I just finished running through Central Park. More like trotting. I was trying to keep my heart rate below 140bpm.

This is a very popular training method called Zone 2 Training. The goal of working out like this is to increase your muscular endurance.

Imagine you’re filling up a water balloon with water. As you fill it up, the balloon expands. That’s what’s happening with your heart when it is in this zone.

More specifically, if you spend enough time expanding your heart (just like the water balloon), it will eventually adapt and the size of the chamber will expand. This means it can hold more blood. And if it can hold more blood, it can get more fuel to your muscles.

You could train at a higher heart rate and get the same adaptation, however the strain on the body increases exponentially in the higher zones.

Zone 2 is the perfect combination of maximum training result with minimum strain on the body. That is why it’s so popular.

For the chronic pain patient, this matters so much. We often see people who will feel good when they wake up, but around 1 or 2pm, things start to fall apart. This is usually a muscular endurance problem. Your body can maintain good mechanics for the first half of the day, but after a while, they run out of gas.

The chronic pain game is pretty simple. Get your body in the right position and be able to hold it for a long period of time. This is why the core of our genMAX testing protocol is Posture & Breathing. This is the foundation. Our first mission is just getting you in the right spot with good breathing mechanics. After that, the entire training protocol at Saint Bartholomew is built around developing enough resilience to hold that position no matter what life throws at you.

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