all right so today we're going to be talking about conditioning and obviously it's one of those topics that a lot of people talk about but we don't have a very good grasp of what conditioning is in a lot of levels or people don't give good definitions of it so today we're going to be talking about what exactly is conditioning and then we can relate that to how we use training programs to improve it all right so let's look at a simple graph here we have power output in the vertical axis and we have duration on the horizontal axis and really we can look at two different sport scenarios okay the first sport a sport scenario we can look at what we'd call cyclic sports and that's anything where there's just constant power output marathon running cycling and you know endurance sports swimming where there's a constant power output throughout the duration of the entire event and we can see something like this okay so there's always some level of power output throughout the event and of course it's going to vary slightly over the course so they might speed up or it might slow down but there's this constant unending level of power output throughout the event okay the second scenario is really what we'd call an acyclic sport and that's where there's a big spike in power output generally followed by some period of rest or much much lower power output and then a big spike again so we can look at okay something like a football game where they're gonna be going all out very high levels of power output for six ten seconds or whatever it may be rest in a bowl of 30-40 seconds or whatever it may be and then they're back at it okay or something like fighting where you're talking three to five minute rounds followed by a minute of rest okay are actually probably a bit lower there but you're seeing the same sort of work with rest alternating periods and those are really the two different models of of almost any sport okay there's always either some cyclic or a slicker component to the sport so in either case we can define conditioning as the maximum sustainable power output okay and we can look at it as a line okay so we'll call this the maximum sustainable power and really this is what condition is it's a measure of how much power you can sustain throughout the entire duration because there's always some level of power out but you can maintain if you're a marathon runner you're in terrible shape you could still walk a marathon or you could slowly jog a marathon there's always me some level of power that you're going to be able to sustain for the duration of the event and that's what we call the maximum sustainable power and that's really what conditioning is anytime you go above this level for very long that's where fatigue is going to start to set in okay so let's look at two different athletes here let's say one's maximum stable power is there okay and the other has a maximum sustainable power of there okay obviously this guy has much better conditioning than this guy okay he's able to sustain a much higher level of power output over the course of the event than this guy okay that doesn't necessarily mean that this guy's always going to win the fight or win the race probably not okay because how well you manage your energy comes into play as well so let's say this is this guy's maximal sustainable power and he operates at below that level okay this guy is going to be able to maintain that over the course of the event now let's say this guy goes crazy and he has power output there okay he can only do that for so long because he's above his maximal stable power before he's gonna start to gas out so even though he was sustaining a much much higher pace than this athlete he was going above his maximum sustainable power and he's going to end up fatiguing and gassing out before this guy okay so there's really two components to it there's how much power output can you sustain which we're going to talk about that in the next episode what dictates that and what determines that and then there's how well you maintain your energy over the course of the event obviously you want to have the highest maximum sustainable power output possible because that gives you the potential to have a higher work rate and have a greater power output over the course of event but there's also how well you manage your power output how well you manage your energy production so those are really the two aspects to it so to sum it up we look at the maximum sustainable power as a measure of how much power you can sustain over the course of your event be fighting endurance sports or any sport in between there's always some level of power you can maintain and that's really the best gauge of conditioning and then there's also how well you manage your energy it's really those two factors that are going to define conditioning and for the most part defined performance so real simple maximum stable power equals conditioning and we'll see you again next time we'll talk more about what actually determines this right so for more videos like this make sure and subscribe to our youtube channel it's just youtube.com8wotv or of course you can find us on facebook facebook.com joeljameson or slash eight weeks out and twitter same thing twitter.com joeljameson and you'll always find us at eight weeks out eightweeksout.com and we'll see you again next time