Building A Strong Foundation: Aerobic Base

 I was recently reading a book on personal financing (yes this is how I spend my morning) and it talked about laying down a strong financial foundation. This would consist of 3 to 6 months worth of emergency money. This would give you something to fall back on during often unplanned emergencies, such as: loss of job, car break downs, or, I don’t know, a lighting bolt strikes a tree and causes the tree to crash through your house. Oh, and did I mention that said tree is now on fire and so is your house (O.K. a little extreme).

The point is this, emergency money gives you something to fall back on during hard times and you cannot become debit free and wealthy without this financial foundation being laid first.

I am not a financial expert, but the idea of a strong foundation directly applies to strength and condition. If you build the house before the foundation is laid you are setting yourself up for a collapse.

When you were born, you did not come out sprinting, well maybe Usain Bolt did. You first had to learn to crawl, then to stand and walk, followed by running, and then finally sprinting. There is no other way to go about it.  Progress to fast and you will wind up on your face or hitting your head on some piece of furniture. And we all know how that ends, you crying for your mommy.

 

Aerobic Base

Your aerobic base is what everything else is going to build off of. Without this base you should not be progressing on to sprints and HIIT training.

Your base is constructed from longer duration aerobic training. This is the, oh so fun long distance running. Being able to run for at least 15min will give you a place to start.

With a higher aerobic capacity you are able to lift longer without becoming winded. Your body becomes more efficient at pumping blood to the body and your oxygen carrying capacity increases. Your body as a whole becomes more efficient and more prepared to do work.

 

How to Get Your Base

There is no exiting way to go about this, unless you love repetitive motion. My two favorite ways to increase my aerobic capacity are to go hiking or biking. You can also go for a jog or hop on a rowing machine or even an aerodyne bike.

Start off at a moderate intensity, one in which you can still talk. Go for 15 minutes. Do this 3 times a week for a week, and then bump your time up to 20 minutes. Do 20 minutes for a week and then go up again, all the while keeping your intensity the same. Work your way up to 30 minutes.

Once you get to 30 minutes start back at 15 minutes and then increase your intensity.

 

Moving On to Bigger Things

 Now that we have a foundation we can start building. The next step is sprinting. There are some groups of people I don’t really want sprinting. This is your older population. This is due to the increased risk in Achilles’ injuries as one ages. If you don’t need to sprint for your job then don’t, but if you just love to sprint then go for it. Just know there is a risk.

Now I am not going to go into great detail on how to progress your sprints because Eric Cressey wrote a great article awhile back on how to get started sprinting. You can read it here.

The general gist of it is this. Gain mobility, start sprinting up hills first, this will decrease impact on your knees, don’t sprint at 100% starting off, sprint on grass or anything that is not pavement.

 

Let The Fun Begin

We can now run long distances, sprint at high speeds. All that’s left is for you to sign yourself up for the running of the bulls and put your skills to the test.

With an aerobic base in place we have now set a strong footing to build off of. So from here we can do higher intensity training and it will even help when it comes to lifting some weight.

Next week I’ll look at building your base for strength.

 

Best

Josh Williams