Polarised training is an exercise approach that divides your workout intensity into three levels: low, moderate, and high. This method encourages spending most of your workout time at low intensity, some at high intensity, and very little at moderate intensity. This approach has been widely studied and proven effective, especially for improving overall fitness and endurance. By avoiding the drawbacks of moderate-intensity workouts and reaping the benefits of both low and high-intensity exercises, polarised training offers a balanced and effective strategy for everyone. However, group fitness classes often fall into the “grey zone” of moderate intensity, which can hinder progress and lead to less-than-optimal results.
Key Components of Polarised Training
Strength Training
- Building Muscle and Strength: Helps you gain muscle and strength, making everyday activities easier and more efficient.
- Injury Prevention: Strengthens your muscles, tendons, and ligaments, reducing the risk of injury and improving joint stability.
- Boosting Metabolism: Increases muscle mass, which helps burn more calories even when you’re resting.
- Improving Performance: Enhances your overall physical performance, making you more efficient in activities like running and cycling.
Cardio Training
- Low-Intensity Cardio
- Building an Aerobic Base: Develops your basic endurance, making it easier for your body to use oxygen efficiently.
- Promoting Recovery: Helps your body recover and adapt without causing too much fatigue.
- Burning Fat: Enhances your ability to use fat as a fuel source, which is great for long-duration activities.
- High Volume, Low Stress: Allows you to exercise more without overloading your body, reducing the risk of overtraining.
- High-Intensity Cardio
- Improving Fitness Levels: Increases your maximum oxygen uptake (VO2 max), which is a key indicator of aerobic fitness.
- Enhancing Anaerobic Capacity: Boosts your ability to sustain high-intensity efforts.
- Time Efficiency: Provides significant fitness benefits in shorter workout durations.
- Metabolic Boost: Increases calorie burn after your workout, thanks to the “afterburn” effect (EPOC).
The Problem with the “Grey Zone”
- Less Effective Workouts: Exercising at moderate intensity doesn’t provide the full benefits of either low or high-intensity workouts. It’s not intense enough to significantly boost fitness, nor is it easy enough for effective recovery and fat burning.
- Inadequate Adaptation: Moderate-intensity workouts don’t offer the strong stimuli needed for significant fitness improvements. Your body doesn’t get the right signals to adapt and get stronger.
- Increased Fatigue: Consistently working out in the grey zone can lead to fatigue without proper recovery, increasing the risk of overtraining and burnout.
- Performance Plateau: You might hit a fitness plateau because the workouts are neither challenging enough to drive major improvements nor easy enough to allow full recovery.
Group Classes and the Grey Zone Problem
- Moderate Intensity Bias: Many group fitness classes often operate at a moderate intensity to suit everyone. This can place participants in the grey zone, where the intensity isn’t low enough for recovery or high enough for significant improvement.
- Lack of Personalisation: Group classes are designed for the masses and often don’t offer the personalised intensity needed for optimal fitness gains.
- Cumulative Fatigue: Regularly attending group classes at moderate intensity can lead to fatigue over time, as you may not get enough recovery between sessions. This increases the risk of overtraining and injury.
- Limited Progress: You may see limited progress and hit a fitness plateau because the training doesn’t provide the necessary intensity variation. Without low-intensity recovery sessions and high-intensity challenges, it’s hard to achieve significant fitness improvements.
The Benefits of Polarised Training
- Balance and Variety: Combines different workout intensities to keep things interesting and prevent injuries from overuse.
- Optimal Adaptation: Low-intensity sessions allow for more exercise volume and recovery, while high-intensity sessions provide the challenge needed for peak performance. Avoiding moderate intensity helps prevent the grey zone trap.
- Improved Results: Research shows that polarised training can lead to better fitness outcomes compared to other training methods, making it suitable for anyone looking to improve their fitness.
How to Implement Polarised Training
- 80/20 Rule: Aim for about 80% of your exercise time at low intensity and 20% at high intensity. If you’re a member of Form Fitness, we have you covered. Your high intensity training will be done under the guidance of our expert trainers. We consider all our strength sessions to be high intensity, you may not be sweating profusely but you are definitely getting stronger over time!
- Monitoring Intensity: Use tools like heart rate monitors, fitness trackers, or perceived exertion scales to ensure you’re working out at the right intensity. Our members like to use Strava to track their low intensity exercise outside of the gym like walking or cycling.
- Perceived Exertion Scales: RPE Scales or (Rate of Perceived Exertion) help you gauge how hard you feel you’re working on a scale from 1 to 10. Low intensity would be around 1-4 (easy to moderate effort), high intensity would be around 7-10 (hard to very hard effort), and the grey zone falls in the middle, around 5-6 (somewhat hard effort). Members at Form Fitness are well versed in using RPE Scales. Generally we like to keep our strength sessions between 7 & 9 for training or higher when attempting maximal efforts.
- Structured Plan: Incorporate polarised training into a structured plan to help you peak at the right times by adjusting the training load and intensity distribution progressively.
All our strength programs are periodized allowing for progressive overload in order to maximize training adaptations and to prevent the onset of overtraining syndrome.
In summary, polarised training combines the benefits of strength training, low-intensity cardio, and high-intensity cardio while avoiding the pitfalls of moderate-intensity “grey zone” workouts. This approach leads to optimal fitness and well-being, even when considering the challenges posed by group fitness classes. By understanding and applying the principles of polarised training, you can achieve better results and avoid the common issues associated with moderate-intensity workouts prevalent in many group fitness settings.
