Why is the internet/fitness industry so obsessed with zone 2 right now?

Advised by Garmin and from my experience it works . For those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to be on team with coaches or have access to tracks

That is not what fitness industry zone 2 training is about. My wife is a crossfit instructor and they offer one zone 2 workout each week at her gym. It is marketed as a magic workout:"Do one zone 2 workout each week and you will see amazing results!"

Think it just has to do with Hubermans pod mainly as well as Peter Attia’s.

The Gilgo Beach guy?

It's just a buzz phrase/marketing pitch to make recreational runners feel good about their 13 minute/mile pace because they're "burning fat." Or, for gym bros and (whatever the term is for female gym bros) to "do my cardio."

Using the various formulas, my Zone 2 heart rate is somewhere between 108 and... 148! That's pretty useless range. The Joe Friel LTHR method that he first outlined 20 years ago should be the gold standard for HR training. 1) Test to determine your LTHR. That's the upper level of your aerobic zone and the HR you should stay below on tempos, etc. It's been accurate to within two beats for me over the years and 2) Your easy pace is 30-45 bpm slower. It's just that simple.

Of course, recreational runners don't need to know their LTHR (Lactate Threshold Heart Rate) because they never run that hard! Hence, we have the "feel good about your shuffle" Zone 2 Method. Sorry to be blunt, but that's it in a nutshell.

"it’s kind of basic knowledge that you should run most of your efforts at an easy pace with relaxed breathing and heart rate"

This is an example of thinking within your own bubble. There is no reason to expect this to have been general knowledge among beginning exercisers. And if that doesn't calm you down, just remember that there is nothing new under the sun.

I was talking to a coworker about this. He's not a runner really, I mean he runs here and there, but that's not important. We were talking about a broader concept we've observed. It seems like more and more people, especially younger people, really need a way to classify everything. Everything must fit in a nice category.

We talked about how this applies to our profession, which is moderately creative and can require some unorthodox solutions, and how younger people in this field seem quicker to lump techniques/solutions into buckets or categories.

Think about any other hobby or sport, idk, I'll talk about weightlifting. I grew up in the gym. It's definitely long been recognized that, "Lower weight, higher volume = hypertrophy, higher weight, lower volume = strength," and that's a good rule of thumb. Everyone who knew anything knew it wasn't that simple in reality. You can get strong doing higher reps if the intensity is there—it's a continuum with a lot of variable and nuance, not some super simple binary. But if you go wade through social media on the subject of weight training, everyone's gotta be dogmatic for no reason, "If you do one more rep than 5 in a set you're not training strength!" "If your HR goes over zone 2 for 30 seconds your entire run is ruined!"

Maybe it's got to do with our attention spans shortening along with the rise of social media formats? It's hard to convey the complexities and variability in training regimens for any sport in a 60s video. Instead, just take a rule of thumb and pretend it's law.

Here is the deal: there used to be the Five Zone system, giving greater gradation to the activity level one was working at. Not one of you guys even mention that, because you evidently all just assume the ‘broad-stroke’ Three Zone system is the defacto way it should be. But as you say, the Three Zone system puts Zone 2 activity in a huge window between ‘above a fast walk’ and below ‘running hard’.

So now ‘Zone 2’ is some big deal to train in, when it actually hard not to ‘’train in it? Maybe because you guys just accept the Three Zone system definition as defacto.

It's all the same stuff just re-named/re-branded. My old HS coach would tell us to go on a run, if it was a long run, he would tell us to "just run together". That mean conversational pace. Other times we'd do a 5M run, first mile easy, middle 3M "hard" last mile easy. That's pretty much what we'd call a tempo run now.

Same stuff.

There were fine differences in effort levels that runners (physios) used to split hairs on, which is not necessarily a problem; just witness the JI system followers getting off into the weeds measuring lactate levels.

But those nuances got morphed and somewhat obliterated by the broad-stroke Three Zone system.

Recreational runners measuring blood lactate levels is ridiculous. I guess they go home and sleep in an altitude tent too (or do people not use those anymore?)

Well, I think the target audience for a lot of this media probably will benefit from doing a lot of low intensity, high volume training because they might not already do that. I also think telling people what they want to hear ("boost your fitness by doing something easy") is good for the sake of social media engagement, which generates a lot of revenue.

But maybe it really does come down to the fact that the fine gradation of a Zone 5 system really isn’t necessary, and that a ‘broad-stroke’ Three Zone system is fine for most hobby-joggers, or cross-fitters, or hobby-bikers.

Zone (1) Very Easy, low-level (comfortable slow-walk effort);

Zone (2) Huge window of effort (from ‘fast-walk, conversation sentences’, on up to ‘breathing hard, running hard, short spoken phrases only’)

Zone (3) Very hard uncomfortable efforts.

Ya it's not basic knowledge. In high school I ran pretty hard every day where I'd run 7-10 miles at sub 6 pace and sometimes close out runs sub 5 for the last mile or two. It did work, but certainly not what you would say is ideal training. The mentality was "I need to work hard to get better" so every day I worked hard.

But people claiming zone 2 on social media has become a bit of a joke. It's been overstated, so people as the joke are claiming to be running zone 2 at race efforts.

Bingo. Welcome to the Fitness Industry. It is ruled by buzz words and marketing pitches about the "next big thing".

It has always been this way. There is no national governing body regulating the 'fitness biz' like Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, etc.

See: HIT, balance board training, bosu balls, stability balls, the shake weight, and all of the other cool wizbang stuff to come down the pipe over the last 100 years.

Alan

Hobby runner here who’s had training breakthroughs due to the lactate pro meter I bought with tax return money last year. Getting a lab test done to know my threshold and making sure I stay under it with the meter has kept me in the proper stimulus and allowed me to stack weeks feeling good vs overcooking things in the past as we hobby joggers so often do. Just because it’s a “new thing” doesn’t mean it’s all bad.

It has less to do with running and competitive training and more to do with the fact that we, as a general population, are so unhealthy and people want to avoid it, but don't know how. They understand you have to exercise, but they don't want to walk for 4 hours a day or sprint all out for 5 minutes and "zone 2" claims to only need 30 min every other day and you just set and forget. That's pretty enticing.

It's just a trend.