As a coach teaching Crossfit classes, and even from some general population clients as well, I often get asked “How can I improve my engine?”
If you’re unfamiliar with this term, I’m referring to your capacity in conditioning workouts.
Whenever we do conditioning work, we have two metabolic pathways that we use, the Aerobic and Anaerobic pathways.
Aerobic= uses oxygen. Think slower, longer conditioning bouts.
Anaerobic= no oxygen. Think high effort conditioning workouts, like sprints.
No matter what type of conditioning work we do, we are using a combination of these pathways. Some types of training and physical tasks require more of one than the other, but when it comes to building your ENGINE, you’ll need both to be efficient.
If you feel that your engine capacity needs work, there are a few things you need to know beforehand.
Do you know what your limiters are? (is it your breathing or is it muscular fatigue that slows your down?)
Is your engine capacity diverse (can you run, swim, bike, do burpees, etc.?)
Do you do percentage work to improve your engine, or is every workout done at an all-out effort?
What modalities are you using to improve your engine? Are you doing only monostructural work(bike, rower, run, etc.) or do you add in mixed modal training(kettlebell swings, box jumps, squats, etc.)?
How well do your recover from bouts of conditioning work?
The answers to these questions can tell you exactly what you need to be working on when it comes to improving your engine capacity.
When a client tells me they want to improve their engine, I provide a program that has very specific progressions, just like if they had a weight training goal.
Here is a general breakdown of how to program and improve your conditioning and how to progress from week to week:
1) Build a foundational layer of aerobic capacity and breathing control.
This means longer, slower bouts of conditioning movements while keeping your breathing under control.
Breathing in different movement patterns is a skill in and of itself. You may be a great runner, but throw you on a bike and you’re winded immediately. Breathing needs to be trained, just like anything else.
2) Teach yourself how to show control in a workout with “increasing effort” sets.
This could also be called “tempo work”, but this means being able to pace yourself early enough in a workout, and still having enough juice to increase your pace later on.
3) Use work-rest sets early in training progressions to make sure you aren’t only working under fatigue.
4) Start with simple movements.
With Crossfit athletes and other mixed modal exercisers, they want to jump right into power cleans and burpees.
Start with less complex movements, build up your base with those, and then progress to more complex movements.
Remember, conditioning work doesn’t have to just be on the track or a bike. Any movement that you can repeat sustainably can give you an “engine building” stimulus.
5) Progress intensity by cutting down rest, increasing your effort/output, implementing more complex movements, adding in sets, etc.
6) Use a “test workout” that you can come back to and track your progress in certain conditioning formats.
If you’re a runner, this could be your 5k time.
If you’re a rower, this could be a 2k time trial.
If you’re a Crossfit athlete, this could be doing a benchmark workout like Fran.
If you’re crazy, you could do 100 burpees as fast as possible. Have fun with that one.
Key takeaways
If every week looks like “testing week”, then you will likely find yourself facing the same problems over and over. You can’t learn how to pace workouts when you work at your highest effort.
Early weeks of training should prioritize work-rest ratios the favor less fatigued working times.
Conditioning and skills don’t get built in one training session. You have to build them up over several weeks, but you will then have to return to fundamentals and start over again!
Progress week to week by decreasing rest, increasing movement complexity, and overall intensity/volume.
Make sure that when you “retest your engine”, your test mimics what you’ve been training. Don’t use a running program if your goal is to improve a Crossfit workout like Fran. The Law of Specificity applies to conditioning as well.
Now, you may be asking yourself “Bro, why do I even need to improve my conditioning?”
A good engine is one of the most transferable aspects of your fitness that can apply to your life.
If you want to be able to do a wide variety of tasks, over a broad time frame(bike ride in the park, walk the dog, chase your kids around, play volleyball with your coworkers, get all your housework done in one day), then improving your engine is going to be one of the greatest things you can do.
Strength, mobility, balance, etc. are all important, but having a better engine will likely do more for your daily well-being, mental awareness, and energy balance.
Get your engine right, get your body right, and get your health right!
Enjoy all that heavy breathing! Peace out, cub scouts. Stay Evolving.
Coach Ian