Maximize Return on Your Aerobic Investment: Zenman’s Brief Guide

Shane Eversfield is Founder and Head Coach of Kaizen-durance, serves as a Total Immersion Master Coach, and isan accomplished ultra endurance athlete.  Shane and Terry met after Terry read Shane’s first book “Zendurance”.

Shane enjoyed countless hours swimming and dialoging with Terry.  (And they cooked many meals together too!)  Frequently their discussions centered around endurance sports as a highly effective form of mindfulness practice, and how mindfulness skills enhance the quality of our lives in every area.

Shane Eversfield is a Total Immersion Master Coach, and Founder of Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery. He is offering the inaugural Advanced Total Immersion Weekend Workshop and Kaizen-durance Introductory Running Lab in Coral Springs, FL, 27-28 January.

Introduction

In my previous blog, we explored the Fitness Cycle. This is the process we use to swim faster, run longer and climb steeper hills on the bike. The Fitness Cycle has three phases:

• Stress
• Recovery
• Adaptation

In this blog, we identify what we actually target in this cycle, and how we can most effectively improve our fitness now, and for many years to come. I call this “hacking performance potential”. Are you ready to hack your potential?

The Big Three

First, we must identify what is affected by the Fitness Cycle. When we train we are stressing three physiologic systems:

• Muscles
• Metabolic (Aerobic)
• Neural

If we really want to maximize the return on our training investment, then we should target the physiologic system that will respond and improve the most to training. Before we identify and focus on that specific system, it is vital to recognize that we will always stress all three systems when we exercise. If we design and structure our training to emphasize stress on one specific system, the others will also experience stress – perhaps to a lesser degree.

OK, So What Do They Do?

Let’s also look at the function of each of these three physiologic systems and how they enable us to swim each stroke and run each stride.

• Our muscular system moves the bones of our skeleton. This is the real working system.

• Our metabolic system provides a healthy operating environment for the muscles (as well as the nerves). This optimal environment includes an adequate supply of energy and oxygen, and the removal of waste and carbon dioxide, among other supports.

• Our neural system coordinates and synchronizes the movements of all of our muscles so that we move the more than 300 bones of the skeleton in a coordinated and efficient manner. This complex task of oversight and control involves both perception and action. Our neural also provides feedback and adjustment of the metabolic system to maintain an optimal working environment.

Each of these systems is essential for us to swim, bike, run, or to perform any action in our lives – even breathing.

And Now… Back to the Big Question

What system responds and improves most readily to training? More specifically, what system recovers and adapts best when we stress it?

Some of you may be surprised to discover: It’s your neural system. Surprising, because most of us have focused all along on the metabolic system – especially if we are performance-oriented.

After all, cutting edge exercise science focuses on improving our aerobic capacity – our ability to provide an optimal working environment for the muscles. Technology has given us heart rate monitors, power meters and GPS pacing devices that we correlate to specific zones of metabolic intensity. By monitoring this intensity, we can train to improve the optimal operating environment for our muscles to maximize performance potential – for a specific race at a specific pace, from sprint to ultra, or simply to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle.

This conventional method of focusing on metabolic fitness enables coaches, athletes and recreational exercises to achieve reliable and even remarkable results, using precise metrics. It’s easy to follow, with clear numeric guidelines. However…

Beware The Aerobic Wall

“VO2 Max” is a measure of an individual’s metabolic potential – a scientific standard of fitness. Well…

Once we surpass the ripe old age of 25, our VO2 Max begins to decline at a rate of 1% per year. Picture this decline as a massive wall that is steadily advancing towards you. Yikes!! In the panic to slow this rate of decline, most performance-driven athletes devote every training session to the desperate effort of slowing that advancing wall. I call this…

Banging Your Head Against the Aerobic Wall

If we devote every swim stroke and every run stride to resisting this inevitable aerobic decline, where is the joy and satisfaction that Terry Laughlin shared with us over the years in his teachings, his blogs, his life? If every workout is just another fruitless effort to push as hard as we can against that encroaching wall, where is the kaizen – the lifelong improvement?

Where is it? It’s quietly and patiently waiting for us in our neural systems. When we can let go of our fixation with resisting the inevitable decline of metabolic capacity, we can begin to cultivate the gift of wisdom that comes with experience and (Dare I say it?) with age.

What is this wisdom of the experienced and aging athlete, that enables us to improve for many decades beyond our 25th year?

“K.I.”: Kinetic Intelligence

If aerobic potential begins to decline at a rate of 1% per year after age 25, why are all the Hawaii Ironman World Champions – both male and female – always in their mid-to-late 30’s? (Paula Newby-Fraser won her eighth crown at age 40.) What do these athletes have that the younger athletes don’t?

They have what I call kinetic intelligence. With experience and practice these “older” athletes have done more than just trained aerobic capacity. They have learned:

• How to use less energy for each swim stroke, pedal stroke and run stride
• How to go faster with less fatigue and damage
• How to sustain these activities for a longer duration, and with more precise pacing

They have acquired the wisdom of KI.

Connecting the Dots

As Terry has taught us, we cannot pursue swim speed or even endurance, until we learn technique. Here is the sequence we use to acquire and improve technique:

• Target the neural system when you train. This is the system that learns.
• Develop kinetic intelligence: You acquire KI through consistent and mindful neural training.
• Focus on efficient technique: A strong foundation of KI empowers you to rapidly improve and continuously master efficient technique. 

Train to Learn

The primary component of neural training is developing and improving technique. Neural training is a learning process. If we focus on developing and improving our technique in every training session – from recovery to high metabolic intensity – we can maximize the return on our training investment… for a lifetime. We can enjoy improved performance for decades beyond our aerobic peak. 

And here is a most important point: Our neural systems can cycle through the Fitness Cycle faster than our muscles or metabolic systems, regardless of our age.

Neural Training: Here’s How

In my previous blog, we considered three skills that are invaluable for navigating the Fitness Cycle:

• Beginner’s Mind
• Trust
• Patience

These same navigational skills empower us to to pursue KI every time we train:

• With Beginner’s Mind, we bring curiosity to each training session. Curiosity is rocket fuel for learning.
• With Trust, we use our own unique sense-felt experience in each moment as the most effective day-to-day guidance for building KI. Trust is the gateway into our own personal experience. And we trust that building this personal wisdom will provide a much greater long-term yield than just banging our heads against the Aerobic Wall, day-after-day.
• With Patience, we can slow down enough to learn and discover, to practice and master great technique. Patience is our telescope to see well into the future from where we are right now. It allows us to relax and craft each stroke and each stride perfectly.

Abraham Lincoln Said it Best

Years ago, Terry included this insightful quote from Abe Lincoln as the byline for his emails: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

No matter how much aerobic capacity and muscular strength we have, we can’t cut that tree down with a sledge hammer. We need a sharp axe. The same is true for swimming: Arms the size of tree trunks won’t help you swim fast if your body is like a sledge hammer in the water.

When we approach each training session well prepared and with a sharp axe, we can reliably hack into the process of rapid discovery and learning. What is this “axe” you need to sharpen? It is your neural system. When your neural system is tuned-in and focused, your perceptions and observations are sharp, and your responses and actions are brilliant.

Training: Workout or Practice?

Neurally targeted training sessions are no longer goal-fixated workouts that punish our bodies. They are diligent practice sessions. We approach each training session in the same way that a musician approaches each practice session:

• The musician diligently attends to each note she plays. We too are attentive to each stroke, each stride we craft. How can we make each one better?
• With “Aural Intelligence”, the musician constantly questions and refines her standards of excellence, her experience of technique mastery. With KI, we constantly evolve our experience of technique mastery.
• The musician patiently examines how each note fits into the overall composition and performance. With patience, we craft each stride, each stroke to bring us gracefully and masterfully to our goal.

Sharpen Your Axe

To maximize the return on your training investment, and to hack your performance potential, sharpen your axe of attention and perception:

• Pause: before you begin your session, even for just a brief moment
• Question: What am I here to do? What can I learn today?
• Summon the curiosity of your Beginner’s Mind
• Invest your awareness and attention completely: No “auto-pilot”!
• Trust the learning process, as it is guided by your sense-felt experience
• Be Patient in striving for your goals, so you can be hyper-aware in each moment

Hack Your Performance Potential: Practice

As you begin each practice session, proceed:

• Slowly and patiently
• With focused purpose and accuracy
• Consistently and faithfully, with perseverance
• Embrace your weaknesses as the greatest opportunities for growth and discovery.

Go Slow? Forever?

When we specifically target the neural system, does that mean we always have to train slowly? Again, let’s look to the musician: When she is first learning to play a challenging composition, she practices slowly and patiently, with focused purpose and accuracy. With perseverance, she practices faithfully and consistently, even when it’s difficult.

Gradually, the musician is able to craft the sequence of notes with flow and ease. Now, she can begin to increase the tempo and still maintain the precision and accuracy. As performance-oriented athletes, our successful practice follows the same progression – from slow and easy to fast and intense. 

Progression is always governed by your ability to maintain efficient technique. If technique erodes, slow down.

Speaking from my personal experience, I devote every training session to crafting graceful and efficient strokes and strides. I do this from low to high metabolic intensity. While I target my neural system in every training session, my muscular and metabolic systems still get trained.

Proof? Recently I visited the Endurance Sports Performance Center affiliated with Island Health and Fitness, where I teach. The technicians there performed a Ventilatory Threshold Test to evaluate my metabolic fitness. I scored in the 99th percentile of VO2 Max for my age – even though I don’t bang my head against the Aerobic Wall.

Conclusion

When we target neural fitness during our training sessions, it’s not about the exertion of mind over matter, or success at any cost. Our neural system is as much mind as it is body. Now, we are training mind IN matter. We are acquiring kinetic intelligence – the wisdom of the master athlete.

Lots More!

“Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” is a six-book series I am producing that deeply investigates our Kinetic Intelligence Hack. We also explore the Pursuit of Mastery to maximize our performance potential in every area of our lives.

Read a synopsis of each book at this link and order Book One, “An Introduction to Kaizen-durance: Hacking Your Performance Potential at Any Age”, available in three digital formats.