How To Run Faster At A Lower Heart Rate transcript

You might have seen influencers everywhere talking about low heart rate training, like staying in zone 2 is going to be the only way that you can improve as a runner. But as a sport nutritionist, I've seen a lot of people get this wrong, particularly with how it's linked with train low, which I'm going to explain in a second. So, if you've been practicing some low heart rate training, great. However, I want to help you get the most out of that training so that actually you can run less and get a bigger stimulus from each of those runs so you can adapt and run faster.

I'm also going to help you learn how to implement this strategy appropriately so that you reduce your risk of getting ill through the winter months and can actually recover effectively as well. To kick things off, I want to explain why low heart rate training actually works. And to do that, I'm going to use a bit of an analogy. So, if you can imagine you're a car. If we want that car to go faster, we've got three ways that we can do that.

We're going to put a bigger engine in the car. Now, from a running perspective, this is like you having a bigger V2 max. If you've got a car with a bigger engine, it's more likely that you can drive it faster. Also, we want to have an ability to hold some high revs. So, holding high revs without actually blowing up. If you then combining a big engine with an ability to hold high revs, effectively, you're going to be able to hold that pace for longer before blowing up.

From a running perspective, holding high revs is having your high lactate threshold. The third thing that we can do is be fuel efficient. From a car, that's like having good aerodynamics. It's so that the car cuts through the air quickly and requires less petrol compared with how hard it's working. But from a running perspective, that's like running with good form. It's like using the fascia and having good bounce, getting free energy return so that you're not having to put so much effort in to actually get the same pace.

If we combine all of those three things, then you're going to be a fantastic runner. However, it's difficult to work on them all at the same time. So if we want to start in say the preparation phase, so if you're building towards a longer distance run, a half marathon or marathon even further, then we want to go through a bit of preparation where you're building your volume. That would be a good phase to implement the engine building section.

Engine building, we want to think about building V2 max. A fantastic way to do that is some low heart rate training. Why does it actually work? Well, low heart rate training is going to increase your body's ability to grow mitochondria and actually increase our mitochondria size. So mitochondria are the little cells in our body that actually produce adenazine triphosphate, which is our energy currency. So if we've got more of those cells that can produce energy, hey, our engine is going to get bigger.

Then when you start building in your lactate threshold sessions and tempo and speed work, that's going to be training your body's ability to hold the revs. However, in this video, we're only going to be talking about nutrition around train low. And by the end of it, if you're able to stay with me, I'm going to teach you how to implement it so that you can actually enjoy all of that running. So, where does nutrition fit into all of this?

Well, as an example, if you're doing some runs where you're saying, I'm going to keep my heart rate at between 100 or 120, maybe below 130, that's a good start. However, what you're eating in the hours leading up to that, or even the day before, during, and then after, is going to change how your body perceives that session. So, if we're trying to do a specific thing within the session, aka build your engine, we kind of want to eat specifically around it to actually get the most from it.

This is where train low could be used effectively. So, what is train low? When we're talking about train low, we're talking about carbohydrate availability. Now, a lot of people do this accidentally. And this is where I want you to be very mindful. If you have a busy day, if you're working and then going up and down steps and then you're quite stressed, all of those things could be dipping into your petrol tank. And if you've seen any of my other videos, you'll know how I talk about your petrol tank sort of simultaneously with your muscle glycogen stores.

So your petrol tank is something that's going to be giving you fuel for high intensity. Because train low is lower intensity, you're going to have less requirement to have as full a petrol tank. People then think, right, I don't need to eat that much and then go into it and then struggle. What I want you to do is actually periodize your carbohydrate so that you know you're going to be going into your sessions in a fairly low carbohydrate state.

If you know that, then when you get 10, 15, 20 minutes in, half an hour, 40 minutes in, depending on the length of your run and how much carbohydrate you had before, when you get to that point where you're thinking, "Oh, this really feels hard now, it's not a shock because actually that's what you're trying to do." But I don't want you to go into a session and for that to randomly happen 20, 30 minutes in. We want to actually plan for this so that we're going to get the most time exposed to training in a low state.

Why would we want to do that? If you train low, so if you're doing some low heart rate stuff and you're training without carbohydrate available, effectively your body's working a lot harder. You're getting a bigger stick signal, there's more stress in the system. If you're getting a bigger signal, your body's having to work harder and therefore adapt quicker. So the science shows that you're going to get more mitochondrial biogenesis, which is body's ability to grow new mitochondria and have bigger mitochondria.

So, and we're also going to train your body's ability to burn fat as fuel, which will make you more metabolically flexible. So then if you get to a point where you're cruising downhill, you're just holding pace, you're chatting in your run, your body's thinking, okay, the intensity's come down a bit, I can actually lean into my fat stores a bit more now. Why is that good? Cuz it's going to preserve your carbohydrate stores.

So then where the intensity picks back up again, you haven't used those and you can push harder. So this metabolic flexibility is going to really help you as a runner. This is how we're going to train it. We're going to do specific train low around one session a week or one session every other week. I don't want you to do too much train low. Why? because it's risky. Because [clears throat] we want to try and reduce the amount of time that you are low because when you're low, again, low muscle glycogen, your body is in a stressful state.

We don't want you in a stressful state because that's when we're going to risk you getting ill. It's going to risk picking up injuries. So, if we're going to look to do this, we want to do it properly, which I'm going to help you with when we get to the practical application. Now, in some of my videos, I talk a lot about fueling and refueling. And this is really to try and make sure you're going into each of your sessions with a topped up tank.

But if we're going to do some strategic low heart rate training in a low state, we're actually doing the opposite. We're trying to intentionally deplete our petrol tank and then we're going to sleep low and then we're going to go into our session without having refueled so that you're starting low. Then you're going to have the maximum amount of time for your body to ah how are we going to get over this? We're going to have to learn how to burn fat and we're going to have to get more efficient at it.

That's also going to drive a bigger stimulus. So, let me pivot you around here a little bit so you can see more of my whiteboard. So, how do we practically apply this? If you're doing a low heart rate session, really, you want to be spending a bit of time in that. So, doing one of your longer runs, which is an easy run, is probably going to be the best time to do that. Most people tend to do that on a weekend. So if you're doing this on a Saturday for example, then what I'm going to suggest you do is you move one of your more intense sessions, speed session, your blacktake threshold session, a CrossFit session or high rock session that you like to do on the side.

Do one of those Friday afternoon or Friday evening. So if we say this is Friday and then we've got Saturday, you go through the day. So we're going to have breakfast, going to have lunch, going to have dinner. I want you to train here. Not sure why I put arrows there, but this is train. What this needs to be is high heart rate. Cuz remember, the higher the heart rate, the faster your body is going to deplete its petrol tank.

So, you're going to have carbs at breakfast. You're going to have carbs at lunch. You're going to have some carbs at dinner. The reason for that is we want you to feel good in this session. We want you to get the high quality session out of it. So, we want you to go into that with fairly high petrol tank. Afterwards, I don't want you to have any carbs after. This is where people often go wrong is that they often just emit everything.

No, I want you to have no carbs, but I want you to have protein. Yes, protein and fat. So, good ideas here are something like a big portion of oily fish, one, two darns of salmon, and get a load of veggies in there, too. So, you've got high protein, high fat, you've got a lot of fiber as well to fill the plate up. Other good ones are things like omelets cuz you can have lots of eggs, you've got protein, you've got fat, and then you can throw loads of veggies in as well.

This shouldn't be a low calorie meal. So, we are emitting a key macronutrient carbohydrate, but I don't want you to feel hungry afterwards. We're not using this as a time to restrict total calories. So, if you'd normally have, say, 6 7 8 900 calories in this meal, we're looking to hit the same amount, but we're just changing the proportion a little bit. So, what's going to have happened with your petrol tank is it would be topping up through here.

Then, this session, because you've really revved it, you've worked hard, you've really pushed it, we've depleted a good chunk of your petrol tank. So, now you're fairly low. You're then Zed Zed. You're now sleeping and you're sleeping in a low state. It comes up here. While you're sleeping, your body uses some liver glycogen. At breakfast on Saturday, instead of having your normal porridge before your long run, I want you to have protein and fat again.

So, this might be a couple of eggs and some smoked salmon. It might be another small omelette. Hey, it might just be a protein shake and out the door. Something small and proteinbased. The reason for having protein sandwiching this train low session is it's going to help with some of the anabolic signaling. So because this new the session that we're putting in now your train low session or sorry low heart rate train low because this is meant to be low because this is super stressful.

We can manage how your body sort of feels and gets through it by having protein around it so that then you're less likely to be losing muscle mass etc. You as you go through this session it should feel harder. That's not a bad thing if actually you're trying to keep your heart rate low anyway. You will definitely have to slow down. I tend to try just nasal breathing throughout as a good way of capping the intensity. And when I was practicing all this, when I was learning about it, um this is years ago now before I was a proper qualified sport nutritionist.

When I was literally learning about it all and I thought if I'm learning about this, I'm going to be teaching it. I need to practice it on myself. And I used to commute into London and I would do my train low session. I would get depleted. I would sleep and I would then be cycling into London. I wasn't doing it on a Saturday. I would do an hour and 15 minute cycle in as part of my train low. And I had to accept that people on Boris bikes were going to be passing me on the way in.

And I had no ego and I wouldn't be sprinting off away from traffic lights enjoying that. I would just be sitting there thinking, "It's okay. I'm I'm using more fat as fuel. I'm training this different system. It's okay." However, another thing you need to be mindful of in this session. Need my other pen. It's going to feel harder. So, you're going to have thoughts going through your head. If you've got to the point where you've really got low and then you started running, your brain is going to be telling you, "Hey, you could just stop running." If that happens, if you need to walk to hold the sort of heart rate zone, do it.

That's absolutely fine. You're still training that system. But just be aware that it might not be quite as enjoyable as some of the other sessions that you do with high carbohydrates. This is why I only recommend I [clears throat] only recommend this train low strategy to clients who are quite invested in really looking to maximize their adaptation. Because if you just love running, you like enjoying running. You have like you like having carbohydrate and feeling good and literally feeling good while you're running.

Doing a session like this, it can be a little bit miserable. It's not for the faint-hearted. That said, it might be something to experiment with so that you've had this experience. And it would be particularly beneficial for someone who bonks hard, if that makes sense. So, if you're someone who, oh, James, when I hit the wall, I'm I'm powered down. I'm in a ball. I can't even walk home. then actually practicing this would be really helpful for you.

Because if you're someone who bonks hard, that means you don't really have much metabolic flexibility. That means you're very good at burning carbs for fuel, but you're not very good at burning fat for fuel. This strategy of a depletion, sleep low, protein and carb, sorry, protein and fat before, then train low. This is going to train your body's ability to burn fat as fuel so that next time you bonk, instead of it hitting a wall, you're going to be hitting some crepe paper that you can just keep going through.

It's going to slow you down. You're going to realize, I don't quite have the same energy to keep going at the same pace, but instead of walking or crawling, you're going to be just running a bit slower. You've got to spend some time in this space. So, if you're interested in trying this, the first thing that you need to do is start short here. So, I would say 30 minutes. If that's good and you get through that, then the following week, maybe try 45, then try 60, then try 90 minutes.

Then, if you can get it up to 2 hours, great. It will feel hard during this session. I don't want you to have any carbohydrate. So, no carbs. No carbs during that session. However, afterwards, we do want carbs. I'm going to go big arrows here. Big carbs. Why? Because we're trying to reduce the amount of time that you spend low. You've just done a huge session that's been really stressful on the body because you've been trying to gradually increase your intensity without the right fuel.

Afterwards, we're going to top your tank up as quickly and as effectively as you can. How do we do that? We have 1 to 1.2 to g per kilogram body weight, kilogram body weight, carb in the hour after and then I'd probably do it again afterwards in the second hour after. So that might be an absolutely monster smoothie with oats with some honey, then second breakfast, then you're probably going to have a big late lunch and then you might have dinner and a dessert.

So we're really bringing yourself back up cuz if you don't do that, then you're going to get to Sunday and you will be absolutely wiped and you won't have any time for the family. Now, before we move on to some myth busting, this whole idea of fueling and refueling and when to strategically eat low or eat high, I teach this to my clients as part of our fueling and refueling sessions in the performance accelerator. We can use it like this to actually make sure that we're getting the most from sessions, be it train low or train high.

But something that is fascinating and the reason I do this and coach this, so I don't just give people a plan, but the reason I literally try and explain how to do it to clients is because it helps fix energy levels. So if my client can understand the type of session they have and how much it's going to dip into their petrol tank and therefore how much carbs to have before and after, when they start getting that right, then energy is consistent and that's the results I look to achieve with my clients.

So, if you're interested in learning how to do that, you might be interested in my coaching program, the Performance Accelerator. If you are, I'll leave a link to my calendar in the notes on this video. Um, feel free to book a call with me. Let's move on to mythbusting then. So, I've tried to explain that training low heart rate and increasing your fat adaptation, teaching your body how to burn fat. Most people think that is suddenly going to be your answer to long-term fat loss.

Unfortunately, it's not. It's going to be helpful, yes, but long-term fat loss is still going to be governed by total energy requirement or total energy intake versus total energy expenditure over the days, weeks, and months. Interestingly though, there was a paper that looked at distributing carbohydrate in an isocaloric diet. So, what that means is they had two groups where they both ate the same amount of total calories.

One group did a structured train load and actually they so they're both in a slight caloric deficit. the group that did the carbohydrate periodization where they trained low actually lost a little bit more fat mass. So, there might be a slight rationale that this could help with body recomposition. However, like what I said earlier, if you're not someone who is super motivated and enjoys really pushing through and enjoys that, god, this is tough, but now I'm kicking into gear, I wouldn't try this.

I would instead do some low heart rate stuff, but make sure that you've topped up. So I wouldn't do your super hard session on Friday evening or do it Friday morning or Thursday so that you've got lots of opportunities to eat carbohydrate ahead of your session. Go into that hold low heart rate but you're going to do it in a high carb state. You'll still get some adaptation. It might not be as effective or optimal. It will still sorry it still will be effective but it might not be optimizing how effective it is if that makes sense.

So whether you want to do it is going to be down to you. Will it help you melt fat? No. However, it could be the little thing that might give you a slight edge. I've got important written down here because I wanted to really stress the point that [music] training low can suck. So, if you go through this properly, if you do a real good effort at your depletion, you then have protein and fat after without carbs, you get into this session low and you do think, "Oh my god, that nutritionist on YouTube told me to push hard and then I've come in here and I just can't do it." Yeah, it is going to suck.

You don't have to though try and push through it. The whole idea is to embrace the fact that you can't hold such a high intensity. So that's why planning this session in as a low heart rate session is the right thing to do. You don't want to do a depletion and then try and do a long hard session. The point is to try and do it with a long slow session. So another reason I've written important here is because most people accidentally do this [music] depletion and then go into high sessions.

Another reason I've written important here is to remind myself to explain that I want you to consider when you might accidentally do this because it's likely that if you have an evening session into a morning session, there's probably going to be some times when you've refueled without enough carbohydrate. You've then gone into that session and it might be a highintensity morning class and you've just thought, "Oh my god, what's happened?

Why am I struggling so much?" That's because you've gone in with a low petrol tank. If it's a highintensity spin session, for example, or you're trying to do a morning threshold run and you just can't execute it, my habit for you is to think back what you've done in your last training the day before and how much carbohydrate you've had. If you're trying to execute a morning hard session, make sure you've got plenty of carbs coming in in the evening before and morning of.

Only only if you're trying to do a structured train low and you're trying to do this intentionally. You do the depletion protein and then big repletion afterwards. If you have any comments on this video, please pop them down. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. So, I've written important here to remind myself to explain that this is not a lowcarb diet. This isn't me saying you need to suddenly only eat highfat, high protein foods and you can't touch any carbs ever again.

This is meant to be a really specific strategy where you're omitting carbohydrate in two of the meals across your week. the rest of it and Mahoba made clear that you're going to be refueling with lots of carbs afterwards to bring yourself back up, not a low carb approach. And remember, subscribe to my channel if you want science-based information that's going to enable you to master your nutrition and not be a slave to diet or counting macros.

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