Conditioning and How to Develop It

Below is an excerpt from an article that appeared at The Art of Manliness on conditioning. The full post may be read here.

I’m a big fan of getting strong. 

Physical strength improves all areas of life, and hoisting heavy weights is just plain fun. At least, I think it’s fun. 

When I first embraced the gospel of the barbell with the zeal of a new convert seven years ago, I pretty much gave up on any cardio exercise, both the low-intensity and the high-intensity kind. 

I rationalized my neglect of cardio by telling myself, “It gets in the way of my gains, bruh.”

Honestly, I just didn’t like doing cardio. 

I’d never been into slow and steady exercise. Running and biking? Boring! I liked to ruck, but I tended to half-ass it. It never seemed like enough of a workout. That wasn’t rucking’s fault; it was my own. 

And high-intensity cardio, like sprints and burpees and the like, just reminded me of the unpleasant parts of playing high school football. 

I’d half-heartedly do high-intensity cardio at the end of my barbell workouts since my coach, Matt Reynolds, programmed it for me. But I always approached it as “Do it if you can get to it.” And I found myself finding reasons to skip out on these cardio sessions more often than not.

What was the result of my neglecting cardio?

A couple things. Neither of them good.

First, I got kind of chonky. Strong, but pudgy. 

Second, I started getting winded doing everyday things. Sure, I could take a long hike on a backpacking trip, but I’d need to take more breaks than I would have liked. Intense games of ultimate frisbee left me sucking wind and asking for extended timeouts to catch my breath. 

In short, I was out of shape. 

I lacked conditioning. 

During the past year, I’ve shifted my focus from just concentrating on pure strength to also investing in my conditioning. Matt has been with me 100% on this shift and has helped me stay strong as I’ve developed the other aspects of my fitness.  

The results have been stellar.

I’m trimmer and in the all-around best shape I’ve been in in a long time. And the fact that I’ve been feeling so good, has changed my feelings about cardio.

To help us unpack the wonders of conditioning and how to do it, I consulted with Nick Solyen at Barbell Logic for his insight and advice.

What Is Conditioning, Anyway? 

“Conditioning” is a word that gets thrown around a lot in the fitness world. 

If you played football, the guy in charge of the team’s athletic performance was probably called a “strength and conditioning coach.”

If you’ve done CrossFit, you may have done “metabolic conditioning,” or “met-con,” workouts. 

We all likely have a general idea of what conditioning means, that it has to do with cardiovascular fitness and that it’s training that gets you ready for some kind of event, i.e., you do gassers in basketball practice so that you won’t be gassed in a game. 

That lay understanding of conditioning is a good starting point, but there’s more to it. 

To understand conditioning, it helps to understand the body’s energy systems. We’ve discussed this in previous articles before, but it’s helpful to review. 

All cells in your body are fueled by adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. When you walk, you’re using ATP. Deadlifting? Powered by ATP. Reading this article? ATP.

 ATP can be produced in three ways:

1. Through oxygen-dependent metabolism that utilizes fatty acids (oxidization). This is how most of the ATP you use throughout the day is created. When you breathe, oxidation turns fatty acids into ATP. Oxidation creates a lot of ATP. You get a lot of bang for your buck. Oxidation occurs within your cells’ mitochondria.
2. Through non-oxygen-dependent glucose metabolism (glycolysis). If you’re doing an intense exercise like sprinting or lifting weights, your body switches from oxidizing fatty cells to produce ATP to burning glycogen/carbs to replenish ATP stores. Glycolysis produces large amounts of ATP but not as much as oxidation. Glycolysis doesn’t occur in your mitochondria but rather in your cells’ cytosol.
3. Through the recycling of previously stored ATP. When ATP transfers energy to cells, it breaks off one of its phosphates and becomes adenosine diphosphate (ADP). Creatine then comes along and says, “Hey, ADP, you can have my phosphate,” turning it back into ATP to once more be utilized as energy. Creatine supplementation can help this process.

Which system we use to generate ATP depends on the intensity of the activity we’re engaged in. 

Low-intensity activities like walking, slow jogging, and leisurely swimming primarily use fat to generate ATP. When your body is using fat for fuel, it’s called oxidation or aerobic activity since your body is using oxygen to help convert the fat to ATP.

As the intensity increases, you start using more carbohydrates. So if your slow jog turns into a speedier trot, your body starts using more carbs to generate the ATP your body needs to haul your carcass along the running trail. When your body uses carbs to create ATP, it’s called glycolysis. It’s also called anaerobic activity since it doesn’t use oxygen in the ATP creation process. 

When you do an intense activity like sprinting or a heavy set of squats, your body uses creatine phosphate to create ATP. Like glycolysis, ATP created from creatine phosphate doesn’t use oxygen. Thus, activity that uses creatine phosphate for ATP is also called anaerobic. 

When physiologists and fitness scientists talk about “conditioning,” they’re talking about your body’s ability to create energy using these aerobic and anaerobic systems. The more conditioning you have, the more efficient your body is at creating energy in a given metabolic system.