Josh Kennedy: [00:00:00] This is the Cricket Matters podcast. And today we're talking about zone two for cricketers, a beginner's guide. So James, I think let's just start off in case people don't know what it is. Could you define what is zone two and why is it important for cricketers? God, this is, this is 

James Breese: difficult, right?

Basically zone two is approximately working between 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. It's not hard training. It's not easy training. It's, it's the idea of working at 60, 70 percent of your heart rate. But. in an aerobic capacity. We're not talking about strength training here now. We're talking about the idea of doing cardiovascular work.

So walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing, that type of activities is what we're looking at. Low impact on the heart. 

Josh Kennedy: Easy cardio, low impact. 

James Breese: Because the way strength training develops your heart is very different to the way cardiovascular training develops your heart. 

Josh Kennedy: [00:01:00] Oh gosh, do you want to go complex and explain that?

Or do we want to leave that for another podcast? 

James Breese: It develops the heart muscles so it grows inwards, right? It puts more pressure on the heart. Whereas cardiovascular training grows outwards and makes a bigger, stronger, more powerful, robust heart in an action. 

Josh Kennedy: Yeah. So obviously the heart is a muscle and it grows, it gets thicker.

So, you know, training your biceps, they get bigger, they get thicker. Exactly the same happens with the heart, right? When, when your strength training, but we want, we want some, we want you to be stronger, of course, but we also want to balance that out and have a stretch here. Bigger hearts, more stroke volume, et cetera.

Stroke volume is a great 

James Breese: way to do it because to pump blood around the body. So you need to be more efficient with how it do it. So it's two very different styles of training, but you can't do zone two by strength training, it's got to be cardiovascular based. 

Josh Kennedy: Would you agree with me then this is, this is sort of, uh, obviously we've done zone two with our clients for many, many years and we've just introduced it to our, uh, [00:02:00] general women's cricket team who we are training.

Would you agree that? Most people get zone two wrong. 

James Breese: Yes, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And we, we had a great debate about it a couple of weeks ago, didn't we? We did. About how we did it, which has ended up us reviewing how we do some of the stuff we do. But if we talk about the three main benefits, right, of zone two training.

Okay, here's number one is fat oxidation and endurance. Now, what is fat oxidation? It's using the right fuel. Okay, a lot of people use glucose and sugar to get their energy. Okay, well, same thing, but, you know, glucose is their primary fuel source. Now, we want to be using fat as our primary fuel source for a lot of stuff we're doing aerobically because there is an unlimited amount of energy.

When it comes to fat, whereas in glucose, we have a stored about 2000 calories and that's all you have and you burn through it. That's why you're going to have to replete it as fast as you possibly can. [00:03:00] And you keep using this and you keep burning out. It's why so many people do a hard intense workout.

They'll burn through their calories and they'll be dead lying dead on the floor. Right, the body's trying to replenish the storage, but also they'll have this hunger cravings like crazy. I gotta refuel, you know, and they'll refuel or they'll do moderate to moderate exercise, which is not in zone two, and they'll have these hunger pains afterwards as well.

That's not what we want. We want to become, we, to become aerobically fitter, you've got to be efficient both in terms of technique. in terms of movement economy, right? And that's just technique. Um, aerobic economy, right? Training in the right areas and also oxidation, fat oxidation, using the right fuel source.

Those are the three key areas we've got to try and figure out. That's number one. Number two is the aerobic threshold. Now everyone thinks about the anaerobic threshold, wherever it goes past that, that's the point of no return. where it's like sprinting. You can't sprint as fast as you can [00:04:00] for more than 10 to 12 seconds, right?

It just isn't going to happen. Okay, right, because that's using, that's you going into above your anaerobic threshold. Your aerobic threshold, which nobody talks about, is sitting below here. And what we're trying to do is make this aerobic threshold as close to the anaerobic threshold as possible. And that's why marathon runners at the highest levels could basically sprint faster than what we can for like two hours at a time.

Josh Kennedy: Exactly. Marathon runners, Nordic cross country skiers. They are the fittest people on the, in terms of aerobic capacity, VO2 max. Cyclists too, the Tour de France 

James Breese: guys. You know, their aerobic threshold is so high towards anaerobic threshold that what would be put us mere mortals into our anaerobic threshold, they're just cruising.

Well, you wouldn't, you 

Josh Kennedy: wouldn't even be able to, you wouldn't be able to go anywhere near as far. You wouldn't be able to get anywhere near, would you? 

James Breese: Not at all. And then look, and then the final thing, which is the big thing everyone's talking about, because zone two is quite fashionable at the moment, is the mitochondrial efficiency.

Yeah. [00:05:00] Right, right. Think about this. I'm going to, I've written a blog about it. So I'm going to use the phrase here because this is going above my little pea brain a little bit too in terms of the here now. So mitochondria are the power plants of your cells responsible for producing energy. Zone two training increases mitochondrial density and function, allowing your body to generate more energy efficiently.

So you can back deeper, bowl longer and recover faster on the blog that's going out very soon. So that's the point. It's health. It is efficiency, it's power, it's endurance. So Zone 2 has to be trained at Zone 2. Not Zone 3, not Zone 4, because there's 5 zones. Right? The problem is, most people don't know what Zone 2 training is and they can't get it.

Therefore, they're always training above that level, okay, which is too hard and too fast. They may think it's normal, so they get really good at suffering, but it doesn't improve energy production. It doesn't improve recovery and it doesn't improve [00:06:00] performance because, as say the German ladies will know, I'll make them do a 300 yard shuttle times two, run first, rest five minutes, do it again afterwards.

I want to see how fast they recover. Because that, to me, it comes back to this idea of a durable performer. A durable performer can recover faster than anybody else too, and keep going, and going, and going, and going. So, that's kind of like how we approach, and the ideas behind Zone 2 training. Because the idea is to make you fitter, aerobically fitter, so you can recover faster and make better decisions under pressure.

Josh Kennedy: Absolutely, and I think it's, when you talk about mitochondrial efficiency, getting all, uh, I think it's really important. And this is something I've learned more about probably over the last six months or so watching, uh, people who are much smarter than me, essentially. Um, once you start, you go too intense and your metabolic processes start happening outside of the mitochondria, meaning you're not working aerobically anymore, you that's.

That's it. Then no longer get the [00:07:00] benefits of zone two. So it doesn't matter if you did an hour's training and you spent 40 minutes in zone two, but some of it was in zone four and some of it was in zone three. Once you've gone outside, you then unfortunately lose the benefits of zone of zone two. So you can't, if you're going to do intervals or something like that, you have to do your zone two first and you have to.

Try your very, very best to stay in that zone two, stay below your aerobic threshold, and then you do your intense intervals at the end. If you do them the other way around, there's no point doing your zone two. It's like 

James Breese: what the girl, it's like what the girl was doing with the fartlek training, that's why we're putting fartlek at the end of the training.

We're making them do zone two because we're working on this area first, and then we're working on the benefits of the fartlek training afterwards. So it's, we got to have this, we know now a lot of cricketers, they don't have a good zone two. Their aerobic threshold is so low down. They can't recover fast enough.

Which means not scoring enough runs, not bowling through six, seven overs and [00:08:00] breaking down because it's about injury risk and prevention too as well. So it's not just athleticism, um, as we're trying to do it. But this is what came onto the debate the other week, wasn't it? How do we determine how, what is your zone two level?

What is your aerobic threshold level? Now the gold standard is lactate testing in the lab. Very few people are going to do that. The very highest athletes in the world. 

Josh Kennedy: Wait a minute, you don't walk around with a lactate monitor? Is that what you're saying? 

James Breese: Yeah, but you know, it just, it just isn't going to happen that that's not what people are doing.

You can't do it. So we used for years the Maffetone method, right? Which is 118 minus your age. That was, that was what we've used for years and it's worked really well for us. However, as you kindly pointed out on the research that people's math levels, when they're comparing them to the lab and comparing to different watches, it's all over the place.

It was massively. 

Josh Kennedy: That was a really interesting thing. When I so, um, watched a video of a guy who had tested all, he's got all sorts of devices, Apple, Whoop, Aura, God [00:09:00] knows what else. He's Garmin. And. It showed his, it showed all his zones at one, two, three, et cetera, et cetera. And the numbers were all over the place when there was some overlap, but they were massively different.

And then he got, obviously he got tested in a lab to show exactly what his zone to. was in terms of heart rate. And like I said, his watch, if he'd relied on his, any of his watches, he would have been wrong to say there was a bit of overlap, but it wouldn't have been correct. And the Maffetone method also put him outside or put him right, right.

Top end, didn't it? And he was, and he was a fit guy. Let's bear in mind. He was very fit. He'd actually. Trained for six months in zone two to expand his zone two. Mm-hmm . So he'd managed to, he'd managed to push it up. It had gone from, I think I'm gonna say roughly one 20 to 1 32, up to one 20 to 1 42. So he pushed it wider, which is the goal, which is what we wanna make everyone do.

Yeah. 

James Breese: Yeah. That was, and then we, so we, so when [00:10:00] we started looking at all the other people talking about their zone twos, we compile all this data together and we've came up with our own version of math. Is it Perfect? No. But it's a more controlled nature and it fits in line with the power of AI analysis, looking through this to help us do it, which is important.

I think AI is a really big factor of how we can analyze complex math and complex equations and do this quite well. So we've come up now with, to help people get into their zone 2, roughly the same way. Because people talk about, hey, use a talk test. The talk test. It's very, you know, it's, it's, can you have a whole conversation as you're doing things, but some people still go away and above that.

So it's having this controllability around it. 

Josh Kennedy: See, I, I argued that that might work, but you, you argued against it, so we were like, okay, we've gotta, we've gotta define it more clearly for people with some, with some numbers and that's cool. 

James Breese: Exactly. It is. 'cause they, they 'cause people, I can talk like this, I can't be speak here properly.

And it's like fine. But it's like giving some controllability and reigning in a little bit because yeah, it's, once you get good at it's. Then the talk, I think the talk test is great. I think it [00:11:00] does. You just know. You know what your pace is. But if you give parameters to people at the start, it gets them into the talk test, I think, and how you do it.

But anyway, we've got this idea of 180, uh, 180 minus your age minus 15 for people who've never done it before. Right? So if you're 40 years old, like me, so it's 180 minus 40, so that's 140, and then you take off 15, so that's 125. So I need to be running at a level where my heart rate doesn't get above 125, if I'm a deconditioned athlete, okay?

Which is the vast majority. But as you start training this more and get better, we increase this. Right over time. So then goes to minus 10 minus 5. So we're starting to build it up So again, if I'm doing a zone 2 workout for me now, it's 180 minus my age 40 Minus five, because I've been doing such a long time.

So my beats per minute, don't, cause it don't go above 135. That's my, that's the level I'm trying to work with it. 

Josh Kennedy: As you say, cause [00:12:00] you've trained. So at 135, are you confident that you can have a, I was about to say a comfortable conversation. It's not actually comfortable. It's a little bit uncomfortable, isn't it?

It's not, you'd rather not have a chat, but you can. Yeah, no. Well, 

James Breese: I I'd argue for me because I think, again, this is me doing such a long time My, my number is 148, because I've known this over time. So I, I can go even higher. And this is the thing, it's a starting point for people to start up here. But the more you train it, this is where your aerobic threshold goes higher and higher and higher and higher, right?

That is the most important aspect. Is that as you build it up, that's what we're trying to get to. So this is the starting system for us. Like if someone's a zone two for two, three years, that's, well, guess what we're doing? We're then going 180 minus their age, plus five, plus 10. You know, we can work it up and adapt it accordingly, the fitter they get.

But this is the starting point for you guys here now is that, where do we start? What's our goal? How do we get into it? Because we want to get fitter, healthier athletes, [00:13:00] not just people good at suffering. Essentially, 

Josh Kennedy: exactly. And that's, as you say, over the years, that's what we've found. They have this massive aerobic deficiency zone when they think they're doing zone two, but they're actually just, as you say, just got awesome at suffering.

It is. 

James Breese: I think the other thing that people talk about, isn't sprints enough? Can't we just do sprints? Cause cricket's a game of sprinting. And yeah, there is sprints in between it. What do you use to recover between sprints? Right? You use your aerobic system. And if your aerobic system isn't there to be able to recover properly, then I don't care how good you are.

So yes, this is the delicate balance of finding the right training platforms and programs to run this. So, you need to do a lot of Zone 2. Yes, you need to do repeat sprint ability, but the zone 2 is supporting your repeat sprint ability in the first place to make better decisions and recover between 

Josh Kennedy: pulls.

Exactly. I mean, how many, how many batters, you know, run a two a couple of times [00:14:00] or some singles and stuff, and then they're like absolutely knackered and then they get out because they can't recover, right? 

James Breese: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, again, so we got to tie it all in, but we just, this today was just a bit of a quick overview as to why we're making everybody, particularly the German ladies who are hopefully listening in right now, is why we're making you Zone 2.

It's for your health. But it's for long term performance and improve this recoverability. It 

Josh Kennedy: is indeed. Uh, there you go. That's your guide to zone two training. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. And if you would like our free training plan, then go to cricketmatters.

com forward slash train. And remember our goal is to make you a better cricketer.