How to increase "low aerobic" load?

For swim just watch

are you sure. you maxHR is correctly set? because I can do some intense rides, but if there is a lot of lower intensity time during my ride, i'll be BASE at the end anyway ...

so, everything below Z4 is BASE, or if majority of your effort is below Z4 it's still bASE.

anyway... these are just stupid numbers and another gimmicky meaningless graph to attract more people. If you train or do sports for some time, you know best what's good for you .... (you don't need an app to tell you that) 

I got to this thread because I couldn’t get a low aerobic load and wanted to find out why. This thread focuses severely on the ASSUMPTION that load focus is based on heart rate or heart rate zone. Even after the question was answered by an expert, people came back to this assumption. Many have explained that their low aerobic load hardly goes up even when staying in zone 2 for almost their entire training, which is also often the case with me. Some even went on that if Garmin does not award load based on heart rate zones, the only conclusion could be that the algorithm or even the firmware is at fault, but few considered that it may because training load is not as dependant on heart rate as most people seem to think. The more I thought about it the more I came to the conclusion that load focus can’t be based purely on heart rate zone. If that were the case load focus would be redundant, because we can already see in which heart rate zone we were training when we look at the heart rate zones. It’s called load focus, not heart rate focus.

Heart rate zone ≠ training load.

Training load seems to be an estimate on how much the exercise impacts your body, some exercise impacts your body quite a lot even at low heart rates. Prolonged duration of zone 2 exercise seems to push the entire load towards high aerobic. If you replace intensity for duration the training load will eventually become more straining and hence fall in the high aerobic category. But also training during an off day (sick, hungover, dehydrated) will be a bigger strain on your body even when you manage to keep your heart rate low. Same goes for being in bad physical shape, it’s easier to overreach yourself as well.

My assumption is that exercise that doesn’t require any physical recovery will fall into low aerobic and any exercise that will require you to take a break at one point will quickly fall into high aerobic. Exercise that you can only keep up for very short amount of time will award you anaerobic points. That’s why interval training can award both anaerobic and low aerobic load to some, without awarding high aerobic. Heart rate may factor into this, but I think it’s not a key element. Though it’s possible that the strain or load on your body is an estimate derived from complex cardiac data, such as variability and whatever Garmin does to estimate your VO2max.

Happy to hear any thoughts on this. I’ll try and see if I can increase low aerobic load based on this. Exercise enough to get a training load but still without exertion.

MAF = Maximum Aerobic Function.  Look it up.  I started on May 1st.   I do 90% HR less than 130 which is zone 1 for me (mtn bike, running, walking), 10% high/anaerobic.  Feel soooooo much better.  Runs are meditative and I feel energised after, not tired.  Requires a change of diet though, otherwise do not bother.  Worked for me.

Was tired of my watch nagging me about low aerobic.  Did what you did, found MAF while searching.

4730146 said:

Prolonged duration of zone 2 exercise seems to push the entire load towards high aerobic

That isn't true. Yes, what you describe may happen due to cardiac drift, but many of my multi-hour trail runs end up benefiting Base and having low-aerobic impact.

For example, I did a 7+ hour 30 mile trail run a week ago. Aerobic benefit was 5.0 and low-aerobic load - 342. Average HR was 127.

I actually have zero problem getting the recommended low-aerobic load. More often, I am low on high aerobic load. And I am always very low on anaerobic load.

It's definitely HR and Zone driven. But, the weird thing is if your zone 2 maxes out at 130 and you spend 1 hour there, you get very little low aerobic. If your zone 2 maxes out at 150 and you spend an hour there you get plenty of low aerobic. 

My conclusion after solving this issue is that the zones are not correct as a default. The fix for me was to set my heart rate zones using % of max, rather than the default. Before doing this, zone 2 for me was barely a fast walk and I felt like I was doing nothing, my breathing was not even elevated. Switching to the other option shifted all my zones around and not only did Zone 2, sometimes known as "Easy" feel correct, as I was just starting to breath and able to slow jog but my low aerobic points started coming in much more abundantly. Now when I follow the garmin program to the letter, I get a good mix of the three loads. The warm ups and slow runs are enough to keep me balanced.

In short, either manually adjust your heart rate zones, or like I did, select one of the other calculation options through the app.  

My heart rate zones are calculated via my lactate threshold. I am going to assume the zones are correct. If anything, they're set a bit low: I can easily push my heart rate higher than what Garmin considers my max heart rate based on LT.

I still don't understand why training load would exist if it is just a different way of saying heart rate zones, there just has to be more to it than that.

And indeed, somewhere in this thread someone posted a video by Garmin where it is explained:

https://youtu.be/Okq6BKYHy3o

Quote: "your device analyses your heart rate, your speed or power and the structure of your workout to automatically identify that workout's primary benefit."

--> so not just heart rate, but other data as well. Heart rate zones aren't mentioned anywhere in this clip, not once. IThe voice over mostly talks about pace/power and VO2max.

Quote: "anaerobic work involves multiple intervals above VO2max pace."

And quote:" high aerobic work-out range from sustained, moderately hard efforts up to intervals done near your VO2max pace."

--> heart rate (zone) is not mentioned, just VO2max pace.

Sadly, low aerobic load is explained more vaguely,  stating that they are "easy efforts".

Stating that focus load is solely based on heart rate zones is trying to squeeze a triangle through a circle. It doesn't seem to fit. Saying that it's because the heart rate zones are off is just squeezing harder, but it still doesn't fit. Of course, heart rate and VO2max power/pace are related, they're just not the same thing. I believe they call that a confounding variable. I'll repeat that I think that heart rate is somewhere in the algorithm that calculates training load, but it just can't be the only variable (as explained in the video).

3 months of every types of training never had a low aerobic good target.

2 weeks of slow hiking with my 4yo son and here it is

what's the 'default' setting for zones?  of course you can 'build' low aerobic by walking, but slowly, for me even fast walking touches Zone1. Zone3 would be fastest i guess (without being exhausted too fast (30-60mins?) by running in Zone4)

8562512 said:

manually adjust your heart rate zones

Why do you want to adjust them? just set your MaxHR correctly.

BTW...what's the point of 'gathering' these low, hi aero, anaerobic points...if you 'cheat' the system by adjusting your zones   anyway, these are jus stupid numbers, nice looking gimmick. just train or do excercises as you like, it should be for you, not  for Garmin