise, but health doesn't necessarily follow. Improper training and competition will bring psychological and physical stress and injury. In recent years, the sudden death of marathon runners has also occurred from time to time. Many people exercise by running, although their grades have improved, but the price they pay is constant injury and declining health level. Through scientific training, we hope to get healthy while exercising.

2. Aerobic function and fat burning

Aerobic function is the basis of endurance events. We can divide muscle fibers into aerobic and anaerobic types, which coexist in muscles. The former is mobilized during aerobic exercise and the latter is responsible for anaerobic exercise. The former mainly uses fat as energy, while the latter mainly uses sugar as energy. Although sugar is the most direct energy source of human body, the stored sugar can only maintain anaerobic exercise for about 5 minutes. On the contrary, even thin people have enough fat reserves to meet the needs of aerobic exercise for more than ten hours. This is why long-term exercise is aerobic exercise, and aerobic exercise can lose weight. Aerobic and anaerobic exercises are often carried out at the same time in different proportions (for example, 80% aerobic, 20% anaerobic, 70% aerobic and 30% anaerobic). If the proportion of anaerobic exercise is too high, the limited sugar in the body will be consumed too fast. When the sugar is exhausted, the human body will not be able to continue exercising (even aerobic exercise needs a small amount of sugar). In order to exercise for a longer time, we need to increase the proportion of oxygen (or burn fat) during exercise; In order to improve the performance of aerobic exercise, we need to improve the efficiency of burning fat. Therefore, the training of endurance events is mainly aerobic training, or the ability to use fat.

Heart rate is the most direct indicator of the proportion of continuous aerobic exercise, which is marked on treadmills in many key rooms. For example, more than 80% of the heart rate means anaerobic, and 60%-80% means aerobic. Simply put, the higher the heart rate during exercise, the closer it is to the maximum heart rate, and the higher the proportion of anaerobic exercise, and vice versa. Therefore, heart rate is an important indicator to guide our training, which will be introduced in detail below. At the same time, excessive exercise with high heart rate is harmful to health, which needs to be avoided in competition and training, and can be achieved through long-term aerobic training.

3. Brain and hormones

Endurance exercise is obviously not only an activity involving muscles and cardiopulmonary circulatory system, but also a complex process in which all systems work together. Like other human activities, the brain plays a central role in the exercise process. The brain directly controls the movement of muscles through the nervous system. Balance and natural exercise play a vital role in preventing injury, which is basically determined by the brain. Long-term correct training will make the brain remember the correct exercise pattern, thus improving performance and preventing injury.

At the same time, the endocrine system of Eriocheir sinensis secretes various hormones through neural feedback. Adrenal hormone (cortisol) and insulin are two hormones most directly related to aerobic exercise. Cortisol can play an exciting role, which can raise blood sugar, speed up the heartbeat and promote fat burning. On the contrary, insulin plays a role in decomposing blood sugar and calming down. In aerobic exercise, we need a proper amount of cortisol, and we need to inhibit the secretion of insulin.

Step 4 prescribe diet

Our daily diet is full of various fine carbohydrates, such as rice, flour and sugar. In the tens of thousands of years of human evolution, even thousands of years of civilization, these fine carbohydrates have never been the main body of our diet. Only under the background of the great development of agriculture and industry in the past one or two hundred years, the diet structure of human beings has changed greatly. However, excessive intake of fine carbohydrates, whether for health or aerobic exercise, is counterproductive.

We usually think that carbohydrates can provide us with energy and can play an exciting role. Indeed, after eating fine carbohydrate foods, blood sugar in the human body will rise rapidly in a short time. However, this phenomenon will stimulate the secretion of insulin, make the sugar in the blood decompose rapidly, and calm the nervous system. This is why people often feel tired and sleepy after a short excitement after a meal. Therefore, a careful carbohydrate diet will inhibit aerobic exercise and fat burning, resulting in a series of negative physical reactions. In fact, many people will have bad symptoms as long as they eat a small amount of fine carbohydrate food. This phenomenon is called carbohydrate intolerance.

Excessive intake of fine carbohydrate food will not only affect fat burning, but also cause addiction symptoms in the human body. Studies have shown that the brain has an addictive reaction to carbohydrates similar to various drugs. This creates a vicious circle. The more you eat fine carbohydrate food, the more tired you get, and the more you want to eat it.

In order to avoid the above hazards, we should reduce the proportion of fine carbohydrates in our daily diet and increase the intake of fat, protein and various vitamins that aerobic exercise needs more. Usually you can eat more meat and vegetables for dinner, and all kinds of nuts and boiled eggs are very healthy and beneficial snacks.

In fact, carbohydrates are widely found in all kinds of foods. Even if we don't eat fine carbohydrates, we can get enough carbohydrates from other foods. When carbohydrates are ingested together with a large number of other nutrients (such as coarse grains), blood sugar in the body will not rise rapidly during digestion, so the insulin level will not be too high. The glycemic index (GI) of food is the effect of constant food on the increase of blood sugar. Fine carbohydrate foods have high GI, which we should avoid. And low GI food should be the main body of our diet. It's easy to find food on the Internet. You may want to check your stomach and intestines before making healthy recipes. In order to maintain a stable blood sugar level, it is a good strategy to eat less and eat more. On the contrary, it is harmful to supplement a lot of fine carbohydrates in dinner.

In a word, a diet rich in fat and protein, various vitamins, but not fine carbohydrates is very beneficial to aerobic exercise and health.

5. Trained

Hormone levels are also closely related to overtraining. Overtraining, especially too much anaerobic training, will lead to overtraining. It is not difficult to understand that overtraining can easily cause injuries, but the more critical issue is the influence of overtraining on hormone levels.

Simply put, excessive anaerobic training, as well as the stress caused by excessive training, will make the adrenal gland overexcited and cortisol secretion disorder. Cortisol will remain at a high level in the initial overtraining stage, giving people an illusion of excitement and "good state". However, high cortisol will reduce human immunity and affect bone metabolism, thus making people more vulnerable to injury. At the same time, because cortisol raises blood sugar, insulin secretion will also be stimulated. High insulin will make people more prone to fatigue, and make people have symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance and fall into a vicious circle of carbohydrate addiction. After long-term adrenal hyperactivity, the secretion of cortisol will eventually decrease, which will make overtraining enter a more irreversible stage. Many people will think that this is a "state decline", but it is actually a manifestation of hormone disorder after training in the middle and late stages.

Hormone disorder caused by training will lead to decreased competitive level, increased injury, mental tension and depression. Obviously, at this time, we have entered a situation of "fitness but unhealthy" and must avoid it. In order to prevent and correct overtraining, reduce or completely eliminate anaerobic training, it is very important to supplement it with a correct diet.

6. Equipment and injuries

As mentioned earlier, the brain is the core of exercise. The brain not only controls the secretion of hormones, but also directly controls muscles to drive bone movements. Besides hormone level disorder, improper muscle exercise is the main cause of sports injury.

Muscle weakness is the root cause of most injuries. Muscle imbalance can lead to partial muscle weakness. For example, when running, because of the problem of shoes or equipment, the left and right movements are unbalanced, and the muscles on one side are excessively tense, and the muscles on the other side will be weak, so the protective effect of the muscles on the bones and joints on the weak side will be reduced. Correct and balanced movements, on the one hand, need long-term aerobic exercise to strengthen and remember the brain and nerves (on the contrary, excessive anaerobic exercise is easy to cause muscle movement imbalance), on the other hand, it also needs appropriate equipment.

In addition to shoes of the right size, contrary to what we usually think, over-protected and cushioned shoes can also cause injuries by causing muscle weakness. Muscle is the natural buffer of human joints and bones, and any external buffer is not as effective as the human body's own buffer. Why does the "extra" cushioning of shoes induce injury instead? This is a series of complex processes through neural feedback. Excessive cushioning of shoes will reduce the external impact on muscles, and through neural feedback, the brain will reduce the intensity of muscle contraction to adapt to this "reduced" impact. In the long run, muscles will be weak. Obviously, when the human body's own buffering mechanism is weakened and the external buffering is stronger, the probability of injury will also increase. On the other hand, when wearing platform shoes, the actual stress area of the sole of the foot will actually decrease (as can be seen by comparing the footprints when barefoot with those of the insole or worn parts), so that the pressure on the stressed parts of the sole will be greater, and people will be more likely to be injured under the premise of weak muscles.

This is why many independent studies have come to a similar conclusion in recent years: barefoot or wearing relatively flat shoes with less cushioning is the best way to prevent injuries. For our daily shoes, light shoes are more worth buying. Another related parameter is the heel-to-toe drop. Nowadays, in order to increase cushioning, many shoes pad their heels very high. In addition to excessive cushioning, this will actually lead to uneven movements, and the stress area on the soles of the feet is too small (the extreme of this situation is the high heels worn by women), so the height difference between the front and rear will increase the probability of injury. Light shoes and competition shoes usually have a small height difference (less than 8mm, also called flat shoes). Although it looks like a "buffer", it is actually to prevent injury. By wearing more natural and light running shoes, correct neural feedback will make the brain and muscles train correct movements and increase muscle strength, so the injury will be alleviated and prevented.

Of course, running barefoot or wearing five-toed shoes is the healthiest in theory, but because of wearing shoes for a long time, most people need to take time to adapt to barefoot step by step. Coupled with the high price of five-toed shoes, light flat running shoes with good quality and low price are my recommended equipment. Many injuries can be corrected and prevented without wearing expensive high-grade running shoes.

7. Correct training concept

Finally, let's get down to business. Talk about training. In fact, relative to the above points, the specific training methods are not so important. Phil Mafeton's theory mainly emphasizes a healthy lifestyle, and fitness and health coexist. There is only one method of direct correlation training in the whole theory, which is the so-called "180 formula".

As mentioned earlier, the heart rate reflects whether the exercise is in aerobic or anaerobic range. The common algorithm is to use the percentage of the maximum heart rate to determine this interval, and the empirical formula of the maximum heart rate is "220- age". However, this "220 formula" is very inaccurate. Experiments show that only one third of people's highest heart rate conforms to the 220 formula. In order to determine the heart rate of aerobic training, we don't actually need to know the maximum heart rate. Phil Maffeton put forward a more general formula "180" through years of experience to determine the maximum aerobic exercise heart rate, which can be used to guide us in endurance training. The specific calculation method of this heart rate is:

(1) 180- age;

(2) If the patient suffers from a disease or is in the recovery period of the disease, decrease10;

(3) Decrease the injury performance, or catch a cold more than twice a year, or have no continuous training, minus 5;

(4) For those who have been trained for more than 2 years, have no major injuries, and their performance has been improving, add 5 points.

The heart rate calculated in this way is called the maximum aerobic function heart rate (MAF), which is an important guide for training. MAF heart rate is the heart rate at which aerobic function can be fully exerted and exercised. If the heart rate exceeds the MAF heart rate, the proportion of aerobic function will decrease, while the proportion of anaerobic function will increase and prevail. Therefore, the heart rate of MAF should be the upper limit of our daily aerobic training, and the speed at the heart rate of MAF represents the ability of aerobic exercise. If you train beyond the MAF heart rate for a long time, you are in danger of overtraining. Aerobic exercise with a heart rate of 1 hour or less is very effective in improving aerobic function, which can be verified by regular MAF tests.

The MAF test is actually very simple, that is, running a distance (usually 8 kilometers) at the MAF heart rate and recording the time. It is easy to see the improvement of aerobic capacity by conducting MAF test every other month. For example, I conducted three MAF tests from September to June165438+1October, and ran 8 kilometers on the track and field with a MAF heart rate of 155 each time. The results are as follows:

Miles 1 mile 2 miles 3 miles 4

Mile 5

September13 7: 02 7:18 7: 23 7: 32 7: 34

65438+ 10/16: 49 7: 05 7: 00 7: 06

7: 10

165438+1October 216: 28 6: 416: 48 6: 52 6: 57

This is obviously related to the improvement of my grades.

Even for short-distance events, such as 5 kilometers, the results of MAF test are related to the results. Phil compared the results of 1 mile pace and 5 km pace in the MAF test:

MAF 1 mile 5 km race time

10:00 23: 18

9:00 2 1:45

8:30 20:58

8:00 20: 12

7:30 18:38

7:00 17:05

6:30 16: 19

6:00 15:32

5:45 14:45

5:30 13:59

5: 15 13:28

5:00 13: 12

Why only use aerobic heart rate training in MAF instead of anaerobic training?

Will pace speed up short-distance projects at the same time? First of all, MAF's heart rate will naturally accelerate. At a higher heart rate, a rising tide lifts all boats, and the speed will also increase. In principle, the improvement of aerobic capacity and fat burning efficiency will improve the overall speed endurance. After all, except for events like 100 m and 400 m, we are not doing 100% anaerobic exercise, and aerobic function always accounts for a large proportion.

Of course, anaerobic function can also exercise occasionally, but it is not advisable to run at high heart rate every time, at most once or twice a week, especially to prevent overtraining. In fact, it is enough to stimulate anaerobic function once or twice a month, and even no anaerobic training is needed.

In addition, Phil's philosophy is "training = exercise+rest". Adequate rest is also part of training. If the pressure of work and study is too great, it is necessary to reduce exercise appropriately and ensure adequate rest. Too much anaerobic training and great competition and work pressure will lead to insufficient rest and recovery, resulting in overtraining. The correct training concept is not a short-term high stimulus of "no pains, no gains", but a long-term strategy of sustainable development.

This is the macro picture of endurance training. I don't agree that others call this method "aerobic training" or "low heart rate training". Obviously, this is a healthy lifestyle and there is no specific training plan. In this way, in a few months, my running performance has been greatly improved, and I feel healthier and more energetic. I hope you can also get a healthier body by developing good diet and training methods. Note: This article is transferred from Ryanflower Runner of SMTH community's Runninglife page. Some of them seem non-mainstream (such as high-fat and high-protein diet), while others are becoming mainstream (such as barefoot running).