Aaron King (00:00):

Welcome back to the modern old school training podcast. I'm Aaron King and today's topic is cardiovascular conditioning, AKA fitness. And so we're going to talk coach Bob King is gonna kind of break down some, some studies and then some training things. So you can think about, and just your conditioning, which I think is very important,

Bob King (00:20):

Well, it is. And you know, from a coaching standpoint, I've, I've said for years, there's no halftime adjustment for fatigue and that conditioning or that fighting off fatigue comes from a cardiovascular fitness standpoint. And so if I go to the early days and work my way forward, it was very difficult to figure out how to take what we know in science. It's been established for decades now that a good base of cardiovascular fitness if is a 20-minute run. And so as a coach in high school, I was coaching football. At the time I had a problem, I couldn't take my football team out and just go run for 20 minutes. And I just kinda had the knowledge that I had at the time. I'm still learning things, but I did some hypothesizing. And so I figured after about it was just rounded to two hours of football practice.

Bob King (01:12):

If we pull our pads off and went for a jog, let me think if we do, and I started prying to make things fit the paradigm. So it's like every football player on the team should be able to run an eight-minute mile. And some of you all think, well, yeah, no kidding. Keep in mind. I've got some, some big boys who play right tackle. That's a long way to go. And so I had to figure something out. And so what we did was we couldn't run for 20 minutes. We couldn't run over the track and go run a mile. So I just went ahead and hypothesized. Everybody should run an eight-minute mile. What I'll do is we'll pull off the shoulder pads and we'll just do a timed run. And this is where it really gets, I think good is that we would say, okay, everybody's going to go and we're going to break it down like this.

Bob King (01:56):

Everybody runs for six minutes. I blow the whistle. You get a one minute walk, we blow the whistle. You get two more minute run because we also know it's hard to stop and then restart. So I wanted to stress them. I figured after two hours of the central system is fatigued. And so they're going to be able to get some benefit out of it because they're not fresh. And coaches like to say, everybody's going to do the same. Well, that was the best way I could do it because those little skinny wide receivers are going to go flying by. And that's because that's what they do in a game. And they go up and down the field, the linemen aren't going to run as far, but they don't run it as far as the game. Cause they're taking three steps and they're done. So we equalized it and made all the coaches happy.

Bob King (02:37):

And we found that during the course of the season, we never got tired. And it was like, man, we did that every Wednesday after a workout. And it just paid big dividends. We had other running schemes going on during the week, but not for today, but we mixed it up between short. And, but that time runs fast forward. Here in the last year or two, I ran across some Mayo clinic papers on cardiovascular fitness. And it just, the data is there. Cooper did a bunch of stuff and everybody keeps bringing, you know, cardiovascular training and methods out. And we can, you know, we can argue about the best way it's getting your heart rate going. I'm just think the weight room is easy. I promote the weight room. I'm in it every day, but I'm also doing my fitness every day.

Bob King (03:21):

And so I take a day off, but what we want to do is get people, understanding that cardiovascular fitness trumps everything. So now when you say that, when I say that too many people just run off to go say, I can't jog, I had no way I can go carry this body across the country. I got, and that's not what I said. Cardiovascular fitness comes in many forms and I don't run anymore. The wear and tear is added up. So I'm an Airdyne guy. I'm on an assault bike, and that's my weapon of choice StairMaster I have at home. So those are the things I use and it works just fine for my annual physicals and so forth. Now for the people watching at home, it's like, okay, my kid can benefit from doing that beneficial, extra workout. The King boys, when they're high school days, we get on the Airdyne on Sundays before Monday practice to get their system going because we needed, you needed to be fit.

Bob King (04:17):

And it paid off really well. So where we're headed with this back to the Mayo clinic papers, they did research across the spectrum in decades, like 40 years old, 50 year old, 60 years old in the seventies and in all into eighties. And they found a couple of things. The paper showed that the better higher level of cardiovascular fitness you had your life expectancy. Obviously, it was better. I mean, that's not so obvious, but it was predictable. When I first got into this business, I had a lecture I was in attending where the doctor speaking was talking about cardiovascular fitness and he concluded with this. He says, we cannot promise to add years to your life, but we can add life to your years. And that was just a great summary statement because I don't know how old anybody can live to be, but you want to live.

Bob King (05:09):

You don't want to be, you know, in a bed and, you know, just incapable of doing anything. Cardiovascular fitness gives you the best opportunity to do that. What can you do in the weight room? As far as cardio like this training? I did a master's thesis on that. That question is like we did the research on the kind of lift and move principle. And so when you go into the weight room you lift and what we designed is a program where it was a push-pull. It's the oldest trick in the book. And we mixed, we did the program design where we mixed it up and we have you going from one exercise to the next. And what we call segments in the segment may have three to 12. So there are three fours, there are all kinds of combinations, which make it really good for individuals on long-term training because you got to have variation.

Bob King (05:52):

And so we try to go 30 to 45 seconds between sets and keep going. And the little research I did showed a very good rate of return on the cardio bat, new cardiovascular fitness when it came to the mile and a half run. And so one group did two days of weights with three days of running. And the other group did three days, of running and two days of weights. And so what we ended up finding is they very close to each other and they did the same running. So the the extra weight day and no less one less running day, didn't short circuit that group.

Aaron King (06:26):

So if you have a, if you're, you're planning out your conditioning for, for the summer, for the NC, whatever it is, how are you, how are you sprinkling in a mix of, we're just going to load more on say, we're doing more crossfires, we're doing more gassers or half casters versus no, I'm actually mixing it up between more high-intensity sprints versus longer timed runs. And you know, this is the difference between the intensity or heart rate zone.

Bob King (06:52):

We just, we, we have over the years been blessed with accidents. And so we do the mentioned the high speed or the high intensity. We do these high speed 110's. And that was remarkable findings there. I mean, there's, it's, it can't be published because it was just, we went out and ran. And so we took a group of guys out and did these high-speed one tens that we do that are 95% effort and we do four to six of them. And then we come back and the next week or the next workouts, we just do our regular interval stuff. Well, one year we had that go on, we did a high speed. And then we did the regular intervals on a Saturday. Then the third week we went back to the high speed, but we had new guys and the first time anybody does it, the high-speed 110's just sabotaged them.

Bob King (07:41):

They just, okay, I'm done. And then when we got them, we just accidentally, as I said, had this con contrast group where we had, you know, new people with the veterans, and the veterans just flew through it. And the new people were, had the same response as they did the first, the veterans did the first time. It's like, man, the body's adaptive ability. And what we found was the ability to run the high-speed one tens made the standard intervals faster because that's what their body was now trained to do. And so that benefit was there. And we know that because, in our principles of building capacity at the high-speed level, that heart rate is at its top end. And so when I say do it at your 95% perceived effort, your heart rates right behind you at 95%. And so it benefits from that.

Bob King (08:32):

And the cardiovascular benefit has been established with the training we do on the timed runs on Wednesday. And so in the football program, back to the Mayo clinic thing for individuals who are, where does this apply to me is the Mayo clinic papers covered a lot of data, but of all the stuff they covered, I had the most striking revelation when they said, and this point we really don't know how much cardiovascular training is too much. Okay. I get that cause it's just impossible to run people to death, but they said it in the paper, they said it twice. They said that we don't know how much is too much. Then they talked about the study and the data. And then it came back. Dean said, at this point, we just don't know how much is too much. So that's pretty remarkable. It's you repeat yourself in a study cause you want to try and get all this information out and you come up with, we don't know how much is too much for the average individual.

Bob King (09:24):

There's a, it's self-limiting because you probably have to go to work or do other things. So you just can't go in and see how long you can go. There are cleanup and eating and all these other things that are involved. It's just self-limiting. Therefore the takeaway would be that you're okay to do what you can do. And at some point, you just have to realize that I've been on the apparatus for 30 minutes. I'm not going to get any more fitter and it's not going to do that much difference for me. So let me go ahead and I can go forever. Now, once I established I can go forever. Don't, you know, just you know, there are issues of getting, as you get older, it's like, man, I go to need a nap. So you now interfere with your day.

Aaron King (10:08):

Yeah. And there's, there's the balance of how much is too much or how much can I do versus the benefit for sports conditioning. And, you know, I, I could do gassers ha I could do all sorts of conditioning drills all summer long, but nothing substitutes game shape and just getting into game shape. So like, even if you're playing pickup basketball, for example, that, that first one, I, if I get back into it, that's the first few just runs up and down the court. I feel like my heart's going to explode, but then you do it for a week or two weeks. And then all of a sudden, you know, it has just done. It's a totally different shape.

Bob King (10:45):

Well, that's exactly right. We can keep coming around to the specificity of training, but the body is a very good adaptive organism. And so if, if you have the built-in capacity because you're a fit individual, the adaptation is quick. That's the key part to know. The other thing that comes up is one study showed that the extreme people ultra-marathoners, and in some of those ways out there that not only just do, but it's also not a matter of being on the treadmill for three hours, it's a matter of just, you know, climbing mountains and just going at a, such a high level that they did find some mounts of heart muscle damage. And I didn't have a lot of information out of this study, but I could only infer that it was treating it like, you know, like weightlifting, you overload the skeletal muscle. It has microfiber tear, micro microtrauma, which is a tearing of the muscle fiber. And it has to recover hopefully to be stronger. And I'm not sure I want to mess with the heart muscle that way, because it's much smaller and it's just one of them. So I kinda, you know, I've always wondered about those extreme and girls that are like, you know, whatever, you know, whether it's swimming, you know, not, not just a triathlon, but where there's a lot of, lot of high-intensity activity involved.

Aaron King (12:02):

Do you know if that damage, there is a long-term effect? Long-Term

Bob King (12:08):

Yes, but they didn't have a longitudinal study for that. So we couldn't do it at this point that I was reading the papers. It was not able to say, you know, now here's what we see 10 years later in that individual. So that's yet to be determined, but I just think it's common sense to a point you know, we're some of us, you know, especially it's a young man's game. It's like, I want to push it to the limit. I'm going to climb the mountain because it's there, I'm going to reel that in a little bit be fit

Aaron King (12:37):

Well, if anyone knows of the study, please just let us know on the long-term for ultra marathoners, anything like that. We'd love to look at that and get the actual science on it if it exists or if it stays there. And in fact, if anyone has any studies at all that they want us to read that

Bob King (12:51):

Just let us know. Absolutely. I think, I think one of the things that athletes are really good at that everybody needs to be kind of good at is listening to your body. It is not, I have literally put my shoes on in the old days and gone out the door, 50, 60 meters down the street, not today. And you know, you just do it and you just listen and live to fight another day because you're not going to get out of shape overnight. You may feel like it, but most of us here physically you're okay.

Aaron King (13:21):

Well, you mind if he didn't sleep, especially after reading Matthew Walker's book.

Bob King (13:25):

Yeah, exactly. I know. No, but just to be smart, I think is the biggest thing I can do with athletes. It's fixed, the season's over, you're off, offseason. They tend to build up or leave out some of that harder or heavy-duty training. But with guys like me and you know, nine to five folks just be smart about it. You know, there's, there are let's say there are standards to what you need, get what you need. Maybe if you got the ability to do more, go right ahead. You know, there's all these body types. If you're, you know, if you're five, eight, 140 pads, you can probably do a whole lot more than I can at six, two, two 15. And so just help yourself, but just listen to your body.

Aaron King (14:09):

Yeah. I've been doing the two on and one-off rule for me for training now that I'm retired and just trying to stay active. There, it's nice having a day where it's secret, Candice did two days in a row, so I can take off today. Like I'm allowed to. So sometimes this still five days a week. So I haven't that like that, that built-in rest where it's like you earned it or whatever. It's, it's psychologically

Bob King (14:32):

You do what works for you. I have, I have created a routine for Bob King that works for Bob King and that is, I just work out until my body says, I need a break. Did I work out five days in a row or four? I don't know. I don't keep up by not keeping a personal training log anymore. I find my workouts are, are more because of what I do yesterday. Okay. I don't remember let's do this. And so I worked out, I did a weight routine yesterday and today, and then tomorrow, I don't know yet. And so I just go until I need that break and then I'm glad I did so I can assure people that if you take that break when you come back the next day, you're going to feel good.

Aaron King (15:12):

All right. Well, if you need some workouts, go to Kingsport, train.com and we got a whole training library there. And if you have any requests for anything more specific, let us know. You can talk to coach King on Twitter or Instagram @CoachBobKing. And then I'm on social media, all the same places @DeepSnap. And so we had to go to Kingsport, train.com. That's the main thing I can tell you. And then, of course, any studies, any comments, feedback, questions, absolutely. Anything you want us to clarify, or you think we need to crack anything at all. Please just leave a comment and we'll address it. And probably have some more content like this in the next episode, because we had some really good studies we're digging into right now, but for now, Americans put Bob.