Podcast Transcription: Zone 2 Heart Rate Training: Cardio Exercise for Longevity and Performance with Ted Ryce  

Ted Ryce: So, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you already know that lifting weights is the best way to work out if you’re looking to lose fat. And losing fat is important for your overall health, it’s important for longevity. But what you might have also wondered is, where does cardiovascular exercise fit into the big picture of health?  

And we’re going to be talking about that today. I’m going to do my best to break down the science for you in an understandable way. So, if you’ve ever wondered that question, and you’ve heard me talk about things in the past, today, we’re going to do a deep dive.  

So, what’s up, my friend? Welcome back to the Legendary Life podcast. I’m your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high-performers. And let’s just jump right in. You may have even heard people talk about cardio, cardiovascular fitness, more specifically, and longevity. And you may have even heard the term, “zone 2 cardio” and kind of wondered what that meant. Or maybe you’ve heard people like Peter Attia and others break that down.  

But today, I’m going to tell you: I’ve been into this for a long time, much longer than a lot of the current people—take that for what it’s worth. And I have a story about it, too, about how I got into it, because I was a personal trainer during the time when it was all about High Intensity Interval Training. And if you don’t know me, I’ve been in this business for over 23 years now, actually, like a month and a few days over 23 years. But I’ve been in this business for that long. 

And in my 20s—and I started about 22, just to give you reference, about 45 now—when I was in my 20s, I was all about the High Intensity Interval Training. We started having study after study after study come out showing how it was superior for everything, from fat loss to sports performance.  

And this was critical for me at a personal level because when I was 28 years old, I believe, 27/28, I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and I started competing, and I became very interested in cardiovascular training because you can’t just lift weights and go to Jiu-Jitsu, you will get your butt kicked, you’re strong for about a minute, and then you get crushed. And that’s what happened to me. And I knew I had to get in better shape. And I had a long history of being in the martial arts before, and I already knew that; I knew I needed to up my conditioning.  

And as they say in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or actually catch wrestling, they say conditioning is your best submission, your best wrestling move, being in shape is key. And at first, I got into great shape. I was training hard. I was doing interval training, I trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu so many times per week, sometimes I even doubled it up on one day, and even tripled it up one day. It was totally stupid, but I was training a lot.  

And just to pause for a second. I feel like most people feel like more is better, harder is better. And definitely more of that equals better, as far as getting in shape. And the more hard workouts you can do, the better shape you’ll be in, the better for longevity and other things.  

So that’s not true. It’s what I’ve figured out, eventually. And I’ll tell you, I learned this the hard way. Because I started when I was, like I said 28. But after a few years of competing—and I did very well in competitions, never became a world champion, but I became the state champion of Florida and won a bunch of other competitions.  

So, I was doing well, but I hit a wall in my, let’s say, early 30s. And as I started to get closer to 35, I just knew something was up. My knees ached. I got out of breath easily. But I could go to my class, my Jiu-Jitsu class—and if you’ve never done Jiu-Jitsu before, imagine the hardest cardio workout ever, because imagine running on a treadmill but when you get tired, you just get off the treadmill or you slow it down. But when you’re with another person and you’re sparring, they usually intensify. So, it’s a really hard workout, you could say. 

And I could go to class and I performed okay, but I was starting to feel like, man…I felt old, to be honest. I got out of breath easily. I was just feeling crushed after my classes to the point where I do an hour long or sometimes an hour and 30-minute-long Jiu-Jitsu class and afterward, I just lay there 10 minutes, just laying there on my back breathing, so, so exhausted. 

And I had other things going on in my life, too. I wasn’t sleeping so great. I was under a bit of stress. I’m not going to complicate this story by going into those details, but just know the whole package matters. But there was a turning point that happened for me. And that turning point came when I started learning from a strength and conditioning coach named Joel Jameson.  

And Joel started talking about something that sounded dumb to me years before. He started talking about how low intensity training was the key to high performance, like a Jiu-Jitsu match, for example. And I just didn’t understand that it makes so much sense if you go and do Jiu-Jitsu, or if you play a hard sport, a very demanding sport wrestling, boxing, something very challenging.  

Right away, it just seems logical that you would want to…It’s so challenging that you think well, in the gym, I need to push myself super hard so that when I get on the mats, in my case, for Jiu-Jitsu, I’m going to perform even better. And what he was saying was the opposite. He said, the key to performing at a high level was to do more low intensity, cardio, and I was like, “Really? I don’t know if that’s true.”  

And he also talked about using metrics like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, and one-minute heart rate recovery to measure your fitness to make sure that you’re going in the right direction. And eventually, I started wising up—or getting wiser, rather. And I started to understand like, hey, there’s something to this. Because if you’re in the gym, and you’re lifting weights, you’re tracking—if you’re serious about your performance—you’re tracking, how many reps am I doing? How much weight that I’m doing?  

Even if you’re not tracking it, like I do now, where I use an app and track it, you’re generally aware, “Hey, am I lifting more weight than a month or three months ago? Or am I stuck on the same weight here?” And by the way, just to throw this out there, if you want to hear my interview, because I’ve had Joel on the show, go to Episode 168: 11 Ways to Work Out Smarter Than Ever. And that should tell you a lot about what I learned from Joel.  

Because what started happening, what happened next is I started implementing a results-driven program. And the results that I was looking for were the things that I mentioned: the lower resting heart rate. I started to understand like, the way you measure intensity in the gym, or the results, rather, of your hard work in the gym, the weights go up, you can do more work, you can do more sets, and you can do more reps with the same way.  

And measuring cardiovascular fitness is the same thing. You can measure resting heart rate. You can measure heart rate variability, too. But I don’t do that personally, even though the Oura Ring does it. We’re not going to be talking too much about heart rate variability. But another thing you can use is one minute heart rate recovery. What is that? If you’ve never heard of it?  

Well, basically, let’s say that you do a cardio workout. It could be a boxing class, it could be a step aerobics class, it could be a Jiu-Jitsu class. And right after you’re done, you check your heart rate and you set a timer for one minute, and you see how many beats your heart rate drops in one minute. Really simple. And if your heart rate drops, 30 or 40, or even more beats per minute. That’s good recovery. And if it stays elevated, like how I used to have it, that’s a sign that what you did, you just weren’t conditioned for.  

And what ended up happening was, instead of getting crushed by going to do these hard workouts, whether it was an interval training workout, whether it’s a Muay Thai workout, whether it’s a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu workout, I started to feel better in my training. And my resting heart rate got lower. My heart rate recovery got lower. I tried tracking HRV.  

I know that’s really popular to track right now, and my Oura Ring tracks it. And I’ll just say this: I haven’t taken it as seriously, although I have in the past because I feel like the resting heart rate and the one-minute heart rate recovery was enough for my goals. Now if you’re more serious athlete, you might want to look into heart rate variability.  

But what I took away from this is, I started realizing, wow, most people push themselves way too hard. And they think they’re working out hard. But what’s really happening—It’s like taking someone who’s been on the couch for the past six months and then having them run a mile. They’re going to be crushed by it. But running a mile, it’s not a display of a high level of fitness. Are you picking up what I’m putting down here? 

So, what I’m trying to say is, you feel that your workouts are hard, because you’re not in that greatest shape, specifically cardiovascular shape. And the better your cardiovascular conditioning is, the faster your heart rate is going to come down in between sets of resistance training, in between sets of hard intervals, if you’re doing interval training, in between sparring matches, if you’re in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class, in between rounds, if you’re doing Muay Thai. Sorry for all the martial arts references, but that’s what I’m into. And actually, because it’s such a challenging sport, cardiovascularly, it makes for a good measure.  

And I’ll tell you this too: performance and longevity, regardless of what your sport is, and you could be an executive and running your company is your sport. It could be you’re an attorney, or like one of my clients now is an auditor in a big accounting firm, she’s a partner in an accounting firm. So, her sport, you could say, is doing these audits during tax season. She’s got to crush it. You’ve got to be in shape to do that.  

And also, if you’re interested in longevity, performance and longevity are built on a base of cardiovascular conditioning, and a great base of cardiovascular conditioning, it just might save your life. After all, your heart is just a muscle. And humans, what we’re dying of? We’re dying from very predictable things—heart disease being the number one. And most of these chronic diseases have a root cause, a common root cause, poor metabolic health.  

So not only does it help with longevity and performance, but more specifically, cardiovascular conditioning, the type of training we’re going to be talking about, zone 2 training, does some things that weights don’t do. And I want to tell you something, before I dive into this: I am all about the weights, all about the weights. You’ve probably heard me talk about weights and how it’s a waste of time to do cardio to burn fat, and that’s all true.  

However, once we shift away from fat loss and start thinking about health, that’s when things change, especially if you’re a person who is either sensitive to the stresses in your life. Or if you’re a person who maybe you’re not so sensitive to stress, but you’re running a company and the things that come up in that company, or you’re an executive in a company and the dumpster fires that you have to put out, take a lot out of you.  

So now we’re talking about something different than fat loss, we’re talking about performing your best, feeling your best, being resilient to stress. And one of the things that I wanted to tell you that I found out through this—I hesitate to call it research because I wasn’t in the lab crunching data. But throughout my studies in interviews with world-leading experts on this, is something that changed the game for me.  

Now, you probably know my story. If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you know that I’ve had a murder in my family, I’ve had a suicide in my family. I’ve had a lot of stressful events in my family. And these affected me obviously. Really, there’s some tough moments and some of you have been up and down with me through some of the great moments, and you’ve been on the down side where I went through some really tough stuff.  

And what I wanted to tell you is this: one thing—and this is the more personal aspect of health and cardiovascular health that changed the game for me, was I started looking into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD. And one of the things that I found was quite interesting. So, there are a few things. There’s a part of your brain called your hippocampus. And I’m not really going to get into too much brain science here, so don’t worry, I’m not going to test you at the end of this podcast.  

But I do feel like this is important, especially if you’re a person who experiences a high level of stress, or maybe if you’ve been even diagnosed with PTSD, because of something you’ve gone through in your life. So, here’s what I learned. This hippocampus area, it’s an area of your brain that is correlated or connected with learning and memory. And it’s also something that’s connected with PTSD. More specifically, what some researchers found is that, let’s say that for whatever reason you’re born with a smaller hippocampus, you are going to be more likely to experience PTSD after a traumatic event than someone who has a bigger hippocampus.  

And I’m not going to go into the studies today on this, although I would love to break this down because nobody talks about this, at least I feel not enough people are talking about it in the way that I started to understand this. And so, if you have a small hippocampus…And let me rewind there for a second.  

So, the important point here is, two people go through a traumatic event, let’s say, you go to war, and they watch their buddies die and it’s super traumatic, as you can only imagine, right? 

As I record this, Russia occupied Ukraine and is attacking Ukraine, invading Ukraine, you can only imagine what it’s like in the modern world to have that going on. I mean, it’s so stressful that people who are just watching the news, it stresses them out. So, let’s say one of those people has a normal size hippocampus, the other has a smaller hippocampus, the person with a smaller hippocampus is going to be much more likely to experience PTSD, as a result of going through more or less the same experience, the same horrible experiences.  

Another thing that they found is a person who had a normal hippocampus, had PTSD, the hippocampus shrinks. So are you with me, it seems that so far, some people have smaller hippocampi than others, that makes them more susceptible to PTSD. We also know that if you have a normal hippocampus, and you go through an extremely traumatic event, say the death of a loved one, like what happened to me recently with my dad, or there’s so many things that you can go through, but something very traumatic, we know that it can shrink your hippocampus, even if you had a normal sized one.  

And what do you think I’m talking to you about this for right now? Where does cardiovascular conditioning come in? Well, guess what? The thing that is the gold standard for improving or increasing the size of your hippocampus, creating new neurons in your hippocampus, therefore, increasing the volume, increasing the size, it’s aerobic exercise.  

And I want to tell you, if you’ve ever felt like, “Yeah, you know, I’d like lifting weights and feels good in your muscles. But yeah, for some reason, I keep doing cardio, because when I do cardio, I just feel more emotionally regulated.” 

Does that resonate with you? So many people have told me that over the past 23 years, and certainly, I find that true for myself as well. Whenever I’m feeling kind of off emotionally, I focus on cardio. In fact, I did about 50 minutes of cardio today, zone 2 cardio, today. And so that’s one reason why this is really important.  

There’s a second reason I’ll talk about very briefly. And it’s something that a lot of people are talking about today. And when I mean people, I mean like a lot of medical folks or people with MDS and PhDs, and I think they’re talking about it in a way where we don’t really know all the answers yet. There’s a lot of claims being thrown around. But they talk about mitochondrial health.  

And if you remember from high school biology, your mitochondria, you were taught that it was the powerhouse of your cells. So, you have cells, every tissue in your body has cells. All of those cells, I believe, have mitochondria. There might be some that don’t—I can’t remember. Some don’t have DNA. But anyway, yeah, I don’t remember the details here. But just understand that a lot of tissue like your heart tissue, your brain tissue, your muscles have mitochondria, your organs have mitochondria, and the cells of your organs, the cells of your hearts, the cells of your muscles, the cells of your brain, your neurons, they all have mitochondria.  

And one of the aspects of aging that scientists are talking about is the mitochondrial theory of aging. And what this is, is that the number and functional state of your mitochondria start to deteriorate over time.  

So, the number of mitochondria that you have start to go away, and the quality, the way they function starts to function differently in a worse way and this seems to be one of the keys that underlies aging.  

And recent research identifies like, these mitochondrial degenerations associated with age is one of the main mechanisms in chronic inflammation. And we’re not going to talk about the details why is quite complicated. And to be honest, I don’t understand all the details, because it has to do with free radical production, reactive oxygen species and a bunch of other things, it gets really complicated. 

But just understand that the big takeaway, and if you’ve heard a lot like Peter Attia and other people talk about this stuff, just know this, that aerobic training increases the number of mitochondria that you have in your muscles. And that is super important to your health. And weight training just doesn’t do it the same way, okay? It doesn’t have the same effect on creating new mitochondria and health of your mitochondria, that aerobic training has, specifically zone 2 training.  

So, let’s talk about zone 2 training and what it is. So, zone 2 training is very simple. It’s kind of the opposite of what most people do when they go work out. It is keeping your heart rate in the 60 to 70% of your heart rate max. So, for example, if you’ve never done this before, I’ll do this really quick because I don’t remember my ranges, but 220 minus your age, gives you your max heart rate.  

And I’m not going to get into max heart rate, the controversy about figuring out your max heart rate. But I will say this: the only way you can really figure out your maximum heart rate is by doing something where your heart rate peaks. But if you don’t want to do that, this 220 minus your age is a good place to start. And I find that it works for me. Although I have maxed out my heart rate, haven’t done it recently. But I have maxed out my heart rate in the past.  

So, are you with me? 220 minus your age. So, I’m taking 220 minus 45, and that gives me a max heart rate of 175. And that’s probably a little bit low. My max heart rate is probably around 180, 183 or something. But again, you have to push yourself to get your maximum heart rate to actually see what your maximum heart rate is. But this gives you a good starting point. And you’re not trying to be perfect here, you’re just trying to get literally like in the zone, in the zone 2. 

So, once we you have your maximum heart rate, in my case, 175, I’m going to multiply it by 0.6, and that’s going to give me 105. That’s going to give me the lower limit of my zone 2 training, then I’m going to go back, I’m going to find the upper limit. So, 175 is my max heart rate. And I’m going to multiply it by 0.7. And that gives me 122.5. So again, that’s probably a little bit low, based on my experience with this stuff. But again, this is good place to start.  

So as long as I’m in that 105 to 122 range, I’m going to be in that zone 2. And even if my range is a little bit higher, like 130/127, whatever it is, I’m still going to be in the zone, if I’m in that 122/120/110, something like that. So, make sure you do the calculations here. And the other thing I would tell you is to use a heart rate strap when you do this.  

Or if you’re in the gym and your equipment has heart rate monitors already attached to it, you can use those as well. For example, my heart rate strap ran out of battery, I haven’t replaced it, haven’t needed to. I’m using the heart rate monitors that are already built into the cardio machines. I haven’t been to a place where the cardio machines didn’t have that. But what I’m getting at here is don’t use your watch, because it’s probably not quite accurate. You could use it, but just know that it’s probably not quite right.  

So, the two things here: you’ve got to figure out your max heart rate so you get the right ranges. And you also have to make sure that you’re tracking your heart rate during zone 2 training.  

And there’s one more thing here, you’ve got to put in the time when it comes to zone 2 training. When it comes to zone 2 training, you can’t just do 20 minutes here and there.  

That might be decent for your health, but when we’re talking about getting the performance benefits, when we’re talking about building more mitochondria, when we’re talking about all the things that we’ve talked about here, you’ve got to put in the time, you’ve got to do at least what experts say, 40 minutes all the way up to 90 minutes, okay? 40 minutes to 90 minutes.  

And we’ll talk about that in a second, because some of you are going to roll your eyes and say, “Oh, I don’t want to do that, that’s too long,” and that’s okay. But guess what, it’s the way it is, so suck it up cupcake, all right? I don’t make the rules. I’m sharing them with you. So don’t shoot the messenger here. But anyway, 40 minutes to 90 minutes. And what we’re also talking about is you’re got to do it for months, to see the benefits.  

Again, it takes a long time, not just in each workout, but also in consistency of your workouts to see the big change. But I’m going to tell you something. This is like investing. Okay, I’m not a big investor. I invest in my business; this is what I invest in. But this is like investing, you start with investing. People tell you, start early and be consistent. Start early and be consistent. And then 10 years past, 20 years past, 30 years pass and you have this –whatever it is your retirement fund, and you can go travel Europe. 

But if you’re not in shape—and I’m in Portugal right now—and you think you’re going to walk up and down all the steps and all the stairs and go to Sintra Palace, or the Pennant Palace in Sintra, Portugal, and you’re out of shape, it’s not going to work out for you, okay. So, if you want to really enjoy your vacations, and do all the things that you want to do ski in Aspen in the winter, and whatever else, you’re into this stuff, it pays off big.  

So, I wanted to start off with that, just to remind you what we just talked about, you’ve got to put in the time in the workout. So, we’re talking 40 minutes to 90 minutes. You’ve got to keep your heart rate in the right range for that time. And then you’re looking at spending months of doing this before you start to feel the difference. Now I’m not saying you won’t feel or see or experience any improvements before then.  

But I’m just telling you, it’s going to take some time. You’ve got to put in some time, you’re investing—except you’re investing in your health, which, what is the better thing to invest in? What is it worth having millions of dollars, when you can’t even walk up the steps? Or your equipment, if you’re a man at least, if your penis doesn’t work because blood can’t get to it, because you’re just a mess, cardiovascularly. What is the point in that?  

Okay, so this is investing, it’s a different type of investing, you’re investing in your health, because this is all about at least, I think, for most people, about the quality of the life that we have, not just about the number in our bank account. That’s important, too. But you don’t want to have to spend all the money that you’ve been working so hard to make on experimental cancer treatments, because you let your health go, all right? 

So again, it takes time to see results, but it’s worth it. This is investing. I also want to tell you this, you’re got to have the right mindset. What do I mean by that? What’s the right mindset about doing zone 2 cardio? Well, zone 2 training is hard. You see, people say that hard training—like, going and crushing yourself is hard. But I don’t think that’s true for the type of people that I work with. I think crushing ourselves with exercise comes extremely easy, because it just makes us feel like we’ve done something.  

The reason why zone 2 training is hard is because it’s annoying, because you’re going much slower than you know you’re capable of pushing yourself. And you’re doing it because you’re understanding the physiology behind this. You’re not going stupid workouts, like I used to do. I would just do a bunch of interval training and hope that it works. And it did for a little while, until I hit the wall.  

And this is what I hear from so many people, so many entrepreneurs and executives, they were crushing it and now their knee is starting to bother them, their back is acting up, the hips are kind of hurting. You’ve got to learn how to pace yourself. If you’re interested in long term health, and zone 2 cardio is one of the ways to do that.  

The other thing I want to tell you is this: when we’re talking about zone 2 training, we can use anything to do zone 2 training. You could put on punching mats and hit the heavy bag as long as you’re keeping your heart rate in the zone 2 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. You can do the rower, you can go running, you can do jumping jacks – whatever you want to do, as far as moving your body, as long as you can do it for 40 to 90 minutes. As long as you keep your heart rate in the range that we’ve talked about, you’re going to get these. And as long as you keep that up for several months, let’s say six months, you’re going to get the benefits.  

But I want to say something else. What I personally do is I either use the elliptical, or I use the recumbent bike. Now, you can use an actual bike if you want. But why do I use these things? Because it’s lower impact on your joints, especially the bike, sometimes the elliptical…I have actually a person who has two knee replacements, and we have to use the elliptical that’s actually better for him.  

Because the recumbent bike actually inflames one of his left knee, and we don’t want that. They’ve already been replaced, so that’s the attachment of the knee replacement into the bone that’s getting aggravated, or maybe the soft tissue around it, that’s not what we want. So doing something low impact something like the elliptical, something like the bike, but you can use anything.  

I’ll let you decide. But again, if you like your knees, if you like your joints, always err on the side of low impact. But if you’re already a runner and your body’s conditioned to it, or swimmer, or whatever it is, sure you can go do that.  

Now, how do we do this when we put this into our workout schedule, and I want to tell you just a really simple way of doing this is to alternate between days of cardio and days of weights.  

So doing your weights on one day, and then doing your cardio on the next and just alternating that. And I recommend you do three cardio workouts per week to make this happen. Four is even probably better, but I’m assuming here that that might even be challenging to get three days.  

So, if you’re working out five days a week, do three cardio days and two weights. If you’re working out six days a week, you can do four cardio and two weights, or you can just alternate cardio, weights, cardio, weights, cardio, weights, and you can take the seventh day off.  

So those are just two easy ways. Now I do something a little bit different for myself and for my coaching clients. But I’ll tell you, I use this one quite a bit, too. They’re just cardio one day, weights one day.  

And again, make sure that you’re doing this in the way we talked about; you’re monitoring your heart rate, you’re doing it for at least 40 to 90 minutes, and you’ve got to keep this up. You’ve got to keep it up. Now look, if you go on vacation, and you’re like, “man, I had the big plan to do the cardio and I just didn’t do it.” It’s okay, just get back on it. After you get back for your business trip or back for your vacation, just get on it. But try to keep it up as best as you can.  

And the other thing here is to measure your progress. Don’t just work out and follow these parameters and expect to get results, you’ve got to measure. So, track your resting heart rate, you can do that very easily with a wearable or you can just put your two fingers on your pulse in the morning before you get out of bed and set the timer on your iPhone for a minute and see what your heart rate is in a minute.  

I prefer using a wearable, I use my Oura Ring, O-U-R-A Ring. Don’t have any affiliation with them, just a fan of the product. And another thing that you can pay attention to is the one-minute heart rate recovery.  

So, after your workout, whatever it is, does your heart rate drop? How many beats does your heart rate drop in one minute? Is it 10 beats, 20 beats, 30 beats, 40 beats? Especially if you get it up high. You only got your heart rate up to 100 and it drops 10 beats in a minute, well, you didn’t get it up that high. So that’s something to keep in mind as well. Maybe strength training might be a better way to gauge that.  

And then the other thing is: do you find yourself having to increase the speed or resistance because your heart rate just isn’t going up as high on the same speed of resistance? Like, if you’re on the bike and you’re using a resistance of eight and it’s like, “whoa, my heart rate is not going up that high. I have to really pedal faster. I’ve got to put on more resistance.” That’s a great sign that you’re getting in shape. That’s what we’re looking for. So those are three ways to measure your progress.  

Now, I know I threw a lot at you today but I’m telling you, don’t just take this and use it as information and think that it’s just going to make magic happen here without you taking action on it. So, what I want you to do is, I want you to go and test this for yourself. So go and test this. Report back with the results. Hit me up. Let me know. Hope you enjoy today, and speak to you soon.