More Than Just "Sweating"
Five minutes in and your legs feel like they’re in an acidic bath, yet your lungs feel strangely fine. Or your legs are feeling strong but your breathing sounds like a Dyson vacuum. Either way, you’ve developed a deep discontent for the Assault Bike, as if it's personally attacking you.
Most individuals approach “cardio” like a light switch: actively moving or not, sweaty mess or not. But conditioning shouldn’t be considered a switch. It’s much more like an integrated system.
Random hard work of course can make you tired. The right work however makes you far more capable.
Engine vs Chassis
One of the simplest analogies is to consider dropping the engine of a Ferrari into the body of a rusted Fiat Punto. You can obviously still press the pedal down in a Fiat the same way you can in a Ferrari, but the frame of a Fiat is incredibly unlikely to contain the power that the Ferrari engine can generate.
Engine: heart and lungs—how much oxygen can you take from the atmosphere and deliver to the working muscles.
Chassis: muscles and nervous system—how well can you direct the effort, tolerate the work, and clear the “burn”.
If your legs blow-up before your heart is ever truly working, that’s likely to be a chassis problem. If you panic-breathe early and tap-out as a result, that’s likely a pacing/CO₂ problem. If everything genuinely maxes out simultaneously, that’s an engine ceiling we can raise.
The “conditioning” portion of Strength and Conditioning is to match the work to the weak link. That’s why we test.
First: Run the Diagnostic (Our RAMP)
Before we begin to formalise conditioning protocols with individuals, specifically general population clients (sports/events naturally have their own conditioning requirements), we run a short RAMP test on the Assault Bike: easy to start, add a few RPM per minute or two, stop when you have to.
The goal isn’t necessarily to chase a vanity number, though I’ll often give individuals a range of performance outcomes for reference, it’s to see how you fail. In this sense, the pattern points to the path forward.
Then: Your Path Forwards (Three Tracks)
Build the Chassis (eg., durability)
Goal: Spend more time on the bike without melting into a puddle.
Looks like: Extending low-to-moderate efforts from 3 to 6 to 10mins, smooth cadence, controlled, minimal drama.
Why: As our car analogy touched on, you can’t sprint a frame that can’t hold its shape. Durability aims to turn the sensation of “this hurts” into more “this is fine”.
Learn to Drive (eg., pacing)
Goal: Hold the hardest pace you can actually sustain over time (eg., max calories in 5 minutes).
Looks like: Starting at a sensible pace, aiming to finish steady—essentially don’t max-out the first minute and crawl across the finish line.
Why: Energy management is the goal. Finding a red line you can work with and living for a while just under it.
Turbo the Engine (eg., intervals)
Goal: Raise the ceiling (VO₂ max—the size of the engine).
Looks like: Intervals that progress from longer/recoverable (“extensive”) to sharper/more asymmetric ratios (“intensive”, eg., 30:30’s)
Why: short rest times force the heart to work harder between reps; over weeks, the engine grows.
As many in-person clients will recognise, we’ll cycle these but we don’t tend do all three at once. The goal is to target the limiter; then keep the rest ticking over.
“Tester Days” (Proof You’re Improving)
Every so often, once every few weeks or quarterly, we’ll throw in our “testers”. They’re not designed as punishment, but ongoing checkpoints without the need for a repeated RAMP testing.
1-mile Assault Bike Time Trial: A quick and “dirty” measurement of pure aerobic power.
Calorie Pyramids: How fast you’re able to recover between increasingly intense intervals.
Upper/Lower splits: Trick the heart into higher work than individual limbs would allow for.
30:30 Resistance Circuit: Incorporation of resistance training inside of conditioning work. 10 exercises, 30 seconds on/off, 15-rep target, 1-min round recovery.
The goal here is to compare you to you. The line should be an upward trend—even if we expect dips along the way. That’s progress in a real life situation.
The Homework (A Quiet Multiplier)
We will rarely spend session time on long duration, lower intensity efforts. Not because they hold limited value, it’s the complete opposite—but because it’s your time. Time spent in the coaching environment can be better spent working through technical elements of lifts and driving intensity between coach-client interaction.
However there are recommendations we do make to clients:
Walk. Cycle easy. Swim. Whatever you enjoy. Hit daily steps (7-10k)
Keep most of it, where possible, in Zone 2—conversation pace—intense enough to answer a phone call, but they’d know you were exercising.
Think of high intensity as creating “rust” (stress and its metabolic by-products) and easy work as WD-40. This Zone 2-type work is building capillaries (think more streets for blood flow), improves overall recovery, and makes the hard sessions feel less hard.
How a Training Week Fits Together
An an practical insight, let’s take a look at how we may organise a clients training week to incorporate the conditioning element:
Primary strength days (2-3x): Resistance Training first; finishing with a short chassis/pacing piece (eg., 30:15 x 6-8 on the Assault Bike or Battle Ropes)
Primary conditioning day (1-2x): your assigned track; durability, pacing, or VO₂ (eg., Nordic 4x4—4mins ~85%, 4 mins recovery, repeat 4 times)
Homework: (ideally most days): 30-45mins easy movement spread across the day as a step count.
The key here is that not every session needs to red. Two greens and an amber beats three reds and a week off.
Next Steps (14-day Starter)
If you’re reading this, and not already client, try the following:
Pick one path from the above (we’d assign this after your RAMP if you haven’t already done one)
Do two focused conditioning sessions per week on that path. Choose your modality, but be wise to the heavy impact of running.
Add two easy 30-40min walks/rides/swims (Zone 2).
Keep one simple metric that you’ll track: distance/calories at a set power or speed, or the average pace for your 5-minute effort.
Review after 2 weeks. If the limiter improved, stay the course. If not, consider switching the path.
Bottom Line
The intention has never been to simply apply conditioning protocols that make individuals sweaty and out of breath. The goal is to programme to make you better—whether that’s taking the stairs without gasping at the top, being able to run for a bus you’d previously had missed, or moving through life with a lower resting heart rate and higher potential range of effort.
So we can surmise down to the following…
Build the chassis. Learn to drive. Turbo the engine. Sprinkle in the easy miles.
And yes, make peace with the relationship you’re going to have with the Assault Bike. It’s not out to get you. It’s just honest…
AK.