You should train 80 percent of your endurance in the aerobic range. This is the current scientific knowledge, which is based on the 80:20 rule.
The focus is on high arcumes, i.e. long distances with low intensity.
For the remaining 20 percent, experts recommend short, intensive workouts: anaerobic training.
What does anaerobic mean?
Anaerobic describes a process of energy generation in which nutrients are burned without the use of oxygen.
If the body needs a lot of energy quickly and during intensive training, the body’s own oxygen is no longer sufficient.
It goes to the carbohydrates, from which your body – unlike fats – can obtain energy even without oxygen. They are present in the liver and muscles as glycogen and in the blood as glucose.
The advantage that carbohydrates provide you with energy quickly is offset by a major disadvantage: the degradation products lactate and protons are created.
The accumulation of protons leads to an overacidification of the muscle and subsequently to a drop in performance. So it is not the lactate that is “evil”.
The burning pain during the final sprint or the last repetition is a protective mechanism of the body. It makes you reduce the intensity or end the load. This should protect the muscle from excessive damage.
What is the anaerobic threshold?
Every endurance athlete deals sooner or later with his anaerobic threshold. It stands for the intensity at which the body can no longer compensate for the increasing lactate production.
If you continue to train with the same load, the lactate level rises until you have to stop your training or minimize the intensity. The reason: The body lacks oxygen.
The better you are trained, the further your anaerobic threshold shifts into higher load ranges. Your body can tolerate higher intensities and, for example, run faster or lift heavier weights.
Why is anaerobic training important?
You believe that aerobic training alone is enough to get better in the long run? Far from it!
According to Ulrik Wisløf, a Norwegian professor of physiology, training at high levels would have no or only minimal effect on increasing your endurance. He believes that you should instead “hang out with your friends”.
Hard words and only applicable to competitive athletes? Maybe! The fact is that very high scopes entail long regeneration times. If you already have good basic endurance, anaerobic training is essential to further improve your endurance, because:
For a steady increase in performance, the body always needs new stimuli.
Which sports are anaerobic?
In order for us to be supplied with energy during training, our body always uses both systems: aerobic and anaerobic. The more intense a load, the more oxygen the body lacks for aerobic energy production. As a result, the anaerobic component increases.
By the way: In an already very intense 400-meter run, aerobic and anaerobic proportions are almost the same.
So pretty much any sport can be trained anaerobically – the intensity just has to be correspondingly high.