Lesson video

Hi there! Welcome to today's lesson.

I'm Mrs. Brooks and I'm gonna be taking you through the topic of "Thresholds of Training." We're gonna have some fun, we're gonna be busy doing some calculations, and this works well within the principles of training section of the physical training unit of the specification.

It is very much based on making sure training is accurate and set at the right zone or the right target so that athletes are getting the very best out of their training session or their training programme.

So by the end of the session, or end of the lesson, sorry, you will be confident in doing those calculations.

Now those training zones are gonna be dependent on maximum heart rate and one rep max, both of which we will develop an understanding about.

And when we've got familiar with those calculations, we'll be looking at scenarios, very much sporting based scenarios, and working at how we can apply those training or those thresholds accurately so that those athletes are getting their very best from their training sessions or their training programmes.

Our key words for the session.

First of all, we need to understand what a training threshold is.

The best way to explain that is like a boundary, almost like a lower and upper boundary, a zone in which an athlete gets told to work in as part of their intensity.

So in doing so, they are addressing the right elements of their fitness development for their sport.

And that is referred to as a threshold.

Now one of those thresholds, or zones, is the aerobic training zone, and that is actually calculated, the upper and lower limit are set at 60 to 80% of someone's maximum heart rate.

And that's because there's been lots of research and knowing that that boundary, that threshold is accurate for someone to be using their aerobic energy or their aerobic respiration.

We've learned that that is with oxygen.

So by using that system, they're developing their cardiovascular, their muscular endurance.

In contrast, the anaerobic training zone is also calculated using maximum heart rate.

But you'll see, I'm sure you're not surprised to see, that those percentages are higher.

'Cause when we work anaerobically we work without oxygen and often the intensity is much higher.

So we're gonna learn how that is set from 80 to 90% of someone's maximum heart rate.

I've referenced maximum heart rate twice there, and you just need to be aware that that is a calculation and it uses a figure of 220, and then to work out someone's maximum heart rate you minus their age.

So that is very different amongst all individuals 'cause it's very much determined by their age.

We will also look at the one rep max and understand how that is used to calculate thresholds.

Quick reminder, you may have learned this already as a fitness test, 'cause it is a very popular fitness test to test someone's muscular strength and that's because they are put on a protocol where they have to get to a point where they can identify what the maximum amount that they can lift in one repetition.

So that means just that one lift and, you know, could they not go any higher? And if they can't, then that's them set at their maximum for that particular lift or that particular muscle group.

So let's have some fun with these calculations.

We are going to divide the lesson up into three areas.

We'll first of all look at that aerobic and anaerobic training zone and develop our confidence in doing those calculations.

We'll then build on that learning of calculations but look specifically at the one rep max.

And then once we've got that real clear understanding of those training thresholds, we'll start to apply them to some sporting scenarios and be able to justify our choices of the training threshold chosen and why that's been chosen to make the training as optimal as it can be.

So our first part of that lesson is we're gonna be looking at that aerobic and anaerobic training zone.

So Sofia is wanting to improve her aerobic endurance or her cardiovascular endurance.

Now she tells us that she's 15, she does have a smartwatch which we know are quite common now, or some device where you're able to monitor your heart rate.

So she's asking if there is a specific range that she should be working in when she goes out and does some of her training.

I suspect that might be continuous based.

And we're gonna tell her exactly what that training threshold should look like.

Now the first, because it's aerobic endurance, she needs to be in that aerobic training zone.

So the first thing she needs to do is to calculate her maximum heart rate.

And you can see there quite clearly that that calculation is 220 minus her age.

So really simply she would do 220 minus 15.

Are you able to calculate Sofia's maximum heart rate? Hopefully you did exactly that and by minusing 15 from 220 we now know that Sofia's maximum heart rate is 205 beats per minute, often referenced as little B, little P and little M.

Now, that was our first task.

Now we've got that figure of 205.

We know that our aerobic training zone has to be in 60, has to be between 60 and 80% of that figure.

So would you be able to calculate 60 and 80% of 205 beats per minute? And remember we're doing that because this is a range that is suggested to allow that aerobic system to be trained, and therefore the fitness work that you do having some benefit to Sofia and her aerobic endurance.

So if we were gonna do this together, first of all for the 60% we would quite simply do 0.

6, and I know there are different ways of getting to 60% and you might have chosen one of those ways, but in this instance, we've gone 0.

6 multiplied by 205 and that figure gives us 123 beats per minute.

So we now know that the lowest range, the lower boundary for her heart rate when she's training, when she's looking to improve aerobic endurance is 123 beats per minute.

Now as part of this kind of second stage, now we've got 60%.

How would we work out 80%? Hopefully you're all suggesting that we would then do 0.

8 this time, multiplied again by 205, and that figure is 164 beats per minute.

So what does this suggest? Yeah, that's right.

This suggests that that's now our upper boundary.

So the highest heart rate Sofia should go when she's trying to improve her aerobic endurance is 164 beats per minute.

So you can see there we've got this range from 123 to 164 which is a suggestion for Sofia to stay within that range while she's training, if she's wanting to develop that aerobic endurance.

Quick check at this point because we need to make sure that we always get that calculation correct for the maximum heart rate.

Which of these four options is correct? I'll give you five seconds to decide.

Absolutely, it's C.

It's not 200 'cause that can be easily mistaken.

It's actually 220 and we're then subtracting or minusing an individual's age.

Now Sofia now shares with us that actually she's playing rugby, she's an under 18 rugby player.

So I can understand now why she does want to get that aerobic endurance because she wants to be able to last the duration that she's on the pitch and hopefully not feel those effects of fatigue 'cause that can really affect her, her gameplay, her concentration, her ability to execute those skills.

And what she's saying now? Now we've taken her through that understanding about that aerobic training zone.

She feels confident that she can monitor that and be aware of that upper and lower boundary.

Now how about if she's now passing this on to her teammate, who she plays with, but that teammate is 17.

Would the aerobic training zone be the same? Would you answer this as true or false? Hopefully you've gone for the same as me and you've actually identified that as false.

Why? Well, remember our maximum heart rate is 220 minus age.

So Sofia was 15 whereas her teammate is 17.

So that maximum heart rate is just slightly lower.

So you'll still do 60 to 80%, and for those of you who wanna try and work that out now and check that that's correct, that range will be similar to Sofia's but we're actually coming out more at 122 and 162 beats per minute.

Remember with some of your mathematical skills that you'll be familiar with whether we round up or round down depending on the number after the decimal point.

So she also wants to improve her speed and that will be very much those anaerobic, those explosive parts of the game, those sprints, those tackles, those jumps.

So we've got her aerobic training zone and what she's saying here is: Is her heart rate range different when she's looking at those anaerobic parts of the game? Now I'm really happy that Sofia has asked us that because the intensity of anaerobic work is much higher.

I'm sure those of you who have done this will know that you are often feeling more breathless, you will be working at a higher intensity and that's 'cause your body's trying to get the oxygen in but your muscles are working at such an intensity the oxygen can't quite get there.

So they actually respire without that oxygen.

So to monitor that what we use is the anaerobic training zone, and we already know 80%.

What we need to do now is also calculate 90%.

Can you do that? Can you remember what we've already just applied as our calculations and work out 90% of 205 beats per minute? The reason I'm asking you to do that is 80 to 90% of maximum heart rate is the suggested range to make sure that someone is definitely working, using that anaerobic respiration.

So let's just recap for Sofia.

We know she's 15 and we worked out her maximum heart rate to be 203 beats per minute.

So if she's in her aerobic training zone, we calculated that as 123 to 164 beats per minute.

And often as a guide, as you can see on the image there, they will be working.

It won't be too easy but then it won't be hard and challenging.

It will be very much that moderate intensity.

However, when she's doing those more explosive parts of the game or the training, she will be recommended to be in that anaerobic training zone.

So now that 80% is the lower boundary of 164 and if you did your calculations correctly for the 90%, you would've got to 185 beats per minute.

So our heart is working much harder at that point 'cause it's really trying to get the oxygen around the body but it's highly likely that the muscles will be respiring most of the time without that oxygen.

So developing that anaerobic fitness.

Now, it's important that we don't get these calculations confused 'cause it's very easy to do so.

So let's just have a quick check for this question.

Which range of heart rate is correct for the anaerobic training zone? There are four options there and I'll give you a couple of seconds to decide.

Well done.

It's that final option is option D, 80 to 90% of maximum heart rate.

Okay, now we've looked at our calculations, we're gonna go into our first task which builds on those learning from some of those checkpoints.

We are being given two scenarios here.

We have some rowers, their goal is to increase aerobic endurance and we're being told that they are all 25.

Then we also have a boxer.

Her goal is to increase power and her age is 19.

So what I'd like you guys to do is pause the recording and show that you can calculate the correct training zone for our athletes in these scenarios.

Come back to me when you're finished.

How did we do for the rowers? I'm hoping that you went with that first step and worked out that maximum heart rate, 220 minus the age, which we were told is 25, which gives us 195 beats per minute.

That's our first step.

Second step: Did we then work out that lower boundary, 60% of that figure? And then our upper boundary, 80% of maximum heart rate? 'Cause the goal here was for that aerobic endurance.

And then finally you've got that zone, that threshold of 117 to 156 beats per minute.

In contrast, our boxer was younger so the maximum heart rate is higher from our first calculation.

We then have to work out 80% of our lower boundary 'cause we're now looking to do the anaerobic training zone 'cause that's very much where our power and our strength and our explosive components of fitness, like speed, will sit.

Then you do the upper limit of 90% and that will then give you that range in this particular scenario of 161 to 181 beats per minute.

So to summarise there, we may get asked to understand what the maximum heart rate is and how it's calculated.

Or we may get asked to actually do that calculation and then identify the correct training zone for a particular scenario.

So we need to be able to know those training zones and then do those calculations of that maximum heart rate.

Now as part of our introduction, we also learned that as well as maximum heart rate we can also use one rep max as a way of identifying or calculating the correct intensity.

And that very much applies when you're doing weight training.

So we're now gonna look at those calculations specifically when doing weight training.

Now if we continue our theme with Sofia, it's highly likely that as a rugby player she will be doing some of those weight-based sessions.

A lot of games players often reference that now as strength and conditioning because it's such a vital part of their sport.

Not only to be more powerful and stronger and faster but also to support them given the large contact that they are having to take as part of their gameplay.

So Sofia is actually saying that she's been allocated that to do to work on that strength.

And should she continue to kind of just monitor that through her anaerobic training zone? Now, she could do that but a more suitable calculation would be where she could work out her maximal strength using her one rep max.

Now a quick recap on what the one rep max is, we can see there that this is an individual that's doing the bench press exercise, a very common one to be able to work out someone's one rep max.

And if we got Sofia to do that, she would obviously do a really thorough warmup 'cause we don't want her to hurt herself given that she's gonna then start to lift some really heavy loads.

And what she will do is she'll start to do a number of lifts, not too many repetitions 'cause she doesn't wanna get tired, but the weight will be gradually increased until she gets to a point where that she's at a weight that she can almost just do the one repetition in, and that gets recorded as her one rep max, the maximum repetition she's able to do.

And that amount being recorded is really quite useful then 'cause you can use that amount to calculate some training intensity.

So Sofia went on to do this one rep max protocol.

She did a warmup, made sure that she was safe, she made sure she had a spotter so she was, 'cause her weights were heavy, that means that she had someone behind her, so she kept safe.

She was kept safe.

And what she's telling us here is her one rep max was 22 kilogrammes.

So she wants to build on this now and understand what she does with that 22 kilogramme to help her calculate some correct training thresholds to build strength.

Now before we look at that, what do you think the answer is to this? The bench press is the only exercise to be used for one rep max.

Do you think that's a true statement or it's false? Did you say false too? I'm hoping you did because even though I shared with you the bench pressure is an example of a one rep max, any weight training exercise can be tested in that same way, and that's good 'cause that gives us more variety and it allows us to pick exercises that are relevant for our sport.

We went for bench press for severe 'cause she's a rugby player and she's really gonna need strength in that upper body, particularly when she's tackling.

Okay, now, as a rugby player she might have two different foci or focus for her strength.

It might be that she's working on that strength and power.

You may be able to pause the recording at this point and talk about all those elements of that sport where that strength and power is needed.

And if she is working on that, it's suggested that they follow this guideline of lifting high weight, so lifting quite heavy, but not doing many repetitions.

So referenced as high weight, low reps.

Now we go beyond that and we can use the one rep max now so we can work out what that high weight actually looks like.

And the figure that we are given is 70% of that one rep max.

So if it's strength or power that someone is trying to develop, they go above that 70% range and it's very common to do three sets but that rep range is quite low.

Remember high weight, low reps? So those repetitions can be approximately between four and eight.

Now, Sofia might also want to develop her muscular endurance.

That is part of muscular fitness and it is important for rugby.

They often need to have that muscular endurance in their legs 'cause they're running for long periods of the game and they don't need that, they don't want that, those muscles to get tired.

Likewise with their arms, there's lots of passing depending on the position.

There's lots of grabbing, there's lots of pushing.

And if fatigue does develop in those arm muscles from that repeated contractions then that can be quite detrimental to performance.

So if her focus was muscle endurance, we would switch.

So we reference this now as lower weight 'cause it's more about the how many repetitions you can do and therefore the reps are high.

And we use our 70% again and we now say that you wanna be below that one rep max which allows the weight to be lower and not as hard to lift, and then you can lift more repetitions.

So you're given the opportunity for their muscle to keep contracting repeatedly and develop that endurance across the muscle or the muscle group.

So often that's referenced as about 12 to 15 reps.

So we knew Sofia's bench press.

It was 22 kilogramme, one rep max.

Can you calculate 70% of that for the bench press exercise? Now Sofia's done that calculation so you might be able to check whether this is correct or not.

And she's worked out that it needs to be above 15.

4 kilogramme 'cause she worked that out to be 70% of 22.

I suspect what Sofia did is did 0.

7 times 22, in the same way we've done that for our 60 and 80 and 90% of the maximum heart rate.

And yes, she's correct! It is 15.

4, so she knows that she would be have to be lifting above that and that threshold remember is also guiding her to do about three sets of four to eight repetitions.

If she was working on muscular endurance though, that threshold will be below that figure.

Still looking at approximately three sets, but we can see there we've gone through that at low weight, high reps in this instance.

So those repetitions would be much higher, from approximately 12 to 15.

Quick recap! Why is the weight lower for the muscle endurance again? Hopefully you said or you just reminded yourself of that component of fitness and how it's about repeated contractions without getting to fatigue.

So what we're doing there is we're allowing that repeated element by doing a number of reps against that resistance.

Now this athlete here, like Sofia, is also a rugby player and also identified her one rep max.

You can see she's currently doing a bench press exercise.

Now her one rep max was 45 kilogramme.

So what she's doing here is she has 30 kilogramme on the barbell and she's doing it for eight reps.

Do we think this is correct? If you said yes, I also agree with you.

This is correct because it's above 70% of her one rep max and she's in that rep range of four to eight repetitions.

So the law there, or the threshold, states that by her doing that and following some of those principles of training that we've learned about, she will have that increase in strength and power which will have a real positive impact on her game.

So let's just remind ourselves which of these is correct for muscular endurance training.

Have a look at the four options and I'll give you five seconds to decide which of these is correct.

Hopefully you went for option B because that is below 70% of the one rep max, and we've got that high rep range of 12 to 15 repetitions which leads us nicely onto our second task of the lesson.

We have some road cyclists here and they've been asked to improve muscular endurance, particularly in their legs.

So we've just done some work with Sofia, looking at that upper body and those arm muscles.

I would like you to describe how you would calculate the intensities to achieve this for our cyclist.

Then go on to describe how that calculation would differ if their focus would shift to power.

Now power could be needed in a road race in certain sections of it.

And then to finish with, we're just gonna look at that explain command and how if they have got an increase in power, how would that optimise their cycling performance? So with explain, we have to give purpose or reason.

So if they've had that increase in power, what is the purpose of that to making them a better cyclist, particularly when they're in their race events out on the road? Pause the recording and come back to me when you're ready.

Welcome back.

How did you get on? For the first part, did you say that you obviously need them to complete the one rep max test? You may have even named some examples of what that might be, a squat or a deadlift.

They have just been written in that answer there because they do very much focus on those large muscle groups in that lower body.

And then did you then go on to say that you'd need to calculate 70% of that figure? And because their focus is muscular endurance that they would be working 70% below that, and then ideally for three sets and that rep range, the one that we're using as a guide at this stage is that 12 to 15 reps.

So they're working at that lower weight for higher repetitions.

And that must have been a nice lead into the second part of the question, second part of the task, sorry, where you would've said if that did shift that focus shift to power, then you would increase that to be above 70% but you'd lower those reps to approximately four to eight.

And then just to go onto that explain command, you may have mentioned a time when power is needed.

So in this answer, we've used the sprint finish as an example.

You could have done a hill climb because that is quite common as part of road cycling.

And then you don't stop there.

You give a reason for that power in that sprint finish.

And that would be that they would then finish that race in the quickest time, hopefully ahead of their opponents.

And last but not least, now we've got our training thresholds clear and we know how to calculate them.

We may be asked to justify a threshold given the scenario we've been given, and these thresholds are very much around optimising training for those athletes or those individuals.

So Aisha is asking a really, really common question here and it's quite a good one to ask.

What do you mean by justify? What's it asking us to do? And I'm glad Aisha's asking us that because in terms of our technique we do need to understand that when we are asked to justify something, we're being asked to support a case with evidence.

So back up.

If someone said it needs to be in this, it's important that they're in this range, we're then backing that up with what we know.

So we're gonna have a little bit of an opportunity to practise that as our final part of the lesson.

Let me just give you an example of that in practise though.

Here's an athlete.

This time this is a netballer.

So doing a really similar exercise to our rugby player, doing that kind of dumbbell press this time.

So rather than using a barbell, using the free weights.

She's trying to also optimise her strength in netball and her one rep max for the dumbbell press was 35 kilogrammes.

Now if that scenario was given to us, we could be asked to identify the training threshold, we could also be asked to calculate the training threshold.

And the one thing that we haven't really done until now is justify our choices for those previous questions to support what we've said with evidence.

So let's break that down.

Identify the training threshold the athlete could use.

Hopefully someone would answer that with above 70% of a one rep max, 'cause it had that strength focus.

And then, identify the correct sets and reps.

We've got that lower rep range.

So that's a good example.

If we build on that and ask them to then show the calculations, they'd have to show that with a workout 0.

7 of that 35 kilogramme, which would come out at 24.

5 kilogrammes.

So that calculation is correct 'cause they've used that 70% threshold of the one rep max.

But then they were told to justify their answer.

So they then back that up, they back up what they've done, they support the case with evidence.

The evidence was that they had a strength focus so they followed the correct threshold of high weight above 70% of one rep max and low reps four to eight.

What a really simple word there of so.

But that means that we're backing up what we've done previously.

So also another good example.

It might be that that question with justify could then be linked to performance.

So we can see here: Justify why this will lead to optimum performance.

So essentially what we're being told there is by doing that they will be at that optimum.

We've now got to say why.

Well, the athlete will have that increase in strength and then we can link that to optimum performance.

And optimum performance for a pass for example is that it wouldn't get intercepted and it would be able to get to someone on the netball team and then be able to keep possession of the ball.

So another good example of that use of justify.

So let's just have a quick check of what we've just done there.

Firstly, these athletes, we've got three athletes here, one of them, or maybe more than one, is describing the aerobic training zone.

Aisha's saying she's working at 60% of her maximum heart rate, Sam's saying 75% of her maximum heart rate, and Andeep is working at 90%.

Five seconds for you to decide which athletes are correct.

Well done if you identified that both Aisha and Sam, given their heart rate percentages, are both in that 60 lower boundary and 80% upper boundary of that maximum heart rate.

Now they're gonna go on to talk a little bit more and one of them is using justification.

They're justifying why they're working below 70% of their one rep max during their weight training.

Sam is sharing with us that she's worked out.

7 of 24 to be 16.

8 kilogrammes.

Aisha, sorry.

Sam is saying that she's working below 70% 'cause her focus is on lower weight for muscular endurance.

And Andeep is saying that he's working below 70% of one rep max and is doing that using a squat and a deadlift exercise.

And this is quite tricky, but which one of our three athletes do you believe is justifying? Really well done if you said Sam.

So Sam is giving us an example there of justifying that she needs to be below 70% 'cause that's the threshold that lower weight when you're working on muscular endurance.

Incidentally, Aisha is showing us evidence of calculation and Andeep is just showing us an example of identifying, saying, "This is what I'm gonna be doing and this is the exercise I'm gonna be doing it on." So a nice lead into our final task where we're gonna follow the exact format of identification, calculation and justification.

So we have three scenarios, all of which could be presented to us on this kind of topic.

Our first scenario is we have some runners and they want to improve their aerobic endurance, and their age is 26.

We then have a long jump athlete who's working specifically on power through weight training and we've already been told that her squat one rep max is 98 kilogrammes.

And finally we have a dancer.

He's really keen to develop on his muscular endurance.

Obviously dancers sometimes can be up to three minutes long.

So those muscles are working and contracting for lots of periods of time.

Wants to do this through weight training and has given a deadlift one rep max of 110 kilogrammes.

Now once we've identified the training threshold for those three athletes, you need to show your calculation, and then finally you're gonna work on that skill of justify and you're going to say why, if they were to work in those thresholds, why that would lead to optimum performance.

Pause the recording and come back to me when you're ready.

Okay, we had quite a lot to do there, so well done for working through those three stages for each of our scenarios.

To go through them, so for scenario A, you hopefully identify that this is the aerobic training zone because they're wanting to work on their aerobic endurance and therefore you would go back to that calculation, that first stage of the 220 minus age, working out that lower boundary of 60%, that upper boundary of 80%.

So being given a range of 116 to 155 beats per minute.

And that last task of justifying that by being in that range it is 60 to 80% of the maximum heart rate, which means that they are training that aerobic system and hopefully then can run at higher intensity without feeling fatigue.

So that skill of justify, sometimes a little bit more challenging, but we need that knowledge to be able to then develop our say why.

Scenario B, quite the opposite for our long jumper.

So because they were using weight training, did you identify that they need to be above 70% of one rep max and three sets of four to eight reps? Your calculation would've been 0.

7 times, or multiply 98 'cause that was her one rep max, which would've given you a figure of 69 kilogrammes and then you would've justified that she was working on that high weight and those low reps so she's probably gonna develop muscular hypertrophy.

Or by that we mean that their muscles are gonna gain in size and strength, and as a result of that she's gonna have more power.

And the optimum performance there is she will then be able to jump further.

And finally, for our dancer, also working on that one rep max, but his focus was muscular endurance.

So it would've been below as our identification, similar rep sets, but with that higher rep range.

You would've calculated that by doing 0.

7, multiply by 110, 'cause that was his one rep max, and that would've given you a figure of 77 kilogramme.

And you may have just picked up on some of that content I shared with you that by working at that low weight, as a dancer, he's gonna improve that tolerance to muscle fatigue and to lactic acid, and have more endurance to perform those movements within a dance routine without fatigue.

And that will probably lead to better execution, better extension, better presentation, if you're not feeling those effects of fatigue.

So really nice there to look at three quite different scenarios, but are how our training thresholds can be identified, then calculated, and finally also justified.

To summarise, our training thresholds are very much about optimising performance and making sure training intensity is targeted correctly.

We've worked out that that could be as aerobic or anaerobic, one of which is 60 to 80% of maximum heart rate, whereas anaerobic is 80 to 90%.

We have to remember that maximum heart rate is calculated as 220 minus age.

But then if it's strength training, we don't use that, we use the one rep max.

And knowing that if it's a strength or power focus, it's 70% above.

Sorry, it's above 70% and it's a lower rep range, approximately four to eight.

However, if the focus is different, it's muscular endurance, we're below that 70% and we're now at a higher rep range from 12 to 15.

Thank you so much for joining me and being busy with our thresholds and our calculations.

I've really enjoyed taking you through that and look forward to working with you on the next lesson.