Pacing Technique

One of the things I picked up from the Outlaw seminar that I went to early in the month was how to measure someone’s aerobic capacity. Sounds cool, right?

Let’s start with what aerobic capacity is. It doesn’t measure how good you look in tights, a headband, leg warmers and wrist bands. It does measure how much work you can do without blowing yourself out. Aerobic refers to work capacity using oxygen. Thus, aerobic capacity means how much work someone can do on oxygen alone.

Let’s move on then to anaerobic capacity. Anaerobic refers to work where you are dipping into stored energy. Because you are using a limited source of energy, anaerobic capacity comes quickly to an end and you MUST stop to rest.

So back to HOW to measure this. For most of us, if we keep our heart rate under 155, we are in the aerobic zone. If we go over that, we enter anaerobic territory. So the test involved doing burpees and measuring your heart rate. You do burpees for 2 minutes then rest for 30 seconds. During those 30 seconds, you take 5 seconds to measure your pulse. If you get about 12 or 13 beats in those 5 seconds, you are right at the edge of your aerobic capacity. If you get higher, you are starting to redline.

Now this won’t work for everyone, because some folks have an unusually low heart rate but the basic idea is sound. At the seminar, they said if you can do 130 burpees in 4 sets AND maintain an average of 12 or 13 heart beats in5 seconds than you have a rocking aerobic capacity.

Battle of Shanghai
Part 1: Barbell Technique
Every 90 seconds for 9 minutes
5 jerks
Part 2: Aerobic capacity
4 rounds for pacing
2 minutes burpees
30 seconds rest
Part 3: Anaerobic capacity
Row 500m as fast as possible

Forgot to take a whiteboard picture so make up some good numbers.