Training: Progressively Accelerating Cardio Exertion

As winter tightens its grip on the Midwest, it's getting hard to work up the gumption to go outside in the dark and the cold and the wind for a walk. And yet I seem to need something in addition to the band work and the stretching and chi kung, something to rev me up and pump me up without putting too much wear and tear on the 50+ year old connective tissue in knees and feet.

I know just how this guy feels.

So for now, I'm trying a concept called "P.A.C.E." to get some heavy breathing in without invoking the specter of repetitive stress injury (and to avoid the muscle loss and cortisol rise and appetite/workout treadmill associated with traditional steady state cardio.)

PACE resembles interval training...except that rest intervals are "as long as it takes to feel fully recovered." Initially, I thought this mean "until heart rate drops back to normal", but rereading Art Sears' book revealed that you just wait until you "feel" recovered - i.e.,you are breathing fairly normally.

Sears makes a good case for this kind of training, although there's a lot of rhetorical handwaving and some not-entirely-convincing metaphors and similes scattered throughout the book. His central principle is that your lung capacity is your most important indicator to your health and vitality, and that the classic "aerobic fat burning zone" is actually not a place you want to spend a lot of time in. Instead, he advocates working hard enough to become really breathless for short periods (45 seconds to 3 minute), and then taking as much time as you need to recover between the work periods. You might do as few as 4 work periods or as many as 6-8, but you shouldn't total more that 12-20 minutes total work time.

If the bell curve mated with a Slinky, the result would look something like this.

Sears says that the positive changes you want to make actually happen during the recovery periods.

Again, this is similar to Tabata protocol or classic interval training, but the emphasis is on health, not performance. You wouldn't do PACE to prepare for athletic competition (although you still might do well), especially for a long distance race - for any race over a couple of miles, a person needs to lay down a base. But if all you want is to increase your "reserves" to better face the challenges of everyday living - it's hard to see how you could do better than this protocol.

I chose the Precor Ellipticals at my health club, because they allow for a "quick start" manual program that allows you to get on, quickly set resistance and slope, go like hell for a few minutes, grab the handles for a pulse check (and I do my intervals without hanging onto the rails, which makes it MUCH tougher), stop, and get off and walk around until breathing is "normal".  I also stay away from peak usage times so as not to inconvenience other people who want to use the elliptical trainers- with 8 machines available, leaving my towel on one at 8:30 at night doesn't cause a problem. In the spring when things get a little nicer, I'll probably choose a nice grassy hill to run up in Memorial park.

2 weeks in, things are going pretty well. 6x3 minute intervals or 8x2 minute intervals take about 35-40 minutes, and I feel fresher and recharged at the end of the session (I do get some questioning looks from neighboring machine users when I seem to "bail" after 3 minutes, only to come back.)  As I said, I don't hang onto the hand rails on these babies, so it really is a challenge. The machine gives me good feedback as to what my heartrate reaches, so I know if I really am recovered before I start again, or at peak capacity by the end of the interval (usually I'm in the high 150's by the last couple of intervals). I once worked myself into a mild case of planar fascitiis in my late 30s going too far too soon on elliptical trainers, but so far my arches and calves are still happy.

Time to start actually measuring BF% and doing some blood chemistry workups, I think. It would be nice to get some concrete feedback on any positive (or negative) changes occuring as I try various ideas out.