How to Build Endurance Through Conditioning

No matter what type of athlete you are, conditioning training can improve your performance. But what exactly is conditioning training?

“It's really an aspect of training that improves the athlete's overall cardiovascular performance,” says Robin Amylon, MS, a strength and conditioning specialist who works at the Mass General Brigham Center for Sports Performance and Research.

She and Mass General Brigham strength and conditioning specialist Kaitlyn Buckwell, MS, explain how optimizing the function of the heart, lungs, and other key components in the body can help you run faster, farther, and recover more quickly.

How do conditioning exercises improve endurance?

When you perform a physical activity such as running or sprinting, your body uses the energy stored within its cells to move your muscles. As this energy source runs out, you feel fatigued, slower, or even weaker.

Conditioning training builds endurance by improving how your body uses its energy sources. It does this by optimizing key components, such as:

• ATP: ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, is your cells’ main source of energy. With conditioning, how your body uses ATP becomes more efficient.
• Heart rate: Conditioning training strengthens heart muscle, making it pump more efficiently. This results in a lowered resting heart rate.
• Lactic threshold: This is the maximum amount of lactate (a chemical produced when your cells use energy) that your body can withstand before it feels fatigue. By increasing this threshold, you increase the amount of time you can do a physical activity.
• Oxygen flow: In addition to the improvements in blood flow, your diaphragm and muscles within your lungs become stronger, your breathing rate decreases, and you can take in more oxygen with each breath.

These changes are made through different types of conditioning exercises, categorized as either aerobic or anaerobic.

Aerobic vs anaerobic exercises: What’s the difference?

“The simplest difference is that with aerobic exercise, you're using oxygen, and with anaerobic exercise, you're without oxygen. And what determines that is the duration and intensity,” says Amylon.

With lower intensity exercises, your body has more oxygen readily available, and your cells have the time to create the energy they need. This means you can do these aerobic exercises for longer periods of time, such as 20 to 30 minutes. Common aerobic exercises include activities like cycling, rowing, running, and swimming.

Higher intensity exercises, such as high-intensity interval training and intermittent sprinting, use up your energy stores quickly. Most people are only able to maintain the activity for shorter periods of time, usually anywhere from 10 seconds to three minutes.

The type of conditioning training that will benefit you the most depends on what sport you play. For instance, aerobic exercises help long-distance runners build their endurance by increasing lactic threshold, improving aerobic capacity, and increasing oxygen flow. Athletes who participate in short bursts of activity (such as in basketball, hockey, and football) will benefit more from anaerobic exercises.

Tips for incorporating conditioning exercises into your routine

For those athletes interested in starting a conditioning workout regimen, Amylon and Buckwell have some helpful tips and tricks to help you avoid injury, excessive soreness, and burnout.

Safety

Before you get started, check with your physician to make sure you can safely do these activities. Some medical conditions, such as heart issues, may make it unsafe for you to do conditioning training, or may require you to only do a lower intensity workout.

Beginners may also want to work with a certified trainer to learn how to do certain exercises correctly (like circuit training) to avoid injury.

Progression

In order to keep making progress in your endurance, you need to periodically increase your conditioning exercises.

“Duration is the easiest and safest way to increase intensity,” says Buckwell. “Our more experienced athletes can manipulate a few other variables. So, instead of just duration, you can manipulate the rest periods.”

This should be done slowly in small increments. For instance, adding five minutes to the duration of an exercise, or reducing a rest period by 10 seconds.

Timing

When to add conditioning training to your existing workout routine depends on the type of conditioning you want to do. Generally, any aerobic training should be completed after a strength training workout, or on a separate day, to get the most benefit out of each session. Anaerobic training should be done on a separate day.

“Every session doesn't have to end with you in fatigue in order to get the results that you want,” says Buckwell.