What are aerobic and anaerobic capacity/threshold, how do you train them, and what are the benefits of improving each for athletes?

Question

I’ve recently discovered heart rate training and have been seeing these terms thrown around a good bit. Whenever I try to google them, I seem to just be met with more and more terms I need to google to understand what it all means.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Aerobic capacity is the maximum amount of o2 in ml per minute/kg of body weight your body can use.

Anaerobic capacity is the total energy output you can put out being a combination of the ATP and lactic acid systems.

For simple terms your body has two gears. Aerobic and then anaerobic.

If you increase your aerobic capacity you can put out more total work without going into anaerobic exercise. Basically you can add range to you lowest gear.

Improving you anaerobic capacity allows you to put out maximal effort for a longer period of time before you reach a point of unsustainable energy output.