Phases of Fitness

medium.com

There's a lot more that could go into this, the changes in acute and chronic responses to exercise, increased lactate threshold, increase capillarization, increased mitochondrial density.

Whilst those heart rate zones are helpful, they're usually inaccurate and a heart rate max run test would be better. Using the "more accurate" formula mine was well under my max HR in the real world.

A minor change would be that in phase 3, you would likely be able to sustain zone 2 for longer, your zone 3 and 4 will have become faster.

Thanks for the reply! Yep definitely agree that a lot can be added, but I purposely left out the technicalities. They can easily be googled, and the main point of this article was to showcase the more tangible aspects of exercising (according to me), increased lactate threshold doesn't have the same zing as mood elevation.

Also I've never done a heart rate max run test, but good to add!

This article tries to lay down my personal idea of the phases of fitness an individual can be in, depending on how frequently they exercise.

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