If you’re looking for the best anaerobic workouts to increase your performance then you’ve come to the right place. Most athletes realize that a lot of physical activity is actually limited by their anaerobic energy system. Unfortunately most athletes don’t have a good understanding how to train effectively to increase their anaerobic endurance. In this article I’m going to review some key biological concepts to improve your anaerobic training. I’ll finish the article with some awesome programs to take your fitness to the next level.
If you’ve read my book, “Programming Your Fitness“, then you’ll have a good understanding how your body produces energy during high-intensity exercises. For those that haven’t, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Here are some key points below covering how your body produces energy anaerobically.
Key Points for Anaerobic Energy Production
- Anaerobic energy is fast, but inefficient
- Aerobic and Anaerobic energy systems work simultaneously
- High intensity interval training builds anaerobic capacity
- Aerobic training is key to support anaerobic output
- Anaerobic means energy production in absence of oxygen
In my many years coaching and writing about fitness, I commonly see athletes misunderstand how the body produces energy, especially during high-intensity interval training. Most commonly they believe that energy is produced sequentially by each of the three energy systems. That isn’t true.
It’s important to understand how your body produces energy, otherwise you’ll have no idea how to train effectively to increase your overall performance. That is just what we’ll discuss in the next section. If you like awesome fitness content, and want some of my free fitness guides, drop your email below.
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Anaerobic and Aerobic Energy Production
The vast majority of your daily energy needs come from aerobic energy production. As the name implies, your body needs oxygen to produce this type of energy. Because this energy system can run off of carbohydrates and fats, it has the ability to produce a huge quantity of sustained energy. It just can’t do so quickly, during higher intensity maximum heart rate training.
If you need a lot of energy in a short period of time, then your body shifts away from aerobic energy production, towards anaerobic energy. The technical term for this shift is your lactate threshold 1 (anaerobic threshold 1). As energy requirements increase, you move towards lactate threshold 2. This is where energy production rapidly becomes unsustainable. You can see the particulars of anaerobic metabolism in the graph below.
It’s important to point out that lactate does not cause the burning or fatigue you feel in your muscles. Your body actually uses lactate in your muscle cells to produce energy in a process called the Krebs cycle. The fatigue you feel when working hard is generally thought to be a result of lowering the pH in your cells, as well as an accumulation of hyrdogen ions.
It’s easy to understand how people get the idea that your body hands off energy production like a baton in a relay race. To use a Fast and Furious metaphor, your anaerobic energy system is like nitrous on a car. You don’t stop using the gas peddle when you push the nitrous button. Both have to work at the same time to go faster. Take a look at the next graph.
This graph highlights the relative contribution of your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems in various running races. I really like this graph because most of us have run these distances, and we have an intuitive understanding how this feels regardless of our fitness level.
You can see on the left that the 200m sprint is very anaerobic, with some aerobic use. The 400m race is about 60/40 anaerobic, aerobic. Its very clear that anything past 800m is very aerobic. Practically speaking, this means that a large portion of all athletic activity requires aerobic energy!
In the next section we’ll cover how to put together high-intensity workouts to increase your sports performance. If you really want to take your fitness to the next level you should check out the program below. It includes a variety of strength, anaerobic, and aerobic training to build well rounded fitness.
Constructing Your Best Anaerobic Workouts
A great way of increasing your anaerobic output, is HIIT, or high intensity interval training. As the name implies this type of interval training is done at close to maximum output in the given interval time. Using our graph above, this would be above lactate threshold 2.
The reason HIIT is one of the best anaerobic workouts is because it trains your body to produce energy using lactate more efficiently. It also increases your ability to tolerate changes in cellular pH, without reducing performance. Check out this chart below for the ideal work to rest ratio for interval training.
This graph comes from my ebook, “Programming Your Fitness.” For the purposes of this article the top three lines are the anaerobic system, with the the oxidative system being your aerobic energy system. This chart provides general guidelines for all cardiovascular endurance training.
For endurance sports athletes, who need to increase their anaerobic capacity, they should stick to intervals with a work to rest ratios of 1 to 3-5. This is something as easy as 30 sec of work with 90 seconds of rest. If you’re more interested in short sprint interval training, that would be 10 sec of work with 2 minutes or more of rest.
Exercise Type for Best Anaerobic Workouts
It’s important to note that you can apply these intervals to almost any type of exercise. As a coach, I find the best anaerobic activities use full body movements like running, assault bike, rowing, etc. You can still do this with strength training movements, but you need to limit your load to 30% of 1RM or less. The is the most effective way to lift weights for anaerobic endurance training.
Otherwise you won’t be able to maintain enough power output to challenge your energy system. You’ll be forced to stop because of your local muscular endurance. Moreover, you need to stick with big compound movements. There is no amount of bicep curling that will really challenge your anaerobic energy system as a whole.
In the next section, I’m going to review some of my best programs to work on your overall athletic improvement, and your anaerobic energy system specifically.
5 Programs for Anaerobic Endurance
I’ve written dozens of programs for all types of athletes. Most of my programs are designed to build functional strength, muscle mass, as well as conditioning. I recommend following the links to the programs for full information on the plan. They will include info on program design, specific goals, and training tips.
Your Next Program
- 8 Week Hybrid Strength and Endurance Training Plan
- 12 Week Apex Hybrid Performance Program
- 6 Week Muscular Growth Program
- 8 Week Hybrid Hypertrophy Program
- 8 Week Functional Bodybuilding Hybrid Program
If you’re the type of athlete that likes to have all the details then you should check out my premium programs. They include percentages for lifts, rest periods, as well as coaches notes on each portion of the workout. You can find my most popular hybrid bodybuilding program below.
Final Thoughts
While this article has been about your best anaerobic workouts, I would be remiss if I didn’t cover the importance of aerobic work for your cardiovascular system. If you recall the running chart above, it highlights that for any event longer than a minute, your body really uses the aerobic energy system.
If you want to increase your sports performance then you must work on your aerobic capacity. This is most often accomplished with Zone 2 training. You can read about that here, or here. Long story short, easy cardiovascular training will help you increase your performance.
If you have any comments or questions about the best anaerobic workouts, put them below, and I’ll get you an answer. Now get out there and get training. Don’t forget to join the email list below.
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