Zone 2 Is Overrated Says Norwegian Super Coach

Zone 2 training is all over the internet these days, but not everyone is sold on it. Are you wasting your time by focusing too much on zone 2? And is it really as game-changing as some say? In this video, Olav Aleksander Bu shares his thoughts on zone 2 training, discussing its potential shortcomings, and crucially, what we might be able to do instead and potentially BETTER in our training!

Are you wasting your time with zone 2? 0:00
Welcome Olav! 1:48
Nuance regarding what zone 2 actually improves in the body 2:15
The power of mitochondria and mitochondrial efficiency 4:22
Performance and how training impacts all systems of the body 9:24
What do you suggest for people training 6-8 hours per week? 16:27
Variety in training, consistency, and leaving intervals in reserve 18:58
Why leave an interval in reserve 22:23
Alternative training philosophy and how to create consistency 27:04
Conclusion 32:28

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Zone 2 training is everywhere the internet is obsessed but not everyone thinks it lives up to the hype I have no indications you could just scrap all other training and do only son two training like make you a winner in t the France are you wasting your time by focusing too much on Zone 2 and is it really the magic formula that some believe it is calling a sprinter into the front a sprinter disgrace to the real sprinters that are on the track and that have thighs that are the size of the stomach of of the guy sitting in in in in in the pelaton one person with such reservations is Olaf Alexander Buu the genius coach behind Christian Blumenfeld and Gustaf Iden between them they have Rewritten not just the history books but redefined what people thought was humanly possible it’s not like you can do one like a point training where you only do one thing and it has no impact on all parts of the body everything has an impact on all things in the body for most people people it will bring you uh far but you will stagnate at some point if you feel you have more in reserve towards then go bunkers just to empty yourself that’s a really bad uh bad way to go about it Olaf is at the absolute Cutting Edge Of Human Performance so when he expresses some reservations about Zone 2 I want to listen so in this video he will give us his thoughts on Zone 2 training where he feels like it might not live up to expectations crucially what we might be able to do instead potentially better including a training philosophy that I really like the sound of now we’ve left this video long the interview is basically uncut so if you like this sort of thing please let us know by hitting the like button and get involved in the comment section too Olaf it is an absolute privilege to talk to you today thank you so much for joining us here on gcn I’m very honored to say uh it’s a Big Show and uh I’m I’m I’m um I’m that you find my opinions interested well yeah absolutely we do um I’m very much hoping that some of your expertise and your knowledge is going to rub off on me and the GCM viewers in our quest for improved performance whatever that may be um I’m going to dive straight in if I may so the theory behind zone two training as I understand it is that it improves your mitochondrial function so you can perform better not only at lower intensities but in higher intensities as well can you explain why you don’t agree with that it’s not that I disagree with it uh but I think um it has to be more nuanced and what I mean by that is that I think very often the conversation around what it really improves in the body talking about whether it’s cardiovascular respirator respiratory uh mitochondrial whatnot that the problem with most of those kind of things that we are trying to find a let’s say a hook for something that we most of us uh can’t really measure um that’s one part of it and the second part of it is that also when we have done measures on this there are also several studies out there in the past where there have been um let’s say the mitochondrial function have been assessed in humans and not only in humans but also in animals and we normally see that the mitochondrial system is orders of magnitude more powerful than um or cardiovascular system or respirator system as well so when I think that it it it it clutters the debate a little bit when when when one starts uh creating these kind of hooks that that are not not let’s say very hard to to to make tangible when we talk about Improvement in performance and I think that for most people whatever training you do as long as you do it consistently over time that is normally what will contribute most to an increase in performance and most often when people go out and they want to exercise people are super motivated they go too hard and they Burns and this is maybe also why it’s maybe easier to say that hey zone two training seems to work because it’s it is something that mostly often um promotes better consistency in the training without that it necess that without that it actually is the Holy Grail uh to to become fitter okay that’s really interesting can I come back to that point about um your mitochondria being orders of magnitude more powerful than the cardiovascular system what do you mean by by that so if you do something called respir or mitochondrial respiration testing so that means you basically go in and you basically take invasively or you invasively go in and you extract cells and basically also the mitochondria and you take that and you you bring it into a special chamber where we basically feed oxygen into look at saturation and basically uh the amount of uh oxygen that mitochondria can take out is we’re not only talk it’s several order of magnitudes more oxygen uptake on the mitochondrial level than basically what the heart is able to supply and pump or basically transform for the blood to transport around oxygen molecules for that to truly reach saturation of course we can say that well you your body doesn’t only consist of mitochondria obviously the muscles and other things as well so it’s not like it’s not pure mitochondri mitochondri is a part of let’s say the structure so then you can say well you have to look at it more Nu like only not only mitochondri you have to look at it maybe as weight per mitochondria per per weight or something like this but even then when you normalize it and you account for let’s say body water um uh bone bone mass muscle mass and these kind of thing still the amount of mitochondria you have in the body basically are uh several orders of magnitude more powerful uh mean or can extract more oxygen available than what your heart and lungs uh are capable of supplying of oxygen to the mitochondria per time and the way to also this is have also been studied uh more let’s say now that is the invitro part of it where you extract mondia and you do that but also when this has been studied in Vivo where basically you you take an atlet and you make them exercise um then also studies there that has been done not only uh in the past but also actually recently as last year there’s a study coming out uh probably this year maybe or next year but where basic that was executed here in Norway but where basically you’ll see that also when you do uh when you do invasive techniques as well when people are exercising you basically see that when people are exercising they’re able to extract all the oxygen that is basically supplied by the heart and the lungs and for in order for that to happen there has to be a system that is capable of extracting all that oxygen and that is obviously mitochondria primarily um so that’s also where you can basically say that talking about improved mitochondrial efficiency and micro mitochondrial density yes that is happening but that’s more a part of where the body is trying to be smart I think about okay how can I improve the performance so it will look for improvements wherever it can and you will be able to document and improve mitochondrial density and efficiency but that’s not where the largest adaptations have to happen in order for you to increase increase your performance the the the for you to improve not marginally but significantly it’s more important to have an improvement in in uh I would say the central system mainly than the cardiovascular and also the respiratory system for you to be able to supply more oxygen per time whether that is actually for longer duration uh but then we’re also talking other systems as well more neurological systems and other things as well or for a shorter time where you’re hitting for example U2 Max or whatever and then of obviously then is purely cardiovascular or not purely but predominantly cardiovascular and and respiratory so so what do you mean by the by the central system then if we’re not talking cardiovascular or cellular so obviously there are many more Central is is a very very uh call it a general istic or or or very large Silo to put it that way obviously there are to the central system we could also put in neurological components uh into that as well let’s say parts of the system you have of course some parts of the system which is very slowly adapting uh to training stimulus and then you have part of the system that responds far quicker to training stimulus but I think that for for the sake of this discussion I would say that when we typically talk about training and we’re looking for adaptations that are typically Quant if iable over weeks or months then I think talking about the central system here could be mainly be limited mostly to uh the cardiovascular and the respiratory system as let’s say call it the central system or the system that supplies oxygen and then you have the peripheral system which is then the mitochondria muscles and these kind of things in that that are to to extract the oxygen in order to do work yeah it’s super interesting you know because when I was speaking to um Dr in saman previously on to he is adamant that the main dictator of performance happens at the cellular level am am I right thinking that you disagree with that no I don’t disagree with it I would just say it’s more nuanced much more nuanced than that so it depends also what you would call uh what how you denote or or also performance so let’s say that you were looking for two def France and we even like two the France when we talk about t let’s say categories there we maybe we talk about domestic or the T tier guys that are pulling the train and then you have the G here that sits sits in the middle there and then you have the Sprinter there but we also have to remember that calling a sprinter in the France a sprinter is it’s a I would say a disgrace to the real sprinters that are on the track and put like that have thighs that are the size of the stomach of uh of the guy sitting in in in in in the pelaton the thing is that all training you do will have an impact on all systems in your body it’s not like you can do one like a point training where you only do one thing and it has no impact on all the parts of the body everything has an impact on all things in the body and we also have to I think that for the sake of the debate to make it more clearer I think that very often what we’re looking for when we’re looking about looking for improvement it really doesn’t matter whether it comes from the mitochondria or does not come from mitochondria or heart or not what really matters in the end is let’s say ability to do something consistently sustainably in a workout but also over time over a long time not over over a couple of weeks or a couple of months but actually year after year and then it’s more about actually using the tools that we have available and looking at Power and then basically looking at duration or kilojoules that we can do and even look at robustness there as a function of how what kind of ability do you have to repeat power duration when you’re fresh when you’re fatigued after certain kinds of workouts and these kind of thing and then it really doesn’t matter where the adaptation happens but I would say that uh obviously one of the things that we know are super important and you can almost quantify consistency in so consistency could be very easily Quantified as for example maximum sustainable energy expenditure how many kilojoules of work are you able to put into your program over a long time talking about not not only 14 days but but and not only a month but actually even quarters I would say even years after each other and then when you look at this one of the main things that happens of course when you start training is obviously that there is a there is an adaptation all over in the body independently of what kind of training you do if you do two do zone two training you will have an adaptation in mitochondria you will have an adaptation both in efficiency and density and so on you will have muscular adaptations beyond that you will have uh neurological adaptations you will have um uh cardiovascular respiratory all kinds of adaptation but as you start doing this training over a little bit of time and you are getting in that consistency the problem is that you will start to stagnate and in order now to advance you need to put in also more of the let’s say uh uh uh call it medium duration work or let’s say uh call it medium intensity training and you also have to put in the high intensity training and I think also here what is very important to the debate there is we talk about high-intensity training we have to talk about vol volume at high intensity volume at medium intensity and volume at low intensity trading and in the end I I’m uh I have no indications saying that you could just strap all other training and do only Z two training and that would basically Pro like make you a winner in t def France you would be able to do good in t France simply because most of the race you do in a t France obviously sits around in your Zone too obviously so you would be able really good to get to towards the finish line but when the Finish Line comes that basically if you then haven’t done any spring Sprint practice of this kind of thing you are out you’re out far beyond that so it is a I I think that like like San Diego and other people that are that obviously are incredibly intelligent and good in the field I I I don’t think there are any disagreement but it’s mainly sometimes we all look for that let’s say exercise in the pill or magic in the pill more or less and we want those simple solution that helps us move forward and to make it simple if if if if to make it simple I would say okay doing Z two training um surely that that will bring you for most people it will bring you uh far but you will stagnate at some point and at that point you need to redistribute the volume and start focus on the things where they have a limitation and so to obviously you can put it this way if we say that zone two would be the equivalent of your depending on how much training you could do how much hours you got available for training per week so let’s said you only went out and you did the power the power numbers that you normally Target for two to 4our rides for example okay so your two to four hour power will also rise every all kinds of even your five minute power will start to rise what will happen at some point there is that you start to see that there’s less developments happening in the five minute power domain but still your two to four hour power will start to increase at some point obviously uh making it anecdotally or or or metaphorically speaking but your your 2hour power can’t be higher than your one 1 hour power and your 1 Hour Power can’t be higher than your 5 minute power and at some point you have a such high utilization that you’re are hammering the roof more or less and if you don’t raise the roof then then basically there is stagnation that you will have stagnation so we can always talk about mitochondria density and mitochondria efficiency and these kind of things and you see Improvement there but again it’s about I think we all the exercise in the pill is being let’s say mindful about where you put your training and looking at okay you will need a variety in your training so I would say low intensity training put it that way do a lot of slow intensity training it’s far easier to keep the consistency in that than when you start to put in more medium and high intensity especially if you’re a little bit ambitious and you really putting it out and like trying to dig yourself a whole I think then you very often can easily run into um areas where you start to exhaust you drive yourself too deep and you need to recover for more days and you start to lose the consistency habits and routines and other things and it’s harder to get back again so it is a it is a Nuance discussion but if we just say that you had really good control of your training and you were able to balance in the right way I would say Variety in the training is and will be and I have no other indication that that is still the king uh in order to to to to to reap maximum reward from the for the training that you’re putting in that’s super interesting so so people who do zone two training and see an improvement that’s as you say it’s perfectly understandable because it’s a training stimulus and therefore your body is going to improve but that at some point you’re going to reach that that limiter and again I think I agree in that one of the reasons why Zone 2 is so popular because it it promises it’s it’s easier to do so you do get that consistency and then also it promises that you can get better without trying too hard and therefore it’s more appealing for people to do so so the a reason to do some zone two training but what would you advise people look at particularly those who are time crunched you know where you might not have the opportunity to do more than you know six to eight hours training a week what kind of proportion of should we say like low intensity work should you do in relation to high intensity or medium intensity as well which is kind of often forgotten about weirdly in all of this so six to eight hours of trading per week uh I would say that the old age uh Sweet Spot training uh it’s it’s a reason for why it got a place and it is because it is a Time crunched way of of course reaping rewards quicker but of course then you’re also starting to come closer to because already when you’re doing six to six to eight hours of training um when you have done this for a long long time you become more robust and I say all systems in your body because they’re adapting at different speeds are getting more and parity to put it that way in the beginning it’s easier to put yourself into an overdrive mode because also when we talk about sweet spots training or or or let’s say medium intensity training the problem with that is that what what I often see is that if people have a system and I say yeah we do this much training in zone two this much training in zone three this much training in zone four and so on typically what I see is that when you go in and you look at it from a metabolic perspective that’s not the case they actually end up actually doing this training they do zone two actually happens in zone three the training they do in zone three actually ends up in zone four and the training they do in zone four is actually in zone five it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong but it already clutters the whole discussion a little bit on what is really what and what are you doing and so on because it is not really well defined uh so um six to eight hours of training per week I would say that it’s extremely important to listen to your body uh that is important what I mean by that is that I would say that for most people a time crunch and you’re looking to create consistency exit the session always where you have let’s say in in let’s say in in in the strength and conditioning world we talk about uh repetitions in reserve so here we could for example say call it intervals in reserve so you would basically exit the session always with intervals in reserve you know that you can complete it with the same quality and I mean by quality is that you’re not brute forcing it you’re basically putting in the technique that is required like you have the cognitive capacity in order to executing good with good technique is in place that’s quality but you’re also executing on an intensity as well where basically you know that okay I could have done maybe at least two more one or two more of these one depending of course on how how long the intervals are that is the way to also then when you go out the next day uh to make sure that you are probably more rested but also actually more willing to do the training because you don’t remember how grueling the the yesterday’s session was so 6 to eight hours of training I would do it um son two training is really it’s it’s it’s it’s fine uh but you could probably still if you really do it in zone two you could probably bring it up to zone three and you would have better rewards uh from by alternating that say one day you do zone three one day you do zone two zone three and maybe even putting in some some I would I would normally say that one structure could be Mondays you do stone two to stone three for example um depending also whether you only do cycling or if you do more Sports involved but let’s say if we focus it on cycling I would say Okay Zone one zone two for example Mondays Tuesday you could go zone four zone five and then you bring and dial it back down again to to EAS here again on on Wednesday where you go for example then zone two again and then again so Thursday you bring higher so this is a well-known structure and the reason why is a well-known structure is obviously because it it is something that wasn’t developed yesterday this is something I have developed over I would say decades into a system where we know that alternating between easy a little bit harder easy harder easy harder and then maybe a couple of days easier for example so you get a little bit more time to get this recover before you bring it again in again this is something that works the only problem with this is again it requires a little bit more attention to details and mindfulness about your your uh how much you extract from yourself because you are bringing it at the moment you start trying to reap a little bit more performance for the same amount of hours you’re also bringing yourself a little bit more towards the edge where you need to have a little bit more Precision in the execution you do as well so obviously Sone two the level of accuracy or or Precision in what you do can you can neglect that to a large extent you really don’t have to understand too much about power or what these kind of things and also whether you are really mindful about your your how you feel after the session is not as critical as if you start to go harder but I would normally like the old old age um uh models which is more pyramidal where you have some high intensity maybe one day you have medium intensity some days and then you alternate in between easier training in between there to space it out a little bit is a very safe structure for people training six to8 hours a week yeah I really love that idea about having one interval in reserve is that has that come do you think from like more of your swimming and running background because I guess certainly in swimming your Technique is is everything right and it feels like swim training people are always being held back from going flat out in order to maintain technique and I would imagine running is somewhere in the middle whereas on a bike you can you know you’re fixed in one position aren’t you so so is there a is there a technique benefit to it or is it simply so that you can m maintain that consistency and train most days train more frequently I think very often when we talk about is already int like introductory to this call we talked about M mitochondria and we are extremely call it f physiologically uh oriented and very little psychologically oriented because it’s a more gray area we have less sophisticated instruments uh or at least practical instruments that allows us to also track what happens from a neurological standpoint and so on technique is obviously important even in cycling even though they let’s say the degrees of freedom there are less than they are obviously in running and especially in swimming where you have full like full you have three or as many degrees of freedom you almost want I would say that yeah the benefit of all to dating so you get easy days and you get hard days are exactly that you are when you go into the hard days you obviously have had an easy day before so you’re more rested to go into that hard day there so you can have a better execution or better quality on the execution as well as you get the intensity if you get too hard on the easy days that will already start to impair let’s say the development on the hard days and then it becomes more like this soup training or whatever uh word is is used used for it um uh and it’s not only the let’s say the physiological part or let’s say the the muscles or or heart or or whatever that is in the body needs recovery is equally much the nerve system and other things as well the cognitive system and so on so the benefit of alternating the training as well is also that even on your hard session when you do a hard session you will also bring the quality of execution because when you do harder training higher intensity training that require that dictates a higher demand for coordination and of course when you then bring it back down to easy session again you bring of course that added benefit also to the easy session where coordination all things becomes easier as well so it allows you also to progress from for for for for many reasons also the easy training as well so again uh there are many ways to to to do this and it it becomes I don’t know it becomes a little bit of um polymics to put it to put it that way but I I would say that if you quantify if you look at it purely okay you’re doing a cycling you have brilliant instruments on your bike and the most two brilliant instrument you have on your bike is is a power meter power meter and uh basically and and obviously a clock so you get both power and you get the duration or time and then on top of that you also today have readily accessible uh instrument that you can put on your body like a heart rate monitor and an an smo2 device like The Moxy monitors for example and that gives you a very good indication what’s going on in your body as well and focusing simply on the training that what do you do Z two training what do you do polarized training pyramidal training and so on the whole point is that if you have 6 to eight hours per week is that you are able to do more robustly consistently more kilj per week but also that you are able to maintain or even improve also the power output for given durations as well and and that’s where uh I I’m fairly convinced that if you took a large group and you put them into a let’s say a z two group pure Z two group which I don’t think really s San Diego or or or or other people are are are really saying um that that’s the only thing you should do and then you can become a two the FR cyclist it is more Nuance than that but again comes back to the simple message but if you put people into different groups um confident if you put one in a pureon two group one in a polarized group or in a pyramidal group uh and so on you would see that the group that are capable of executing the most amount of kils on Purely Zone 2 maybe that would be the Z two guys but if you are looking to have a little bit more performance than just purely zone two so you want to be able to have a nice climb maybe take some straa segments and these kind of things you basically need to also put in the h intensity and medium intensity and you will see that those guys are clear will will be the clear winners on that okay so I feel like we might have have got to the Crux of this but just to sort of recap I think that one of the reasons why Zone 2 has become so popular is just because of how simple it is so could you propose like an alternative training philosophy then as I said I think we’ve touched on it already but a philosophy that would be potentially more effective but as easy to understand and carry out I would say it depends a little bit on your your your target obviously whether you looking to just exactly you are a straa segment hunter or whether you are more like purely exercising to increase your longivity and you’re just looking for that consistency and simplicity and so on but even then I would say that uh there are things we can measure today we have a lot of good instruments today but there are even more things we can’t really measure today and where that where you need to be mindful mindful about it and that’s where exactly let’s say that the reason why zone two training are very effective is exactly that it’s it’s it’s you are you are let’s say you’re taking away uh different parts that potentially can lead to let’s say a burnout or or that you’re driving yourself through the ground uh in a couple of weeks time problem very often is that uh or we we we are very simply in our mind we look at what we did yesterday so when we get really tired today we’re looking at what did I do yesterday why why I’m so tired today but in fact it was maybe the training over the last three four weeks that actually resulted in that today is the day you really feel it and we start hammering rather yesterday and we don’t actually understand the larger picture of it so zone two training in that sense is of obviously uh nice and easy because it doesn’t really require a lot of uh it should feel easy that’s the whole point with it uh I would say that if I were to propose a different training philosophy philosophy is one you when you first have a pet on your bike which you probably have use it and and and decide before you go out in training what intensity you going to nail uh and don’t if you feel you are more in reserve towards the end go Bonkers just to EMP yourself that’s our really bad uh bad way to go about it so I I I would rather be like be think that there’s a day after tomorrow the session that you do today is not what’s going to lead to an increased performance because that would be nice then all two different Riders could basically just go out the day before to the France put in a monster session and then win to the France you it’s the consistency that brings them up to the level where they are so to create a consistency decide on what you going to do before the session and stick to the plan don’t deviate from it stick to the plan and then the only deviation you’re going to make from that plan is to reduce it and that is based on feeling that okay can I execute one more the next interval with the same quality as I did the previous one and then I talking about quality I’m talking about executions so technique that you’re mindful about when do you’re not ending up where you’re just brute forcing through the last interal because bad idea again that’s why son two training works so again to to to to improve the whole program and to propose I call it another philosophy or let’s say an improvement to that philosophy it is use your instruments your power meter and basically go out and have more training where you have easy days hard days or let’s say easy days medium days hard days space them in with the easy days in between try to pick maybe three sessions three let’s say medium to hard days a week and always leave the hard sessions with let’s say intervals in reserve so even if you plan with 10 intervals if you start to feel that no the two last intervals here is going to dig me through the ground skip them and you will I I’m I’m pretty sure you will actually start to see more even more improvements in your program than purely doing zone two training but it dictates that you basically are able to keep the consistency if you’re not di it back a little bit and then grow it again but don’t go bunkers I feel like you’re looking into my soul when you’re saying if you got something left in the tank buers just that that that it is exactly for those people the so let’s say the zone two why why because like going bunkers that’s what we all when we exercising oh yeah come on now 1 of January I promise myself Beach Body 2024 here I come and you you are motivated you go out and you just want to feel almost that blood taste in your mouth going out of that session afterwards the problem is that when you read in the papers yeah these many new subscribers to the training center or the fitness center 1 of January 80% of them gone 1 of February simply because they drained themselves over the weeks that came in there and they don’t understand what maybe they they end up thinking it must be a flu or something like that that no you basically empty the battery and the problem is that we don’t have a good battery indicator on the body say oh this is how much I need to recover to be back at 100% or 90% or whatever we don’t have that indicator that is training smartness what which needs to be developed over time and the only way to develop that over time is to get in consistency and getting into consistency means holding back great St that’s absolutely fantastic well yeah it’s been brilliant talking to you um and uh and yeah some incredible insights there so thank you very much yeah my pleasure one interval in reserve write that down I Bloom and loved that blooming loved it I hope you did too as well Olaf unsurprisingly is coming at this from a really high performance perspective but don’t let that obscure the lessons that we can all learn in there consistency absolutely key and you can get that by not absolutely B ing yourself on any session and then variety as well tuned to whatever goal or objective you might have in mind and crucially whilst I was expecting him perhaps to rubbish Zone 2 training he did not Zone 2 is definitely a way to train even if perhaps it is not the most effective but if you enjoy it and it gives you consistency then absolutely keep on doing it now a huge thanks to Olaf for his time today again if you’ve enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up hit the like button and then we will get another amazing interview sorted for you at some point soon