so today we're going to take a look at math training and zone 2 training and i want to tell a little bit about the differences and why one may be better for you than the other how's it going runners my name is justin thompson i am your average running pt and i help the average runner achieve their own personal elite status if that's something you guys are into then go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the bell so that you guys know when the next video comes out so today we're going to compare math training with zone 2 training and both of these are kind of low heart rate style of training and trying to build your aerobic base so there may be times though when one is better than the other and maybe not i i it's i'm still kind of trying to figure that out what i know is that over the course of this the lifetime of this channel i've been using maffetone style training quite a lot and you guys have probably resonated with that quite a bit as well so now i'm going to shift a little bit and talk also about zone 2 training so there's differences between the two and one may be a little bit more appropriate for you than the other so let's talk a little bit about the details you've got math on one hand and zone two on the other hand both of which are designed to help you build your aerobic base now they do it a little bit differently and there's a different kind of a belief within each one about whether you should have your heart rate in a slightly higher range or in a slightly lower range so let's talk about first math training and i've talked about it a lot on this channel but just to review so math training is basically you take the number 180 you subtract your age and that is your max aerobic function number your math number which for me 180 minus 32 gives me a math number of 148. now you can live in about a 10 beat per minute kind of a zone so 148 and then 10 b's below that 138 so that would be my math zone now of course if you've been training for a long time then they give you a little bit of leeway to bump that up just a little bit so take my math number from 148 to 153 so i add five beats per minute on that but i've been trying to keep mine right there at that 148 number so what's the difference to zone two so zone two what you're trying to do is keep your heart rate in about 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate so instead of taking just a kind of a random arbitrary number like 180 you actually have to figure out what is your max heart rate now this is something that is debated and debated and debated whether you need to go and get it actually tested or if you can use a very simple formula like 220 minus your age now the problem with that 220 minus your age is well your age is the only thing that's really factoring but in all honesty the same thing with math training you're really only factoring in your age unless you can kind of bump it up or down based on your fitness level but for simplicity what i'm going to do today is i'm going to use that 220 minus my age number now i may get some comments down below and that's fine i know that this is not the most accurate method so i'm going ahead and putting that out there right now but i do know that when i have gotten my heart rate up really high and really was pushing a pace i know i was getting up there in the high 180s i may have even hit 190 one time so the numbers end up kind of working out for me anyway so if i plug myself into this formula what i get is 220 minus my age 32 so my max heart rate number is 188. from there i need to take sixty to seventy percent to get my zone two numbers so for me that sixty to seventy percent of 188 lands me at 113 beats per minute to 131 beats per minute so let's compare that to my map zone so maf zone 138 to 148 zone 2 113 to 131. as you can see there's a difference there there's a significant difference there you know you go you've got a 17 point difference between the max number of zone 2 and the mach number of mapatone training now here's the problem that i've had with zone 2 and why i have not been using it and but it but have instead been using math method when i go from a walk to a jog there's this really big gap in heart rate where my heart rate just kind of skips over a large chunk of space here for example when i go for a brisk walk my heart rate gets up to somewhere around 1 10 or so and it gets pretty tough to get it above that 110. unless of course i start jogging but when i start jogging that jumps up really quickly to 125 130 135 and then it doesn't stay there it kind of continues to creep up so for me going from a walk to a jog i almost completely skip over zone 2 entirely now i personally believe that there's a gap in my fitness there where if i had a better cardiovascular and aerobic base then i would probably be able to make that jump from a walk to a to a jog and i would probably land somewhere in the middle of zone two but because my cardiovascular base is still work still building and still working on it i don't quite have that range of heart rate numbers that i can access with normal everyday activity and exercise so instead i've been using math method and even early on in my math method i was having a hard time keeping it below my 148 number again this was because i was really deconditioned and i had to work to start to build my aerobic base up again but now that i'm starting to build that aerobic base back and i'm starting to realize hey i can keep it under 148 a lot easier and i'm even keeping it down on the lower end of my maf zone on a lot of my runs even though i'm actually starting to run a little bit faster so now i'm starting to think a little bit okay can i start to train a little bit more in zone two because i have a little bit more of an aerobic base build up now i'll be completely honest i've tried to run in zone 2 and i'm still not quite there yet but i think i'm getting closer and the reason that i want to try and start to train in zone 2 is because that is quote true polarized training my math zone kind of lands me in a zone 3 or so and if you're using a 5 zone system then you want to be training primarily on one end and on the other end of those zones and zone three tends to land you kind of in a what a lot of purists will call jump mile zone now if you're deconditioned and you're just starting running and you have very little aerobic base and very poor cardiovascular fitness i don't think there's such a thing as junk miles and for myself because i had had long layoffs before and now i'm starting to kind of get back into it i don't feel like my math zone was actually junk miles for me and i still don't think that i think that it's still very beneficial to run in that quote zone 3 or my mafitone numbers now i think as i continue to improve my cardiovascular fitness and as others continue to improve their cardiovascular fitness they want to start to aim for a little bit more of that polarization in their training and that's what i plan on doing i really plan on starting to bring that heart rate down even more as my cardiovascular fitness continues to improve but it's not going to improve very much if i'm just running hard and fast all the time so what i'm trying to do is now i'm starting to live a little bit more in the lower end of my math zone starting to move a little bit closer to that zone two training to start to retrain my body and my brain and my legs my muscles my heart to be able to work more efficiently in those lower heart rate zones now i think i'm probably going to still be using math training for quite some time i think if you're really deconditioned and you're just kind of coming back after a long layoff or something like that then you could spend about a year in math zone just trying to build that cardiovascular fitness back up before you start to see you know the desired results and start to get to the point where you can actually start to run in zone two so let me just kind of wrap all this up for a second i want to make sure that you guys can have a little bit of a guideline so if you're brand new to running then just know that your heart rate is probably going to try and shoot up a little bit higher so zone 2 may not be real really realistic right so unless you're just walking and now we've talked about this before it's okay to walk it really is and i recommend if you're just starting out doing walk and jog intervals where you're jogging maybe takes you up into your mafitone zone and then you're walking might bring you back down into zone two i see no problem with a method like that where you can combine math and zone two and then as you get to where you can do a little bit more running continuously i have no problem with sticking with math numbers even though it's not true polarized training it's still running with a lower heart rate it's still in an aerobic zone so you're still getting the effect that you are desiring which is to help build that aerobic base now on the other hand as you get more advanced and you start to kind of outrun math then i think it's appropriate to start thinking about living a little bit more inside of your zone too now you may have to start doing something similar to what you were doing early on with math where you were doing math running intervals and zone two walking intervals well you may have to even bring that down so that you're doing zone two running intervals and zone one walking intervals just know that as you do this that patience is really really important and we've talked about patience when we've talked about math training in the past so i know that that's not something that's uh that's new to you for me to say be patient as you are building your aerobic capacity but just know that even as you start to kind of change over from math to zone 2 if that's something you want to do even as you start to do that you have to be patient and you may start having to run slower than you were when you were doing math training and that's normal so as i'm thinking about this how do i plan on implementing zone two into my training now well you guys saw in the last video that i am kind of going a little bit more anaerobic as well so i'm starting to get a little bit more of that higher heart rate and that anaerobic training a little bit which means i probably need to balance that out with a little bit of polarized training right so here's what i'm planning on doing i'm going to do one day a week of anaerobic training one day a week of zone two training and then the rest of the days in the week i'll still live in math training zone now i'm pretty excited to see what the results of this are i have no idea whether this is going to work out for me if i'm going to even be able to run in zone two at all or if i'm just gonna end up having to do a bunch of walk jog while transitioning into zone two and if i do that's that that's okay um but if my goal is to improve my ability to pump blood to my working muscles and do it most efficiently then i need to start working in these low low heart rate zones and try and train my heart and my muscles to be able to use that heart rate level and still be effective with my running so again just to kind of wrap it up i think maffetone training and math method is great for beginners and just starting to kind of try and build that aerobic base and then as you get more trained and more fit and this may be a year down the road i think it's important to start to transition a little bit more into zone two so that you can really truly start to polarize your training and not end up running with just a bunch of junk miles now if you guys found this video helpful then go ahead and leave me a comment down below i would love to hear from you guys because this is a topic that you know i haven't really heard a lot of videos on comparing these two methods so let me know if this was helpful to you and how do you plan on implementing this information do you plan on sticking with math do you plan on going to zone two are you already doing zone two are you not doing either and you're just anaerobic all the time let me know what your thoughts are and i would love to hear from you guys and respond to any of your comments that you guys leave down below now if you guys like this video go ahead and hit that like button down below subscribe if you haven't already and get out there seek your elite and i will see you guys next time