Michael Boyle's Strengthcoach.com Blog

There has been lots of talk about metabolic conditioning for both fitness and fat loss. In the past I have posted these workouts under the heading Real Life Intervals. It’s funny because certain groups think they have cornered the market on hard work. In my mind, the best work device in the world is the Schwinn Airdyne. Between Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning and Boston University Hockey we own about 28 Airdynes. I know, they need a little maintenance but they are worth it. This is a workout done on what we refer to as “the big fan” Airdyne with the large front fan.

FYI, the work intervals are prescribed by distance, this way no one can dog it. If you use time you need to watch people. If you use distance, they either ride harder or longer. In this case the work interval was 1/2 mi.

Rest is based on heartrate. This means that we wait for the heartrate to drop to about 60%. There is no magic to 60% but it works. For my BU athletes we use 65% as that seems to be their recovery heartrate on the bench.  In either case the entire workout stays in the theoretical aerobic range.

We now have our Polar Team System on a big screen TV so there is no hiding.

Time       Heartrate        Rest

Interval 1  .5 mi       1:25         150                   :60

Interval 2 . 5 mi      1:20        160                 1:20

Interval 3  . 5 mi     1:20        166                  1:25

Interval 4  .5 mi     1:20         168                 2:00

Interval 5  .5 mi     1:20        170                 2:00

Interval 6  .5 mi    1:20        177

I think the key measure of fitness is recovery. How fast does your heartrate go down. We train for a combination of work consistency and recovery. Try it.