Cardiovascular Fitness & Training for Women w/ Dr. Alyssa Olenick

Podcast – Steph Gaudreau

In the world of fitness and nutrition, there is so much misinformation and oversimplification of concepts out there. This is why Dr. Alyssa Olenick is here to continue our conversation surrounding everything from heart rate zones to perceived excursion and how to balance your intensity properly.

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Key Takeaways

If You Want to Improve Your Cardiovascular Health, You Should:

1. Focus on getting fit and meeting the physical activity guidelines if you are just starting out
2. Don’t get caught up in the all-or-nothing perfectionist mentality when it comes to your heart rate
3. Get over the idea that you have to annihilate yourself for fitness to count

Finding Balance with Dr. Alyssa Olenick

Dr. Alyssa Olenick, or Dr. Lyss, is currently a Postdoctoral research student studying metabolism and menopause. She has a Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology, where she researched metabolism and exercise science in females. Dr. Alyssa is on a mission to redefine evidence-based fitness. She is passionate about science-based nutrition and fitness and how the two integrate so that she can help people become their healthiest selves while chasing their boldest fitness goals.

Learning to Love Zone 2

Whether you are just starting out with your cardiovascular health journey or have been going for a while, there is a good chance the conversation surrounding Zone 2 has come up more than once. Dr. Lyss has a ton of experience in understanding and applying the nuance of research to everything from your heart rate, RPE, level of intensity, recovery, and so much more. Learning what to focus on and pay attention to at the different levels of your training will help alleviate your concerns about both strength training and cardiovascular fitness.

Training in a Different Way

Dr. Lyss wants to encourage you to think about your training program holistically. Balanced fitness training can help you develop characteristics for health, life, and longevity. However, this takes a different mental approach and view of what quality training and intensity are. It is not just about pushing yourself to your maximum; it is about looking holistically at your overall intensity to see where you can go harder because you have held back in other areas.

Female physiology needs both strength and cardiovascular health. A well-rounded training and athletic approach program can help you be the most resilient human you can be.

What is your relationship to cardiovascular training? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.

In This Episode

• Where to start when looking to improve your cardiovascular fitness (6:40)
• Understanding the role of heart rate and how to figure out where you need to be (20:58)
• How to assess your training distribution and fitness mindset throughout the week (31:27)
• What to do if you feel like you aren’t working hard enough (36:04)
• Learn how to train in a recoverable way to ultimately do more (41:02)

Quotes

“Do not worry about the mode or how you do it or how intense it is or the zone that you are in; the first thing you need to do is get to the physical activity guidelines.” (7:29)

“But you have to decide, once you have been doing this for a while, ‘what do I actually want from this?’.” (16:15)

“When you are doing more intense exercise, you are having to focus more on your steps and your breathing and what you are doing. So these are all things that I like to use for checking in with yourself.” (30:25)

“Not all training needs to be hard to be quality.” (36:43)

“Hybrid training is health. And it doesn’t have to be running and lifting. It can be so many different things. But train multiple characteristics of your fitness.” (43:37)

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Related Episodes

FYS 420: Dr. Alyssa Olenick (Part 2)

Cardiovascular Fitness & Training for Women w/ Dr. Alyssa Olenick (Part 2)

Steph Gaudreau
10 years ago on social media, it would be rare to see a conversation about sex differences in fitness and nutrition, specifically conversations about women and how to apply these concepts. But now times have definitely changed. And in some ways, the pendulum has swung in completely opposite direction. misinformation and oversimplification of different concepts and research is so common. How do you know what to sift through? How do you know what’s actually being said in the research and how to apply those concepts on a more practical level?

Steph Gaudreau
Well, that’s what we’re gonna be getting into in this podcast today with a very special guest of mine. We’re covering part two of my podcast with Dr. Alyssa Olenick. And on part two, we are diving into cardiovascular training and fitness. Everything from heart rate zones to rate of perceived exertion, all the way through how to balance your intensity across the week, and practical considerations for you, no matter where you are in your level of cardiovascular fitness.

Steph Gaudreau
If you’re an athletic 40-something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself, and doing hardship, the Fuel Your Strength podcast is for you. You’ll learn how to eat, train and recover smarter, so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, and perform better in and out of the gym. I’m strength nutrition strategist and weightlifting coach Steph Gaudreau. The Fuel Your Strength podcast dives into evidence-based strategies for nutrition training and recovery, and why once you’re approaching your 40s and beyond, you need to do things a little differently than you did in your 20s.

Steph Gaudreau
We’re here to challenge the limiting industry narratives about what women can and should do in training and beyond. If that sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And let’s go what is going on? Welcome back to the podcast. And thank you for joining me on this part two of a two-part conversation with Dr. Alyssa Olenick. I’ll be introducing her in a moment. But if you haven’t listened to part one of this podcast first, I highly recommend you go back and get some context before you jump into this part where the conversation really centers around cardiovascular fitness and training, including practical advice and implementation.

Steph Gaudreau
My special guest is Dr. Alyssa Olenick, better known on social media as Doc Lyss Fitness. She is an incredible force of nature, and so knowledgeable because she has a PhD in exercise physiology, specifically researching metabolism and Exercise Science in females. And not only that she’s also a postdoc studying metabolism and menopause. So when we say that Alyssa has tons of experience in understanding the research and applying the nuance of the research, and really sifting through what we know about women’s training, fuelling cardio, and so much more, we mean it on this episode, we’re covering a ton of ground.

Steph Gaudreau
We’re talking today about cardiovascular training, and specifically addressing some concepts around zone two or more moderate-intensity training. What do you need to know do you need to stress about your heart rate or heart rate zones? How do you take a more comprehensive approach to figuring out the intensity of your cardiovascular training? And having a frank discussion about how we approach the biggest priorities when you’re just starting out in your cardiovascular fitness? As opposed to your more experienced? What do you need to focus on what should take most of your attention at these different levels?

Steph Gaudreau
And hopefully, that will relieve a lot of the concerned questions and confusion that I’m hearing so many of you out there are having when you start to realize that yes, strength is really fucking important. But also, cardiovascular fitness is important as well. We need to find ways to include both not only from a performance perspective but also when we pull back and look at greater conversations of health and well-being a quick reminder before we jump into the episode, if you are appreciating and loving all of the episodes from the Fuel Your Strength podcast, please hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you’re tuning into the show on YouTube, hit subscribe there and ring the bell for more notifications. And also check out all of our podcast videos. Okay, without further ado, let’s dive into this part two episode with Doc Lyss Fitness. Do you have time for one more question?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
I have time for two more. They’re totally fine. I have time.

Steph Gaudreau
I’m just like, Ah, I have so much I want to ask.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
No, no, you’re good.

Steph Gaudreau
Okay, so we’ve covered a lot of ground and I feel like we’ve been inching toward this topic as this podcast has gone on. And I know that you have been, you’ve been somebody out there not only from the training point of view but personally in your own training, banging on the drum of cardiovascular fitness and why this is so important. And there’s this interesting thing happening, right? In our, in our industry in the fitness industry, which is zone two, cardio is having this renaissance. I don’t know. I mean, I used to race mountain bikes.

Steph Gaudreau
Yeah, I started racing mountain bikes in 2003. Hearing about building an aerobic base is not a new concept, yet it has risen in popularity for some reason this year. It’s on everybody’s lips. There’s a lot of I’m sure misunderstanding about it. There’s a lot of confusion. There’s a lot of frustration about building your cardiovascular fitness. Yeah. So for the folks listening, I guess maybe an interesting place to begin would be when we’re looking at improving our cardiovascular fitness. Where do we need to start?

Steph Gaudreau
If somebody has not done any cardio? Because I know we were saying earlier, if we’d look back at the data, women, especially, are not meeting, you know, we’re not, we’re not doing the best job at beating our cardiovascular minimum minimums, when we add strength training onto it, then that number goes down. But how do we get people to begin knowing that we the industry has made this really complex? And then people feel frustrated about getting started?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Yeah, so the first thing I’ll say, for those of you who are unfamiliar with me or my content, is I did just publish this week a video on like, how to make zone two easier. And I have a video that breaks down all of the zones. And I have like a whole ebook on this kind of stuff. And so if you like, I’m gonna give a quick version of this here. But there is like, I do have some more in-depth things. And I think I have a couple of podcasts coming out in the new year of like, what counts is cardio, and how do you know your cardio is working?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Because I know this is like, a hot topic for people and trust me, if you follow me, I feel your frustration. Everyone yells at me because cardio is hard. And I’m like, I know, I know. It’s hard. I’m a beefcake by nature, my jeans aren’t made for running, but I do it anyway. But that being said, I think that the first thing is you just need to get yourself to the physical activity guidelines, do not worry about the mode how you do it or how intense it is, or the zone that you’re in. The first thing you need to do is get to the physical activity guidelines, which are 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous and it’s essentially a two-for-one trade-off.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So you can work 50% less for when it’s a more intense kind of thing. And so you want to distribute this across the week. And this is a lot like this is a lot like 150 minutes, it’s like two and a half hours of cardio a week. And people were like, what, that’s crazy kind of thing. And so I think it’s important to recognize and this is like the conversation that happens too is like, for many of you just getting started, a brisk walk will count towards that. But as you get fitter, a brisk walk doesn’t count towards that. So that’s where it’s tricky, because people will be like, Alyssa, if I can’t walk, and this and that, how to get this in.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
To that I say, get off the industry high horse, if you don’t get 10 to 15,000 steps a day, you’re going to crumble, I would rather this is a qualm, I have a lot of coaches who make it seem like if you don’t get 10,000 steps a day, and you’re going to crumble. And I’m like, that’s like three to four miles of walking a day. And that’s like at least an hour of walking a day. Now granted, it’s broken up things like that. But I would rather somebody get six or 7000 steps a day in and trade that time, even if it’s 15 or 20 minutes towards more formal cardio. You can position that before or after your training session.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
A lot of people worry about doing cardio before they’re lifting. If you’re doing 10 or 15 minutes of cardio before you’re lifting, you’re probably not having the interference effect that you think it is do it after you’re doing higher heart intensity, more volume stuff, I prefer to do it after on its own, but just get it in where you can start. Again, your walking needs to be vigorous like your breath is increasing. It’s not just a passive casual regular walk your heart rate should be at least in the hundreds when this is happening. The amount, the rate of it should it will depend of course on your age and fitness level.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
But if you’re on a walk and your heart rate is under 100 beats per minute, it’s probably not intense enough for any adaptation. But that movement is still good. But anyway, you can do this moderate activity, which is probably getting your heart rate to at least above 50%. Maybe ideally 60% of your heart rate max for 115 minutes per week. And this can be done anyway, people are like I think the industry does a really poor job of making people that they have to do cardio like they have to run or they have to bike or they have to do XY and Z. It doesn’t matter how you’re doing it. It can be any sort of cardio row swim, bike, dance, hike, rock, whatever it is, you’re really been rocking a lot recently to do whatever you need to do.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Make sure your ventilation is increasing your heart rate getting up it feels a little bit exertional across the week. If you cannot get to 150 minutes per week you don’t eat like off the bat. Start where you’re at Start with 20 minutes twice a week and do that until it feels sustainable and then add. And so this is where it’s nice with the alternative of 75 minutes of vigorous activity, which is about an hour and 15 minutes of harder intensity work a week, where you can just do a few hit sessions or a few harder intensity runs or a few harder intensity cardio things to get to that, and it takes half as much time. If you’re meeting those guidelines. I don’t really care how you’re getting there, the nuance and the fanciness.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And all that stuff doesn’t really matter. That is like the minimal standard of what we’ve kind of seemed like this is what you need for health and longevity. Same with the two full body resistance training days a week, which I’ll back up a lot for people, we’re thinking like, one to two hours a lifting for a week and two and a half hours a cardio back and feel like a lot for a lot of people start where you’re at meet yourself with where you’re at everything counts and adds up. I think a lot of people do a bad job of making people feel like they’re not like it’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing. And it’s absolutely not everything you do matters, the biggest thing is you want whatever you’re doing, you want it to be improving your fitness.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So it doesn’t have to be perfect. But that’s why intensity is great because you can get more adaptations with less, there’s a lot of stuff with exercise snacks if you do a few all-out sprinting, or really hard stair climbs per day across the day you can still get some of these benefits, even though it’s in smaller micro doses. So meet yourself where you’re at to the physical guidelines, once we get past the physical activity guidelines where I’m kind of like, I don’t really care if you’re doing it for doing less than this week, because it’s like, you just need to be doing it right.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And you need to be doing it consistently enough for things to adapt. Because here’s the deal, if you’re not doing a lot of cardio right now, or you have a really poor aerobic base or poor cardiovascular fitness, you don’t have a zone two period, you do have a zone two, but like, everything you do is going to spike your heart rate, it’s going to be hard, you just don’t have the cardiovascular fitness. And so I like to tell people all the time, you’re not fit enough to worry about that for a lot of things that people tend to get hyper-focused on. So like in my running programs for like a lot like my first three or four programs people do as beginners, we just use RPE, because it’s just your heart rate is going to be high because you just don’t have the fitness to do that. So it’s like, if you’re trying to like run or gain a skill or fitness, just focus on doing that. And then as you develop that, let’s worry about that nitty gritty.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
This isn’t me saying zone two isn’t important, or zone four isn’t important, or these different polarizations or pyramidal purchases are useless. No, I use them in my programming and approach them I stayed with you like I wrote my ebook and during 2018, and for years, people were like, Yeah, I’ll slow down. Okay, run easy. This is great. And now people are like, Well, my heart rate was this one beat per minute and my zone three for one minute, and am I gonna die and I’m gonna explode is this is this is this correct? Oh, my gosh, I can’t get out of zone four. And I’m freaking out.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
But I’m in the beginner program. And I’m like, stop like this, this has made it for people just more barriers to this. So first get to that, then we can start thinking about okay, those zone two things, Zone Two is great. Zone two is fantastic for building an aerobic base and cardiovascular fitness and contributes to health uniquely. But similar to high-intensity exercise. Ideally, we want both in our training programs, or we want a mix of both. And so the more volume you’re doing, so the more minutes per week that you’re doing, the more you’re going to want to split up the intensity into doing okay.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Something like maybe 60, 70, 80, or 90% of your training is easy. And then 10-20, 30-40% of whatever it is, is high and hard intense. And that distribution is going to depend on how much you’re doing. So when I was training for my 50 milers, I was running like nine to 11 hours a week, that’s a lot of minutes per week, I cannot do 10 hours of running per week in my Zone Four or I’m never going to recover, I’m going to feel horrific. That’s going to be just a recipe for disaster. So then I was I was having like one harder quality session a week and the rest was very easy and slow. So I probably have something like 10 to 20% of my training in zones three to four zone three is also not the devil if you use it for intentional things, right?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
I’m training for an ultra marathon, you’re not doing zone five and ultra trust me a lot of zone two and three. But right now I’m in this offseason, I’m in a really busy season of life, I’m probably only doing two hours of cardio right now in my week, and guess what I do not care about my heart rate. I’m trying to get in get out, I’m doing a few more hit sessions, I’m doing a little bit more threshold-level effort Am I running and then maybe a running easy running for the rest of that throughout the week? But it’s not as if that distribution doesn’t matter as much because you’re just not doing a ton.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
The only caveat there is as you’re adding it in, I would not encourage you all to add three high-intensity sessions a week to get to 75 minutes right off the bat. Maybe do one hard and too easy and then build up to that over time or do a few easy sessions and with some Sprint’s are harder stuff like you don’t want to just dive into that. But the less you’re doing the less that distribution really matters. The more volume you’re doing, the more it matters, or the more specific the goals that you have are. So if you’re somebody who knows you have your fit, and you’re like well I can’t stay in zone two to save my life.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
I just talked about this in my podcast like that’s where you need to have that conversation with yourself which you’ve done endurance sports, you’re like, oh, I should probably submit a season of time actually developing this because it is a physiological adaptation to it, and you have to do it to get better at it and the less fit you are or the more neutral you are the actually like the lower the heart rate and the easier and slower you’re going to have to go. Because you have to gain the fitness that allows you to kind of have your zone to be at a higher heart rate over time, right?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And that is dependent, that’s part of that fitness status, leading to more fat oxidation, because a lot of that is related to fat oxidation. And that’s one of the characteristics that is trained is improved mitochondrial density and quality. Some of the different physiological adaptations of cardio that happened in that zone to training can come with high volumes of this easy work that’s recoverable. But then you get better at those things over time. So you know, then you get to a point where you’re like, I have a specific goal, or I realize I really suck at this and I need to develop this.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
That’s when we can start saying, Okay, well, okay, what’s let’s look at the distribution of your training, and let’s progress efficiently and appropriately. And let’s keep our hard sessions hard. And our easy, sessions are recoverable right, again, hard can be zoned three, four, or five, it doesn’t have to only be zone four or five, it just depends on what your goals and training are. I think people like I definitely agree with the gray zone, zone three, but I also think it gets a bad rap where people think like they’re gonna die if they do moderate-intensity exercise. And that’s not the case.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
But you have to then decide once you’ve been doing this for a while, okay, what do I actually want out of this, for most of you, I would be happy if you did whatever you needed to do to get the physical activity guidelines for the rest of your life. But if you have these specific goals, or you want to get better at specific things, or you start caring more about endurance sports, or things like that, then okay, let’s focus on this, but doesn’t mean that you can say Zone Two is great, if you are new to cardio, and you want to just use zone to biking to get started in cardio, that’s fantastic. It’s really easy and accessible.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
But what I’m saying is don’t sit there and freak out. Because after three training sessions, your heart rate isn’t lower. Because that’s an adaptation to zone two training is something that’s not coming in like 612 weeks, clients get so frustrated all the time because it’s like it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working, we’re talking give yourself six, nine. twelve, fifteen months for this stuff to happen. Your adaptations to what you need to develop this with cardiovascular fitness are painfully slow. So it might not mean you’re not doing anything wrong. And that’s why for beginners to cardio, I say just focus on getting fitter.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Because you’re going to drive yourself mad trying to be in a perfect zone to heart rate, while you’re also trying to add up to new behavior, while you’re also trying to learn how to do a new scale, like, just focus on adding that in and gaining that skill, especially if you’re under the physical activity guidelines are only getting to that point, then we can refine later. But you’re not going to die if your heart rate spikes, and you’re not going to die if you drift into zone three, and you’re not going to get any benefits or no adaptations. If your heart is high. It just depends on how much you’re doing the volume, where you’re at, your fitness and training, and what your goals are.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Again, Zone Two is beneficial for everyone across the board. I’m not saying that just ignored it entirely. But I think that people like it just because they get so consumed. It’s it’s an all-or-nothing perfectionist thing applied to everything. And it’s crazy to me because we have clients or people in my DMs or comments and I’m like, I have a PhD in this. And I’m not even this dogmatic about it. I’m just like, okay, run an easy, cool gray, oh, my heart is a little high today. So I should just maybe slow down or this feels really hard. So maybe I should take it easy. Or you know what, I’m short on time. So I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna bang this one out today and call it a day like, like, you don’t this, it’s not this such fragile thing. If you just give your body stimulus frequently enough, it will adapt and get better. And then you can worry about those details later on.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So I know that’s like a nuanced thing where I’m like, it matters and you should care. But also, you don’t even really worry about it right now. Kind of like all things in fitness, right? Like, these are things where it’s like, yes, it’s important, and you can do it. But don’t let that be the thing stopping you from getting started and doing what we know is good for you. And we’ll move that needle forward.

Steph Gaudreau
Yeah, absolutely. I’m of the same mindset, which is, we got to get you to get your minimums. First and foremost, once somebody has kind of cracked that nut, right? And you know, I always talk to people too. I’m like, it’s not just knowing the number of minutes. It’s how what else has to flex around your day, right? You’re probably not only just exercising in your day, and that’s the only thing you’re doing. You’re working, taking care of the household running errands, doing other things for enjoyment. I mean, taking care of the family, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that has to move around the training as well. But once somebody has gotten to that, you know, they’re sort of like gotten into a groove and they do want to turn a little bit more attention to maybe further developing that aerobic base.

Steph Gaudreau
Before we dive in. If you listen to this episode, and you’re like, Okay, I am ready to get to work. I want to take my strength, muscle energy, and performance and take it up a notch. I want to take it to that next level. I want to feel like a badass but at the same time do it in a way that works with my physiology as an athletic woman over 40 with coaching and community support and go ahead and check out Strength Nutrition Unlocked. This is my group program, we’re going to lay out the framework for you and guide you as you implement and really customize it to all the things that you’re doing your preferences, your likes, and the places you want to go with it, then go ahead and get on board, you can start your process by submitting an application at StephGadreau.com/apply, we’d love to hear from you and see you inside the program.

Steph Gaudreau
You talked about RPE a little bit. And this is where I see a lot of people kind of losing the thread. They’re like, Oh, my gosh, you know, I don’t know what heart rate I need. And can you talk a little bit about heart rate? And it’s sort of placed in all this? Because I think people think this is the one number I need to live and die by? And how else do you help people figure out where they need to be in terms of like, it is truly an easy effort? I think that’s where people get kind of lost. I have my I have my answer. But I’d like to hear what you do with people.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So there are two things. There are the people who are saying, well, my RPE is low and my heart rate really high. Well, you’re probably actually going harder than you think you are. So let’s check that. I hear that one a lot. And I’m like, well, let’s actually check what you think is hard. Because zone two feels easier. It feels like you’re not exerting anything and it can be kind of boring. So I know, that’s why people don’t like it. And so one, I think that the best way to check in with yourself is I think there’s this now there’s this push back against heart rate because people are getting so dogmatic about it. I heart rate is a valuable and practical and good tool for training.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
I am very pro heart rate. But heart rate in the context of everything else, you know, what is your heart rate monitoring approach? Are you using a risk-based monitor or a chest-based monitor? Because one, it’s going to be more accurate? If you’re using a chest-based monitor to less use heart rate in conjunction with RPE and respiration talking breathing in for? Why is your heart rate may be elevated that artificially elevated outside of this that isn’t just your exercise intensity? Are you dehydrated? Is it hot and humid out? Or are you underfed? Is it our culture fair thought you would have some cardiac drift?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Sometimes your cardiac drift is because you went out to harden your heart and couldn’t sustain that. So it’s drifting but or you know it is conditions but when the conditions are hot and hot or humid, you should just slow down. I know people really hate that in the summers, it just means it’s more stressful. And you should probably slow down which makes it really really crummy. And I know that. But the reason let me explain the reason why we use heart rate. So if you were to go into the lab, and you were to do an exercise test called a graded exercise test, where you gradually increased the intensity of exercise, like pretty much linearly or step by step until you couldn’t go anymore.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
That’s a vo two max test. But similarly, there’s a lactate threshold test, which does that similarly, and what you do is they take you have a mask on your face that’s taking your respiration so it can see how much oh two and CO2 you’re breathing in and then breathing out. And then the finger sticks of your blood of something called Blood of lactate, which is produced as a byproduct at the end part of glycolysis, which is just how you burn or use carbs in the body. When there isn’t a high level of oxygen available for it to be then turned into fuel with oxygen, I’m trying to choose super big words here. Like it’s always being produced in the body.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And it’s always being produced during exercise. But eventually, when you get to high or hard enough intensity, your body starts producing this faster than it can clear it out because they will take this lactate and go take it to other places and then turn it into like basically fuel for you to use, take it back into glucose and burn it and use it for energy metabolism. When this increases rapidly use GET YOU it’s called your lactate threshold. And this is kind of that tipping point of what you can’t sustain intensities above this for long periods of time. So these are going to be your shorter all-out really hard exercise intensities.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
This is your lactate threshold. Similarly, around the same time that your lactate threshold starts to happen, something called your ventilatory threshold starts to happen as well. So it’s this point I want your body starts producing more CO2 more rapidly than it’s breathing out oh two or verses 202 coming in. So your body is basically in a more even call it kind of more acidic, and it’s not able to buffer itself as efficiently and you can’t sustain the exercise intensity for much longer. When we’re doing this in the labs, or if you did this yourself, you would wear a heart rate monitor. And we would find a point of what your heart rate was related to that. And that’s the point of which you should probably be training when you’re doing this.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Most of you aren’t going to labs to do this. So the reason heart rate is so popular though is because you don’t need a lactate meter. You don’t need a metabolic cart. It’s an easy thing that’s really cheap and accessible for many people, especially with photoplethysmography is what it’s called when it’s risk-based, has become more popular over the last decade. And so what you’re essentially trying to indirectly do is find that point a lot of people say 60 to 70% and that technically isn’t false. For many of you that have a lower fitness status poor cardiovascular fitness status.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
You are probably going to have to exercise in your zone to at a lower percentage of your max heart rate because you are not fit. So that lactate threshold or that ventilatory threshold of the point in which cardiovascular exercise starts to get harder for you, that is what is shifted forward when you do cardiovascular training, and you get fitter, which is also why you can burn more fat when you’re fitter during exercise, or you’re more efficient at it. So that shifts forward, which means the heart rate at which that happens shifts forward.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So the people out there running two-hour marathons, for example, are running at like 85 to 90% of their CO2 Max, that’s how far their lactate threshold is shifted over. So that’s how that’s at how intense have the absolute maximal running speed that they can handle, they can do where their body is able to still clear lactate and use oxygen efficiently for fuel metabolism, what you’re doing with training is shifting that forward. So two-hour marathon runner zone two is going to be a lot higher, a lot higher than mine or yours if you’re more sedentary or unfit or even if you’re like in the process of getting fitter. And so this is what makes it really hard for people who are new to this is that you’re gonna have to like they’re like, Oh my God, this can’t be real that I have to exercise this low heart rate.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
No, it is. But as you get better at it, and you do it more and you do it longer, it will shift. So something I do with my clients, or we have in my eBooks, which I keep plugging here. But that’s just the system that I use something called a threshold test. And so what we do is we have you do this threshold test. And then I have like, I have these calculators that I share with people to use to kind of estimate for themselves or I have like a service where I’ll do it for you and kind of look at your data. And what you do is you’re trying to figure out what your personal threshold is.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And based on the duration of the test you’re doing the calculations for this are different than like, so don’t just go all out and find that heart rate, because it’s gonna vary if you’re doing 30 minutes, 60 minutes, a half marathon marathon? It kind of depends on how long you’re doing that intensity. And you kind of figure out okay, well, what is your average heart rate when you’re kind of doing this maximal sustained level effort? And then from here, how does that adjust for your heart rate, and that can be a little bit more accurate than age-predicted heart rate Max, but for most of you starting out, you can do age percentage heart rate, Max, and people are like, Well, what about heart rate reserve, hurry Max, it’s all going to come out within the same relative range of beats per minute, the best thing that you can probably actually do for yourself is to find your true heart rate max.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And you can do that by doing like a few all-out sprints on like a bike or up a hill or doing a gradual exercise running on a treadmill where you make the incline and speed faster and to get like to the highest heart rate that you can get if you don’t know that from your own data or watch, that will be more accurate than just doing to 20 minus your age, and that can help people. But otherwise, for many people like you your threshold will vary. And it’s going to be like a threshold test or a threshold value is going to be more accurate, though, and people who are fit because if you’re unfit, you’re going to have an artificially high heart rate during those same intensities.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So it’s going to artificially kind of say, Oh, you have you can exercise at this really high heart rate like your zone four is actually your zone two. So there’s that caveat of like, I’m like, Well if you’re a beginner and you have low aerobic fitness, let’s start with your heart rate. But let’s not freak out about it being perfect all the time. Let’s start with that percent of your heart rate, then from there as you gain more fitness, or if you are someone who’s transitioning, okay, you’ve been doing this, you’ve been gaining momentum, maybe then you’re like, hey, I, I can do an hour of cardio, that’s usually the point. I mean, we do have it for some of my things, we’re off for like a 30-minute threshold test. But I think like they’re not as good until you can get like an hour of sustained cardio if you can handle an hour of sustained cardio, or an hour-long run, or whatever that is, that’s about that point where you’re gonna actually test your threshold.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And so that’s where I’m like, Okay, your data is probably gonna be a little bit more personalized and accurate to you if we can figure out what it is relative to your own fitness and your own heart rate and your own response. But otherwise, if you don’t want to do that, or test all this, what you can do is just start saying, Okay, let me run cycle. Exercise cardio at a point when I’m not breathing super rapidly, you will have increased respiration. Can you carry a conversation one of the things that I love to do on my runs when I get bored or off, I’m just running and my mom or brother calls me as I answer and I talk to them. I’m carrying conversations with them while I’m running.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
I love it because it kills time for my run. But sometimes my mom doesn’t even notice that I’m running until she’ll be like, she’ll hear like, cars or whatever. Like, are you running? And I’m like, Yeah, but I can carry that conversation while running. And that’s how I know I am in my zone too. You can tell when you’re lying to yourself. I do it all the time, too. I’m no different than you guys. And I’m like, Oh, I’m totally in my zone too. I’m absolutely not in my zone too. But I’m in a hurry that day and it’s okay. But can you take Can you can you sing? Can you talk and like not just fragments but like maybe 15, 20, and 30-word long sentences without having to gasp after you do it?

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Can you actually just like speak? does your body feel like it has enough oxygen not only to keep propelling you forward but like carry that conversation at the same time? A great way I know that I’m in zone two versus higher intensities is how much focus is your training requires. Like if you have increased focus, you’re probably at an increased intensity. That’s why Fun fact, your lifting that’s repetitive would be more interesting if you just did it more intensely than that intensity brings in interest. That’s one of my favorite things to say, but is your aura around you feel blue light, you can look at things, read things you’re aware of things around, you’re kind of lost in thought, when you’re doing more intense exercise, you’re having to focus more on your steps and your breathing and what you’re doing. So these are just all things that I like to use for checking in with you.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And so you can also use RPE. And so an RPE, for like, zone two is going to be like, an RP of like three, four, maybe five, just depending on that. And I think a lot of people are exercising at a 5, 6, 7 and calling it zone two. So these are all different ways that you can assess this. And I like taking a holistic approach to this, of like, okay, how hard Am I actually trained today, and it’s a great way to check into yourself too, because sometimes like my heart rate will still be pretty low. But I’ll feel like hot garbage on my runs. And I’m like, I’m just going to slow down because I feel terrible. Even though my heart rate data says that I’m I’m fine kind of thing and that.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So that’s why I like these holistic approaches to things or sometimes my heart rates high, but it doesn’t feel that hard to me. And I’m like, Oh, well, I forgot my chest strap. And I’m using a risk-based monitor. So that’s probably why it’s not as accurate. Today, I’m going to use exertion and talk a little bit more to make sure that I’m at this point of what I want to be. So there are a bunch of different ways to assess this. But that’s my approach. Like if you’re somebody who’s transitioning from getting, you know, okay, I’m not just a total noob. Alyssa, what should I do, it’s like, okay, let’s use these parameters. And then let’s think about your training distribution across the week. So I like telling people to start with all of your training is easy, except for one day.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And then as your training volume increases, all your training is easy, except for two days, or you have like two sessions across the week where you finish hard or something like that. Instead, you’re just you’re you’re taking some of those minutes per week, and making them a little bit harder while you’re really working on developing this because I think a lot of people think that they can’t do Mac cons, or HIIT workouts or higher intensity stuff all developing that, well, let’s make most of your sessions or most of the minutes per week that you’re doing this to develop this while you’re the focusing on developing this more skewed towards that zone to maybe one, maybe two higher heart intensity quality sessions per week, because remember, this is driven by volume.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So if you only have a limited amount of time per week, you’re just going to shift in skew that percentage for that, or you’re going to have to increase more time, which you can build up more time to while you’re doing this. Or then later, if you want to, you know, shift back more, maybe you’re doing the same amount of minutes per week, but you’ve really worked in that zone, too, you feel like your aerobic base is there, you’re recovering better during training, you have this higher cardio fitness, you could tell your heart rates dropping, and you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna bring in two quality sessions a week and trade-off that other one right now because I’m gonna go back to focusing on that, it doesn’t need to be this dogmatic like you only do 80% of your training for life, it depends on what your total volume, the characteristics, your training, but I really like we do aerobic base build seasons with our running programs.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And I have just one-speed workout a week. And it’s optional, people want to do it because you still want to preserve those characteristics of high heart intensity training, they are important, but you do need that the thing was zone two you need volume. But the reason that you can do so much volume with Zone Two is it’s recoverable. And it’s easy. So if you actually do it, where it’s actually easy, and it is actually recoverable, you can kind of do a lot of it. And it doesn’t interfere with your lifting your recovery or your other aspects of training.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Versus like, if you’re doing zone four for like five runs a week, you’re probably going to feel like garbage in your lifts are going to be impacted, or you’re gonna feel terrible if you’re only doing four to five met cons a week, or four to five Orangetheory classes, or F 45, or whatever that is, and you’re not doing a little bit of that easy stuff, too. And then you’re going and doing a run and you’re like, Why is my heart rate high, I’m fit well, you need to take time to distribute your volume towards that to actually train that over time. So that’s like the tough love that you have to get people and like, yeah, you’re met cons are great, but you’re not recovering during the interval runs during your workouts or the cycling or the rowing.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Because you need that aerobic fitness, because that’s supposed to usually be the recovery period for a lot of people during those workouts, and they’re not there, they’re redlining, that kind of stuff, because they haven’t developed this, this or they’re doing HIIT workouts or they’re lifting in the gym, and they’re not recovering between intervals or sets, because they just don’t have this fitness characteristic train. And if you’re realizing that you’re lacking that investing time, or just distribute your volume more towards that you still do you know, you don’t have to give up CrossFit or your your head or your any of that, we’ll just start shifting more of that, that per week towards that a lot of people want to know, like, what’s the amount that I need to do, and I’m like, well, more is always better.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
But you don’t always have that much time, which is why I’m saying shift the volume that you are doing to prioritize that or increase it and build it up. You know, the physical activity guidelines, it’s like 150 to 300 plus minutes per week, you get more benefits, the more you do, but not everyone has time to do that. But if you have the time to fast, like a good aerobic base-building season, where you can really do that and you can do more high volume and you have the time for that. Then spend that time doing it. It’s not worthless. If you can’t sustain that forever. If you have that you might pull back maybe you live five days a week and you’re going to shift to three so you can do more of that cardio. That’s what we started thinking about your whole program holistically and you should do that as well. Especially when we’re thinking about how bounced fitness training and like these developing all these characteristics that we need for life and health and longevity, so there’s my high horse.

Steph Gaudreau
I love your high horses. I think the the thing that is going to be a departure for a lot of people is not just an understanding the the physiology and why having that base is going to benefit them. Even at those higher intensities. It’s the mindset of, especially, I would say, with the cardio aspect where it’s we just are used to going hard going hard going hard as almost an inversion of what we see that a lot of people need, right? Some people would approach it, where they’re going to sit, let’s say they’re doing five sessions a week, they’re gonna go hard for four and maybe easy for one. And that is like, such a mental departure for so many people where they feel like the self talk you know, I’m being lazy, I’m not working hard enough, is, I think really going to become the sticking point. Any advice for those people who are like, I don’t know if all sounds good, but I feel like I’m just not working hard enough.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
I really think it’s important to lean into, like, Why do you have to do all of your training hard every single day? And why do you feel like it’s not working unless you’re doing a heart also like Zone Two is it I think I made a post on this like Zone Two or easier or submaximal training isn’t it? It isn’t easy. It is hard, like it is hard. Like think about it, every one of you complained so much about how Zone Two is so impossible. But then you’re like, it’s not hard enough. And I’m like what it but it is hard to do during an hour-long zone to work out for somebody who doesn’t mentally lean into that focus, or that boredom is going to be hard in its own in a different way.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
But not all training needs to be hard to be quality. And what I think a lot of people are missing is that they think that their training is quality, because it’s all hard all the time. But what you’re doing is you’re just having a lot of the same and so you’re not getting the max of your best efforts on those hardest days. Rather, you’re just kind of getting a lot of the same. And so, you know, if you really struggle with that, I really want you to think about like, why you wouldn’t polarize your cardio, just like you do your lifting, we don’t do our lifting at RPE 10, every single day of the week, we do RPE, seven, or eight and sometimes you max out and sometimes we go really hard.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Or we’ll do a top set and back-off sets. It’s no different with your training, we don’t need to go all out. It’s the quality, but it’s also the stimulus that’s giving you the characteristics that you want. If you don’t want to do so who doesn’t do it? You’re an adult with autonomy. That’s my biggest thing for people. It’s like, don’t do it. Don’t do it. I’m not making you do it. I’m just giving you the information. But if you’re frustrated that certain things aren’t happening for you and your training, then you have to have that tough love with yourself.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And we’re like, huh, well, maybe I don’t need all this intensity all the time. And what I would really encourage people to do is lean into doing this easy stuff and see how much better your higher intensity days actually go, how much. Maybe your intervals are like how many calories you’re burning on the rower and your intervals, or your air bike or your pace or your effort, or your mileage intensity is when you have that recoverable contrast in your training, and you’re all everything’s getting better moving forward. Because you can you can pull back so you can move forward and other stuff. So think about that, too. It’s like, don’t think about intensity as every single session on its own. But look at across your week, where are you able to go harder because you’re pulling back to go easier.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
That’s where I would look at that holistically, rather than just in the moment, and get over this idea that you need to annihilate yourself for fitness to count. You just have to get over that. And that’s that’s hard. That’s maybe kind of like tough, lovey, where I’m like, just to be disciplined, blah, blah, and I don’t mean it in that kind of way. But like, really try that’s, that’s that’s hard in its own way. Just because it’s physiologically not hard. That doesn’t mean it’s not difficult. And honestly, once you lean into zone two, I freaking love zone two training. It’s so great because you can turn your mind off. It’s passive, it’s easy.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
You can do emails during it, you can you know, talk to friends, make it do commute make it like make it a community thing if you need to do that, like watch TV, watch, watch, you know, your favorite show while you’re doing it that’s a great behavior change thing is to stack a podcast or show that you like with the thing that you don’t want to do. To make it easier call somebody I just said I talked to my mom and brother all my mom likes mix automation, like you don’t have time to talk to me unless you’re in Iran. And I was like, You call me on my run you get me for an hour, a whole hour I’ll talk to you about whatever you want kind of thing.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And so, you know, I think leaning into having a different mental approach in view of what training isn’t intensity and what quality training is. And why that is defined as intensity only to you all of the time because odds are if you’re doing all of your training in high intensity all the time and that’s that fine line between people because it’s like, Well, you do want intensity in your training. I don’t want to act like you don’t it is it is hard. But you do want to have that contrast as well. Our bodies respond to those different stimuli differently and so you have to ask yourself, Do I want to feel like it’s hard or do I want it to work?

Steph Gaudreau
Yeah, love that. Love it. Tough Love, welcome. It’s funny because I was out back visiting my family looking for a perogies. Of course, yes. When I was out running, I took a picture of myself where I was talking to the camera, and somebody said, you know why? How do you always look so happy when you’re out on a run? And I was like, because I do. A lot of my writing is in zone two. And I’m, I’m literally like, wow, look at these flowers blooming in the neighborhood. And like, oh, there’s that lady down the street with her dog.

Steph Gaudreau
And, you know, you get to kind of not be in the fucking pain cave all the time. To be quite frank. Yeah, there’s something nice about going into the pain cave. But if you’re there all the time, isn’t a nice place to be. And I would say to for my community antennae to be 40s 50s. And up, you know, just like, you’ve got to give your body a chance to recover. And if you want to do that intensity, like intense, intense all the time, you best be fueling for it. And that’s again, I think, where some of that stuff is falling down for folks. So you know, if you’re always injured all the time if you’re kind of crispy around the edges. It’s like, I know, it’s hard, but you got to learn new things. And why not set that birth as a challenge for yourself? You want to challenge like the challenge is to learn how to train in a different way.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Yeah. And it’s recovered. But it’s like, it’s like the I hate advertising and as this but it is very true. And maybe people buy into more, it’s a recoverable way to do more because everyone’s obsessed with doing more. Well, that’s that’s a great way to do more and not really have it be super detrimental to your body. Like if you want to do more, do really easy cardio within reason, like don’t 10 hours a week, but like, yeah, it’s a great point that crispy around the edges, that feeling like you’re filled with battery acid and fragile all the time kind of thing.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And you’re not recovering or a lot of people are like I can’t balance doing cardio and resistance training. I can’t handle both of my same Farnborough rounds, well, let me introduce a zone to my friends, because it makes it so much easier. So that way, you know, and I think especially your community, there’s a lot out there where it’s like, yeah, you do need some high heart intensity stuff and sprint interval training. But also, a lot of the things that lead to greater risk factors in that 40-plus transition are poor cardiovascular, fitness, and health, and like, how do we preserve that? Well, we train the things that we know that we need.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And some of that even helps with some of the symptomology that we see with that because of the vascular benefits and development. And you know, you’re you’re quite literally stressing and straining your vascular system to handle heat and heat dissipation better. And it might actually improve some of those symptoms that come with that. So, you know, don’t don’t write it off.

Steph Gaudreau
Yeah, we were talking about our walk last night, because now we’re those people that walk at night, you know, were we it 10 years ago, we weren’t. So my husband and I were talking about how our just our strength has changed over the last say 10-15 years. And our focus is different in training now where I’m really interested in being a Swiss army knife, I want to be fairly okay at different things. And I also we were talking about last night on this blog how now we’re in our mid-40s. And having better cardiovascular fitness.

Steph Gaudreau
While we’re now kind of both taking some time to build more of a base could be taking away from say top-end strength, it is well worth it in terms of the health aspect as well, for us being in our mid-40s. And just thinking about things like cardiovascular health and for women seeing that those I mean men as well. But for women seeing those cardiovascular risks rise in our age group and higher and how, you know, sometimes we’re just going to make trade-offs. But yeah, I love that you brought that up, that’s so important.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
No, I like this with the Swiss Army Knife approach. And that’s like the hybrid thing. I’m like hybrid training is health. And it doesn’t have to be running and lifting, it can be so many different things, but train multiple characteristics of your fitness. Like if I take anything from a CrossFit model, then there are definitely bits and pieces that I really like about that CrossFit model of things. And it’s let’s train multiple characteristics of our fitness because that makes us well-rounded athletes, that makes us healthier, we want to be aerobically trained, and strong, and powerful, and able to like to handle our body weight and move like these are all things that are important, especially as we are aging and getting older, like you’re gonna have to pick yourself off at the floor and get up and down from things and put things pick things up and move them around.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And like you want to be able to step have some pep in your step still, and you want to have aerobic training, but you want to be strong and strengthen your bones and your muscles. And we do that by having more honest athletic approach programs that tie back to everything we talked about. In the beginning, especially I know your audience is largely females, like you don’t need different things, they just become more important or they’ve always been important and you neglected them you need. You need good well well-rounded training that is polarized periodized and contains multiple components of fitness. So that way you can be the most resilient human that you can be from puberty, through periods of pregnancy and menopause and beyond. So, there we tie it all, and look, the circle comes.

Steph Gaudreau
Yeah, it does. It comes full circle. This has been I mean, we could keep talking, but I know you’ve got to know. But this has been awesome. And I’m so glad that we were finally able to have this conversation. There’s so many more things I want to chat with you about but Maybe we’ll do a part two someday. So yeah, we’ll save some things for then. But tell the good listeners where they can follow you learn more about everything that you offer and just kind of get involved in your world. So they have a nice contextual science-informed, practical counterpoint to a lot of the things that they’re seeing.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Well, if you don’t like black, if you like black and white absolutism, Lutheranism, and fitness, no, follow me, because I’m gonna make you think I’m gonna challenge your thoughts, I’m gonna make you give you a nuance. But anyway, all jokes aside, you can follow me at dockless fitness. And so that’s where I mainly hang out on Instagram, but my YouTube is growing and I have a lot of really good content on there as Doc Lyss Fitness, and then my podcast is called the messy middle because I live in the messy middle of fitness and that nuance and all that stuff. And so you can also find all of my training programs, services, and ebooks, either through Instagram or DocLyssFitness.com.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
And so we’ll hopefully be coming out with cardio-only subscriptions to my training programs next year for my non-runners because we know that that’s in high demand and who better than my team filled with exercise physiologists to put that together for you a bunch of meathead grunt head cardio looks, my whole team is like lifter turn cardio hybrid junkies, and I love it because we’re just like, a bunch of bros, you know, quote unquote bros who got into the Cardio World. And so it’s a lot of fun. And so yeah, I have a ton of cardio and the female phys stuff and lifting too because at the end of the day, you know, female physiology needs our cardio and strength.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
So I think it all is cyclical sometimes I think people think that it’s, I don’t talk about the female phys stuff. And I’m like, No, everything I’m talking about every single day applies to this population, like debunking cycle turning isn’t what you need every single day, you need actual good training approaches and applications. So I would definitely dive in. I have a few long-form videos or podcasts on cyclical training and my actual advice for that and a prescription for that, hopefully, more menopause stuff as I dive more into this field with my postdoc. And then I have a ton of the cardio stuff, like I said, either out or coming, especially on zones, if you want to learn more. So dockless fitness, across the board, you can find everything, probably just start from Instagram or my website and go out. Fantastic.

Steph Gaudreau
We’ll link all that up in the show notes. Thank you so much. Thank you, are you with us? I am. So I’m just oh, I can’t wait to share this episode out. It’s gonna be great. And I think this is the exact, you know, perspective that people need. It’s always nice to also hear people who are sharing similar thoughts. Because I think people need that counterpoint to what somebody said, about the absolute isms that are out there. So the more people that they can hear talking about the nuances of the context and all that stuff, the better.

Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on.

Steph Gaudreau
Thank you. All right, my friend. That is a wrap on this two-part series with Dr. Alyssa Olenick, better known as Doc Lyss Fitness. We went through so much content on these last two podcasts. And I could honestly talk to Lyss for hours longer, but I know, we just need to save some more for another time. We covered a ton of ground, talking about the sex data gap in research, through strength training, and fueling and some of the really important conversations and considerations that women specifically need to think about. And finished up here today talking about cardiovascular fitness and training, because we know that we need both for optimal health and also for performance.

Steph Gaudreau
This podcast will continue to focus mostly on strength training and related concepts. From time to time, we will welcome guests on to talk about these other aspects of fitness, including my next podcast guest where we’re doing another deep dive into cardiovascular training. So definitely stay tuned for that. Thank you so much to Dr. Alyssa Olenick. for coming on the podcast, be sure you check out everything she has to offer and follow her on social media. She has a wealth of information and frequently does really deep dives into what the research is currently saying. I can’t even tell you the amount of work that I know she puts into these posts so that you can better understand what is the research currently telling us about women’s performance, and so much more, go ahead and give her a follow.

Steph Gaudreau
Make sure you check out the show notes for all the links to everything we talked about in this episode. And make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app, it really does make a huge difference in letting the platform that you listen on know that this podcast is definitely worth listening to. And as an eight-and-a-half-year veteran of the podcast space specifically nutrition and fitness, I can tell you that female podcasters do not get the same type of play that our male counterparts get. So any support that you can show to female podcasters in this space is incredibly important. And I can tell you that every way that you can support the show whether it’s recommending an episode to a friend or smashing that subscribe button means so much to us. So thank you very much for all of your support. Okay, that does it for this episode. I will see you in the next one where we’re going to be diving into more cardiovascular other training concepts and practical applications with a very special guest and until then stay strong.

Cardiovascular Fitness & Training for Women w/ Dr. Alyssa Olenick | Steph Gaudreau.