Module 6a: Anaerobic Capacity

Dumpster fires, metcons, and intervals. | Module 6 - Anaerobic Capacity and Valor | Technical Essay

Anaerobic capacity is often the training we love to hate. It makes for sexy social media clips, we look good busting our ass, and get a potent training signal while testing our strategic ability to find and maximize rests.

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

One of the easiest ways to conceptualize anaerobic capacity is in terms of intervals, a great example being Pat O’Shea’s “Interval Weight Training” (IWT). Under this model you would see something like:

• A few rounds of an explosive movement coupled with aerobic threshold work, followed by a longer rest before moving on to…

• A slightly higher number of rounds with a grindy movement like back squats (again with timed rests) and another longer rest before the final segment of…

• A supplementary circuit of bodyweight exercises with minimal or no rest between sets.

This structure isn’t unlike what we’ve seen in our hypertrophy and power modules. The difference maker is that “when you start timing rest, you are no longer training power.” Note that previously when we did put time limits on rests, it was to ensure a minimum was met to fully express power in the upcoming set, compared to a maximum rest allotment between rounds.

In my opinion there are two defining characteristics for anaerobic capacity (ANA):

1. The limit being explored is “recoverability”, specifically inter-set or between rounds / interavls.

2. A dumpster fire – metabolic confusion induced by intentional stimulation of multiple energy systems at once.

If you’re a combat sports athlete, you’re familiar with recoverability – our whole lives are governed by “rounds and pounds.” Technically, all recovery boils down to aerobic efficiency, hence our earlier endurance work.

This is true whether we’re talking about recovering from:

• A scramble inside a round, between rounds,

• The number of quality reps / rounds / miles we can get in in a single training session, or…

• The number of productive training sessions we can get in in a single week (recall the constrained energy hypothesis from Module 1).

Anaerobic capacity (ANA) and aerobic capacity (AER) are distinctly different experiential processes as well as training adaptations. To differentiate these, I should ask myself which adaptation I’m trying to drive?

• The ability to accomplish more work within a given interval (AER) or…

• Decrease the time needed to recover between intervals (ANA)?

Obviously the two are related, though time frames can become quite arbitrary and are often objectively defined by one’s field of play (rounds, quarters, periods, etc.). A key distinction, experientially is how far we plunge into confusion towards despair; which will be covered in the attached somatic essay.

Suffice to say for now that training capacity (aerobic or anaerobic) will require pain because of the inherent lack of comfortable rest between intervals. This is a good time to mention that hard training requires hard resting and attention to detail to ensure that our efforts — no matter how defiant or noble — are not spent frivolously.

From a structural perspective, interval training like every-minute-on-the-minute (EMOMs), and variants, are good choices. For example:

• EMOM/10 = every minute, for 10 minutes.

• Alt/EMOM/10 = for 10 minutes, on odd numbered minutes do X, on even numbered minutes do Y.

• E2MOM/X = do something (like a short circuit) every 2 minutes for a total of X minutes.

• “Death By X” = interval accumulation, starting with 1 rep in the first minute, 2 reps in the second minute, 3 reps in the third minute, etc. until you cannot complete the required number of reps in the given minute.

True to this program’s design, I like the metabolic description of a “dumpster fire” – though I can’t take original credit for that phrase. The term “metabolic conditioning (METCON)” is extremely broad and we’ll talk about it more in the next module (AER).