Hard to Kill Programming Methodology: Part 9 - Oxidative Training

When it comes to developing the ultimate blend of performance and longevity, energy system training plays a critical role. At Garage Gym Athlete, our Hard to Kill Programming Methodology ensures that athletes build a rock-solid foundation while pushing the limits of performance.

After covering the Strength Continuum (strength, strength-speed, speed-strength, and speed) and the Endurance Continuum (aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, strength endurance, and power endurance), we now shift our focus to Energy System Training—one of the most crucial, yet overlooked, aspects of training.

Understanding Energy Systems in Training

The body has three primary energy systems:

1. A-Lactic (ATP-PC System) – Short bursts of max effort, under 10 seconds.
2. Lactic (Glycolytic System) – Medium-duration, high-intensity work lasting 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
3. Oxidative (Aerobic System) – Longer, sustained efforts where oxygen is the primary fuel source.

This article will focus on the oxidative (aerobic) system, which we call Sustain Training at Garage Gym Athlete. While aerobic endurance training (such as Zone 2 training) lays the base, oxidative training takes it to the next level by incorporating structured interval work to improve performance and efficiency.

Why Just Doing Zone 2 Isn’t Enough

Many athletes fall into the trap of thinking low-intensity Zone 2 training is enough to build endurance. While Zone 2 is essential for aerobic base-building, higher-intensity aerobic training is what improves speed, efficiency, and endurance performance.

If you want to get faster, last longer, and improve VO2 max, you need to train at higher intensities using structured intervals. This is where oxidative training comes in.

How to Train the Oxidative System (Sustain Training)

Oxidative training primarily focuses on interval-based training with structured work-to-rest ratios. The two most effective ratios for developing oxidative capacity are:

• 1:1 Work-to-Rest Ratio → Moderate effort, equal rest time (e.g., 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off)
• 1:2 Work-to-Rest Ratio → Higher intensity, double the rest (e.g., 3 minutes on, 6 minutes off)

The key to success? Intensity should match your rest period.

• If you have a longer rest period (1:2 ratio), you should be pushing harder during the work interval.
• If your rest period is shorter (1:1 ratio), maintain a steady but challenging pace throughout.

Sample Oxidative Training Sessions

Here are some examples of oxidative workouts you can incorporate into your training:

1. 5-Minute Aerobic Intervals (1:1 Ratio)

• 5 minutes hard effort (Zone 3-4 intensity)
• 5 minutes rest
• Repeat for 4-6 rounds

2. 3-Minute Threshold Training (1:2 Ratio)

• 3 minutes at near max effort (Zone 4-5)
• 6 minutes recovery
• Repeat for 3-5 rounds

3. 8-Minute Sustained Efforts

• 8 minutes steady work (Zone 3)
• 8 minutes rest
• Repeat for 3-4 rounds

Why Oxidative Training Matters

Training the oxidative system allows you to:
✅ Improve VO2 max and endurance performance
✅ Increase fat utilization for fuel
✅ Boost recovery between high-intensity efforts
✅ Enhance overall work capacity

By programming structured aerobic intervals, you move beyond simply “logging miles” and start training smarter, becoming more efficient at sustaining higher workloads over time.

Are You Training the Right Way?

Many athletes unknowingly undertrain their energy systems, leading to suboptimal performance. The key to sustainable progress is knowing when to push intensity and when to back off.

If you want expertly designed programming that balances aerobic, muscular, and strength endurance in the right ratios, Garage Gym Athlete does it all for you.

💪 Join the Hard to Kill Programming Methodology and start optimizing your training. Sign up for a free trial today at GarageGymAthlete.com.

Final Takeaway

Energy system training is the secret weapon behind elite endurance and performance. Start incorporating oxidative training into your workouts, track your intensity, and watch your conditioning skyrocket.

Next up, we’ll dive into the Glycolytic (Lactic) System—one of the most challenging but rewarding aspects of energy system training. Stay tuned!

Remember: If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred:  All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. We're diving back in to our programming series. This is the Hard to Kill Programming Methodology, and it is the perfect blend of performance and longevity, ultimately what we're trying to do. So I'm going to jump straight in. Very brief recap.

We've gone through the strength continuum, which is strength, strength, speed, speed, strength, and speed. And we've also gone through the endurance continuum. Aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, strength endurance, power endurance. What you'll notice about those two continuums is we covered eight areas, okay?

And in those eight areas, we were predominantly looking at types of muscle contractions or strength training. If you just think about the entire strength training, all of that is How to get stronger, how to get faster, um, you know, dynamic efforts, those kind of things. Then we get into the endurance continuum.

And other than aerobic endurance, we talk about muscular endurance, strength endurance, power endurance. So those are all lifting methods. Those are all strength methods other than aerobic endurance. Now, when we talk about aerobic endurance, in that continuum, I was primarily talking about zone two training or base training because it lays the foundation for everything else.

Now we get into energy system training. So there are three energy systems that we're going to be talking about and that we program at Garage Gym Athlete. It's in all honesty, one of my favorite topics because I love specifically training energy systems and what it can actually do for your training. And so we're going to start kind of in reverse order.

And so there are three energy systems. Like I said, a lactic, lactic. And oxidative and the, they have other names, but we're going to start with the oxidative system or your aerobic system. We call this sustain. Okay. So real quick, you might be thinking, wait, we already talked about aerobic endurance, how is training your.

Oxidative or sustain or aerobic system going to be any different? Well, if you think about it, if you were going to try and improve your aerobic endurance, like say I want to go run An ultra marathon a marathon a 5k doesn't really matter what it is some endurance event I can't just go do zone training zone 2 training every damn day.

Like I just can't that's not going to be very effective You're like Laying the base without ever doing any of the hard work, the threshold training, uh, the VO two max training, any of the thing of those things, all you're ever doing is zone two training. So in tune trading is great, but it's not, what's going to get you any kind of, uh, you know, higher end performance, faster marathon times, faster, five mile times, one mile times.

That's not what's going to do it. It's really just laying the base. So when we specifically talk about oxidative training and energy system training, and this is specific to garage gym athlete, because a lot of people use this in many different ways. We are talking about higher end aerobic threshold training, interval training specifically, and how to improve it.

And that, and there's even a third modality we'll get into before this series is over, but that shows how we're hitting the aerobic system in three different ways, because it's that freaking important. Okay, so. The oxidative system, if you were to look at energy system training, just big picture here, like what is it?

What are we talking about? Well, when we're talking about energy systems, we're really talking about how the body utilizes energy to produce produce. You know how how utilizes different forms of energy to produce power to produce output and the lower in time and higher intensity, you're going to be predominantly using sugars.

Okay, and then as you move away from that and you extend time. And you, uh, you know, move away from the intensity, you're going to primarily be using fat. Now, that's kind of in a vacuum. Like when you're training less than 10 seconds, these like high bursts that we'll get into energy system training, that's without oxygen.

Really, it's stored, you know, ATP, those kind of things. We're not really worried about the macronutrients that we're consuming for a workout. When we're talking about energy system training, we're talking about how you metabolize, um, different. In forms of energy and how that translates to your training without trying to overcomplicate it.

So when we're talking about oxidative, we're typically talking about longer duration and lower intensity, but not necessarily low intensity, like not hard. What I mean by low intensity is it's not glycolytic. It's not these really, really hard efforts. Okay, so what does this look like? Predominantly for us, a garage gym athlete, when we are doing oxidative training.

The main thing that we are trying to adhere to our standard work to rest ratios. Now this is across the board. Um, how you should train energy systems is targeting specific work to rest ratios. When you're looking at the oxidative system, your aerobic system, you should be looking at one to one or one to two.

So what does that look like? Well, if I want to go three minutes on three minutes off. That's how we're starting to train the aerobic, the oxidative system. Or it could be 1 to 2, so we could do 3 minutes on, 6 minutes off. Okay, and the more time you have off, what does that typically mean? That means you should have gone harder in the training, and typically these intervals are going to be anywhere from three to eight minutes in duration.

That's going to kind of be. I mean, you can go up, you can go 10 minutes on 10 minutes off. You can, you can do any kind of, um, combination you want, but typically in our training, three to eight minutes. And so when we, when we go to program this, I want you to just think about the one to one versus one to two.

So if I'm doing three, let's say, eight minutes on, eight minutes off, five minutes on, five minutes off, it doesn't matter, three minutes on, three minutes off, any of those things, if I'm trying to stick within that three to eight minutes, then that's going to dictate the intensity. Now, I'm not going to give you a specific heart rate zone, but knowing that, like, hey, I'm going to go hard for five minutes, and then after this I get a full five minute break, you should know that you can Probably go pretty hard on those five minutes.

Like you're going to be an upper threshold, you know, high zone three, low zone for something like that. Now, if I say, Hey, I want you to go three minutes on and we're going to rest for six minutes, that should be a bigger indicator of bringing even more intensity, right? So now we're. Hi, like we're high zone for we were really trying to push the pedal to the metal.

This is threshold training. This is really like VO two max level training, and then you're gonna take six minutes off. That means you're basically getting a full recovery. Um, and so the expectation is to go really hard. And the reason I have to talk about this blending of time and intensity and all these kind of things is because if you don't do this correctly, If you mess around with energy systems and you're just like, Oh, well, Jared said, if I, you know, it's a one to one work to rest.

So I'm doing one minute on one minute off, which is also correct. Like you could do one minute on and one minute off, but if you are either going way too hard or not hard enough, you're like not in the right zone. You're not training how you should be. And predominantly what I see is not someone going too hard.

It's not going hard enough. So it's like, okay, I'm going one minute on one minute off. That should be a pretty taxing. Session. And you'd probably do that for 30 or 40 minutes, you know, maybe even longer. But if you are like. Well, I'm going, you know, you're hitting zone two level intensities from one minute on one minute off.

That's not exactly, you know, checking the box here from the oxidative training standpoint. That's more of like base training zone to aerobic endurance. You can do that somewhere else. And for us, we would have already. Plan that for you. Program that for you somewhere else in that training block. But when we get to the oxidative, when you start to see these intervals, you just have to know that there's a certain level of intensity attached to it to make sure that you're seeing the results.

So if I'm again, if I'm going three minutes on three minutes off, I know that that's all right. That's like my My 80 percent 85 percent and now I see three minutes on six minutes off. I'm going to that one to two. All right. Now I'm bringing up 90, 94, 95%. You know, I'm, I'm going to go pretty hard on these three minutes and then you might do a series of these.

So it is interval training. It wouldn't just be three minutes on three minutes off and then you're done. It would be doing that for three, four, five, six sets. And typically you would. Um, like say you did three sets of that this week, you do four sets of it next week, five sets of it the week after that, and then maybe back off and then, you know, maybe change up the time, time domain.

But that is it for opening things up with energy system trainings. There's a, there's a lot to unpack in energy system training, but if you just know you need to be looking at work to rest ratios. And we're just talking about oxidative right now. There are two more energy systems to hit, and then you also know, hey, we're predominantly using more fat when we're in the oxidative system.

So the intensity doesn't have to be at our absolute highest level. That's when we get to the glycolytic. And we'll talk about that. You know, that is how the body is utilizing. Energy is predominantly doing that through, uh, you know, oxygen. It needs oxygen to continue to create that energy, and it's relying on a mix of carbohydrates and fats that your body has stored ultimately to to unlock, you know, these carbon chains that are eventually gonna be turned into energy that you use.

Energy systems are one of my favorite topics and I can't wait to dive into them more, but this is the oxidative system. And if you are one of our athletes, you're very familiar with training with this and we appreciate you for sticking with us being a part of our training. If you would rather not have to worry about all the things that I'm talking about, you're like, man, can I just have someone do this for me?

Absolutely. Go to garagegymathlete. com, sign up for a free trial, and we would love to have you. But that's it for this one. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.