According to the American Heart Association, regular endurance activity improves your fitness level and exercise capacity and helps protect you from cardiovascular disease. HealthGuidance.org defines cardiovascular endurance as your ability to perform sustained physical activity, using your larger muscles, while getting your energy primarily from your aerobic system. Your aerobic system supplies energy to your circulatory system and your muscles during extended cardiovascular activity. Endurance workout plans should incorporate long, slow distance (LSD) training, interval training and cross-training activities for variety.
Long, Slow Distance (LSD) Training
LSD training is used by many endurance athletes--including cyclists, runners and cross-country skiers--to expand their training bases and promote physiological adaptations that may be advantageous during competition. According to BikingCoach.com, LSD training, which involves training beyond your normal race distance, will stimulate enzymatic adaptations in your tissues so that your tissues rely more on free fatty acids as an energy source. Performing LSD training also improves your body's ability to clear lactic acid from your blood and muscles, which is advantageous during higher-intensity training or competition, and improves your heart's ability to pump blood. LSD training typically involves continuous, low-intensity steady-state exercise, which is a powerful stimulus for improving your capillary density and up-regulating your mitochondrial function---two peripheral training adaptations that help your skeletal muscles use oxygen more efficiently. LSD training sessions usually last for multiple hours.
Interval Training
Performing regular interval training can help improve your cardiovascular fitness and speed up your metabolic processes. According to the Mayo Clinic, engaging in interval training--which involves short bursts of higher-energy activity interspersed throughout the course of your workout--helps you improve your aerobic capacity and helps you burn calories more efficiently. As your aerobic capacity improves, you'll be able to perform more physical work in a shorter period of time, and the more vigorously you exercise, the more calories you will burn. The short-duration, high-intensity bursts that characterize interval training usually last between 30 seconds and 5 minutes, but may be longer or shorter in duration depending on the physiological adaptation you're trying to achieve. Interval training typically is performed to optimize your glycolytic energy system, which is an energy system heavily relied upon during higher intensity exercise conditions, such as during a race. According to John Berardi, Ph.D., an assistant adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin, one of the most significant benefits of training your anaerobic system--of which your glycolytic system is a part--is that all your body's energy systems will operate at higher levels and become efficient at burning calories and generating energy.
Cross-Training for Variety
Cross-training combines two or more types of physical activity, and often is used by endurance athletes to add variety to their training schedules. Cross-training can help you reduce your likelihood of injuries because it gives your bones, muscles and joints a rest from repetitive stresses. The Mayo Clinic recommends you incorporate cross-training into your endurance workout plan as a way to keep your workouts fresh and fun, lose those last few pounds or add a new layer of fitness to your usual routine. You can perform cross-training using two different strategies. The first strategy involves you performing two or more types of activity that share the same goal--such as aerobic activity--in the same exercise bout. For example, you might go for a run after a bicycle ride. The second strategy involves you performing two or more types of activities throughout the course of your week, such that one day you exercise by bicycling, the next by running. Your endurance workout plan will be most sustainable if you participate in cross-training exercises that you enjoy.
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