Last week I spoke to the aerobic system and its importance. While I’m prepared to argue it’s the most important, I cannot neglect the other pathways. I will just give them less overall time. This is actually easy to do since the intensity here is higher, meaning we cannot hold it as long.

Glycolytic Pathway

Anything more than a :10 sprint but less than a 5k is typically glycolytic. I stated last week, anything over 2 minutes becomes aerobic. While that is somewhat true, the physiology gets a little strange. There are huge differences in your fitness ability and how long you can maintain.

I consider the ability to sprint or do a maximal lift as power. I consider the ability to move for long distances or time domains as your engine. That means glycolytic is your fitness, and I’m a pretty big fan of fitness. We want to have the ability to dig deep and get through a station (think the bike in DEKA) then use our aerobic system to get back to normal.

It’s a Trap

The last thing to mention here is fooling yourself and in the words of Richard Feynman “you are the easiest person to fool”. Any textbook or knowledgeable coach will explain that to increase your fitness the best method is aerobic training. However, aerobic training takes a long time and is hard to fit in to our schedules. So CrossFit came out with this method of training very intensely. Basically seeing if you could do 40 minutes of work in 20 minutes. This has huge benefits but is a dead-end trail if we hope to compete in anything longer than 20 minutes. One of the biggest concerns I have is what happens to the body after weeks and months of high intensity training 5 times a week. It begins to take a toll and you can see it in the mirror. A good aerobic day or two really breaks this up and allows your body to recover.

More to come, stay tuned!

Check out our group training program to learn more how we incorporate the glycolytic pathway https://dissent.fit/group-training/