Anaerobic Training Effect

mcalista said:

One other thing to consider is that extended warmups/cool downs can lead to a workout being classed as "low aerobic" (because that is where you spent most of your time), even if the focus of the intervals was anaerobic. If how it is classed is important to you, you may want to consider recording your warm-up and cool down as separate activities.

Maybe I'll try this as I can't seem to get a "vo2max benefit" score no matter what I do.

I had a run a few months ago where I did hill repeats of about 4min each with equal recoveries and was surprised to get a "1.3" anaerobic benefit and an overall "vo2max benefit" for the entire run ( a 10m run with the hill reps at the end - LOOONG warmup for example).

But since then I have had a ton of workouts with repeats of 30sec to 5min where the recoveries were similar and the HR maxes were similar yet I keep chasing that "vo2max benefit" score and at best the anaerobic benefit coming in at .4 max and showing "no benefit."  

It's bizarre and I came here to start another thread on the topic but this one already discusses it so I'll bubble it to the top again.

I often aim for anaerobic workouts myself but it's hard to reach that level and I'm a sprinter, not so much a distance runner. My last run was 10X400m sprints on a track with 90 seconds of walking in between which gave me a purple Anaerobic activity with TE 3.4 / 3.4. I often do 100m, 200m, 300m, 400m sprints, never more than 500m because that's getting into more fast pace running than sprinting. I think the key to hitting that Anaerobic level is to really push myself to 100% effort on the sprints and then walk to recover in between so my heart rate drops back down. Sometimes I do sprint\jog repeats and I end up with a Tempo or VO2 Max run instead of Anaerobic, but I will still see that my Anaerobic Load has increased after the run. I don't recall having an Anaerobic purple run where my Anaerobic TE was not at least >3.0.

Longer sprints seem more likely to get me a purple run too. 100m is just so quick that my heart rate doesn't increase high enough on the efforts to raise my Anaerobic TE score. I actually have my 945 set to show my TE score on one of my Run activity screens so in the middle of my run I can check it and I will often see it increasing as I do more sprints.

FYI, I always do a 15m slow jog warmup and cooldown too so I don't think that will affect the TE score.

Thanks everyone for the food for thought and tips on this.  I do tend to gravitate more too aerobic stuff so I always tend to think keep HR up a bit to keep vo2max engine running between hard efforts.  BUT... if the goal is sprint speed or annaerobic repeats... then recovery between is part of that goal as well or really needs to be to enable the amount of intensity needed on the sprints!

I've been having this same issue with my runs and I never used to. I can only get anaerobic on my bikes. I don't get it! Something is up. I have a Garmin 945. I just reset all of my stryd stuff and double checked my HR zones in Garmin. I'm hoping something corrects sooner than later. It doesn't matter if I'm indoors or outdoors, tempo, track interval sessions doing 400s+ , threshold runs or hill sprints. They all say 0 anaerobic. I have a VERY sensitive HR so I know something is wrong with the calulations, I just can't figure out what or why. I know it's messing up my VO2Max as well. 

curious could you post share a couple workouts you did that you thought were "ideal" for  Anaerobic TE?  Curious to see - maybe one of bike as well that worked well?   even if it was screen shots with description if you don't wanna shrae. 

I've had mixed results lately with this... some give me decent results on something I wasn't expecting.  Typically from doing harder threshold (LT/tempo) intervals with faster 1min starts (plus 1min harder sprinkled into each interval)... with ~4minute recovery jogs with HR dropping down into to around 70% range before surging on treadmill with HR getting to 80 to 85% over a minute or two and then being pretty steady slope upwards over 6-10minutes.    But then on pretty hard 30-50sec hill sprints with 1min recoveries... get like 1.6 TE.  Don't get Zero scores much besides on longer steady runs (even if they have strides, cuz recovery between is at a aerobic easy run, not walk or jog)

Funny that this thread would bubble back up as last week on a whim I did the Garmin Suggested Workout of the day which was a Vo2Max workout with 9 reps of 15sec sprints each with 3min of recovery in between.  I did the workout as designed but a few times I had a hard time hitting the prescribed pace (5:00min/mile) because I was going up hill at the time.

At the end of the run I got a score of 3.2 aerobic and 0.9 anaerobic and it was supposed to be 2.5 & 2.5 for both.  I suspect I was not given full credit either because I didn't quite hit the pace targets, OR because a few times it took me awhile to let the HR drop into the prescribed zone (maybe it meant for me to walk) for the recoveries.

B@rt said:

to me this helped a lot to understand how to get the specific workouts spot on.

That's a nice find, thanks for sharing.

Today, similar to 4months ago (see post above), on a whim I did the Garmin Suggested Workout of the day which (for cycling) was 10 x 2min in max zone watts/power with 1min recoveries in Zone 1 - with a 15min warmup/cooldown tacked on each end.  It was supposed to be a "Vo2Max" workout that would net a Aerobic/Anaerobic Training Effect of 4.2/2.0.

I executed this workout perfectly on the trainer, hitting every wattage target for the Upper Zone work, and also recovering properly in the rest intervals.  The only thing I did was skip the last 5min of the cooldown, because frankly I ran out of time but i was also getting pretty bored with 15min of Zone 1 to finish out.

Garmin tagged the workout "Tempo" with an Aerobic/Anaerobic TE of 3.7/0.6 which is "no benefit" to anaerobic systems.

At this point I am completely puzzled in what I'm doing wrong?

badbri - with recoveries shorter than the work interval (and length of work interval of 2min (pretty long for Annaerobic))  

That would be 20minutes of work interval - pretty long!  A good vo2max aerrobic workout. BUT, I have always had issues with high intensity stuff giving a result that is 'vo2max' my heart rate just doesn't climb that much in 2-3min.   

Any time you 50% recovery time like that, you won't get the high-low heart rate alternations that the anaerobic effect is looking for.  Want a saw blade effect on graph.  I find 30sec is a bit to short to spike HR high enough ... out of the saddle full torque, maybe.   So something like 45-70sec zone6-7...  then double-triple that for recovery.

but yes, it can be puzzling! LOL

NickMN said:

BUT, I have always had issues with high intensity stuff giving a result that is 'vo2max' my heart rate just doesn't climb that much in 2-3min.   

Yeah I am guessing it is looking specifically for HR BPM data to drive the Vo2max aspect, even if I am nailing the power/watts (in this case) or the paces (if running).  I can't help how my HR is responding to the work prescribed so I guess there is not much to be done here to improve.