What is zone 2 exercise?
Exercise intensity is commonly organized into 5 zones to better study, discuss and understand the influence of exercise intensity on performance, training, and general health. In the simplest form, these zones are defined by heart rate, since it is so easy to measure. Here's my extra simple description of the 5 zones. Zone 1 is easy exercise. It is the amount of exertion you can sustain without feeling like you're breathing hard or breaking a sweat (not because it's hot out). Think walking or cruising on a bike. Your'e exercising but it doesn't feel like work. Zone 2 is when you start feeling like you working, having to breath harder, but can still hold a conversation. This tends to equate to 60-70% of your maximum heart rate. Next you have Zone 3, which is when you pass your aerobic barrier and begin using anaerobic energy consumption, in turn leading to gradual accumulation of lactic acid in your muscles. Represented by 70-80% of maximum heart rate, zone 3 is great for cardiovascular conditioning, but will self-limit duration because you will eventually accumulate too much lactate to continue at this intensity. For recreational athletics, it's easy to spend most of your time here. You feel like you're working hard, but you want to keep enjoying what you're doing so you don't push harder, but still have to tap out before too long. Next is Zone 4, at 80-90% max heart rate you're really working hard here, but likely can't sustain it for too long. The good side is that training in this zone helps you improve how well you can tolerate high lactate levels in your blood, and how efficiently you utilize your energy sources. For this reason it is a good place to train for the purpose of improving high end cardiovascular performance. Then there's zone 5, where true misery lives. If you're not really hurting, then you're not in zone 5, and you really can't stay there for long. At 90-100% maximum heart rate, zone 5 is truly going all out. Training here has ton's of benefits for improving performance, but also plenty of debate out there on who it's appropriate or necessary for. Personally I love it, and probably do it too much, because activities like mountain biking or trail running inevitably turn into a race against myself, so it's hard for me not to go all out. But to bring it back to the point here, what distinguishes zone 2 from the others is that it is the highest intensity at which you can exercise without crossing your aerobic barrier. This means you will not accumulate much lactate in your blood, and in turn will be able to sustain this intensity for much longer.
Why is zone 2 exercise important?
I'd have to dig into the literature to validate these claims, but the simple version is that the benefits of exercise for cardiovascular and metabolic health are best achieved through regular exercise. While increasing the intensity of the exercise yields increasing benefits, the cumulative duration of the exercise is equally important. While of course something is always better than nothing, here we're talking about what is ideal for promoting general cardiovascular health. It's not that more intense exercise in zone 3,4,5 isn't beneficial, it's just that it is harder to clock an adequate total duration of exercise in these zones because lactic acid is accumulating in your muscles. Simply put, Zone 2 is intense enough to afford great cardiovascular conditioning, but easy enough that it can be sustained for optimal duration.
Why is stand up paddling so good for zone 2 exercise?
It's honestly not that easy to stay in zone 2 when exercising. It feels like you're working fairly hard, but you're really not pushing all that hard. The trouble with most types of exercise that are commonly used for zone 2 training are that they tend to not be very fun. Think stationary bikes, elliptical, or long monotonous biking or running on unvaried terrain at a slow pace. For the training minded types these things work great, but for the fun chasing enthusiast's like myself, I'd rather be doing something more fun. Most exercise that is done for fun tends to either not be intense enough or become too intense too easily. Think sitting around waiting for a set when surfing, too easy, then having to paddle hard
to get back out after surfing a wave, too intense. Mountain biking, trail running or hiking can be nice and easy on the downhill, but quickly transition beyond zone 2 during a climb. Even snow skiing or boarding, with the right amount of skill and effort you can get your heart racing, but you're still going to sit on that chairlift and drop back to resting on the way up.
Enter flat water Stand Up Paddling. The fact that you're out on open water standing on a board, usually in a beautiful place, seems to make the required monotony of staying in zone 2 still seem like fun rather than labor. Better yet, the perceived exertion tends to feel much higher compared to your actual output in contrast to other sports. When riding a mountain bike or trail running, when you feel like you're working hard, you really are, and your heart rate confirms this by easily climbing out of zone 2 and just as easily jumping to zone 3, 4 or even 5 just by having a good time. On the contrary, when flat water paddling on a SUP, if you feel like you're paddling hard you tend to be right in zone 2, which is also why you can keep going at that pace for a fairly long time. To really get out of zone 2, you usually have to do an all-out sprint, which you'd rarely want to do unless you're in a race. It is my theory that this ease of maintaining zone 2 comes from the generally mild demand placed on such a wide range of muscles throughout your body that are required to keep you balanced on the board and counterbalance the force of the paddle stroke. In turn the semi-forceful and highly repetitive action of advancing and pulling the paddle through its stroke seems to place just the right amount of demand on upper body muscles which exhibit generally lower aerobic capacity than their lower body counterparts, letting you easily elevate your heart rate into zone 2, but really having to push-it to go beyond it. It's truly the baby bear's porridge for recreational sport intensity. If you don't believe me, try it. Have reasonable competency on a SUP so you are able to all-out sprint when you want to, wear a heart rate monitor and go for a fast but not sprint paddle for 30+ minutes. Chances are you'll stay in zone 2 most of the time, which would not be so easy to accomplish without a more concerted effort in other activities.
Granted, caring about how much zone 2 exercise time you're getting tends to be of greater concern to personality types that are happy with the arduous slog of boring laborful exercise. I'll still take some small comfort in knowing that going out on the SUP for a playful cruise is checking some very helpful health and fitness boxes. And for the hype-motivated fitness types, who wouldn't mind making it a little more fun.
More to come on the additional health & fitness benefits of stand up paddling.
-Why stand up paddle surfing might be the most fun way to get a killer, full body work out
-Stand up paddling checks all the boxes for a longevity promoting exercise
-Stand up paddling for vision... really?
-Stand up paddle boarding to fix a disc herniation
-Stand up paddling during pregnancy
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