Hi, would get some views/opinions on my thoughts here, or maybe I’m totally wrong about this all together.
Some background.
I’m +52yrs old, run every second day (mainly sub 1 hour), ride bike every second day (mainly sub 1h20min)and do strength training almost every day (push/pull/legs). No elite ambissions or competing in races etc. Just wanna see how fit/well trained I can get this old grumpy body.
I use Polar Vantage V2 and Polar Flow to monitor my cardio strain, load and tolerance, recovery, VO2max, HRV etc
I’m at VO2max 53 and my cardio tolerance is 109 (according to Polar)
I read alot and watch YT alot for subjects related to training/healthy food etc.
Everywhere I read 80/20, slow to get faster, more low intense to increase fitness etc. After low intense sessions Polar summary says things like “good steady low intense training, improving your fitness and your body performance bla bla bla”
If this is true, I would expect to see improved cardio tolerance value or VO2max or just anything indicating that my fitness benefits from the low intense/slow/recovery.
Instead I just see a decline in my cardio tolerance value. This leads me to the conclusion that the only way for me to increase my cardio tolerance value is to constantly train harder to generate more cardio stress (28 days avg) which totally contradicts all I read about training volume in low intense/slow training. So if I want to max my cardio tolerance value, I should go bananas for 28 days straight and reach an unsustainable cardio tolerance value and then try to stay at that level. Doesnt at all feel like the recommendations i read about enhancing fitness.
I like numbers, gadgets, statistics, graphs etc. If its not a number, it doesnt exist
Maybe it is just Polar cardio tolerance value that I misinterpret as “fitness” (maybe its the name that is just misleading?). Is there any other value that can be easy to measure/monitor?
I really don’t like to get punished after low intense/slow sessions by reduced cardio tolerance value. Its hard as it is already for me to do those sessions in the first place.
A lot of bla bla bla but it has been bugging me for weeks.
I guess I had to get this out of my system