Energy System Training

The Square Curve

Face it, adulting is hard. Between the stress of work, raising a family, or managing a household, the demands of the modern lifestyle leave little time to focus on health and wellness. By the age of 30, many US adults have already begun to experience the declining quality of life (QOL) associated with aging as a result of these demands on our time.

However, this decline, or "CURVE", is not inevitable. In fact, recently published scientific data has shown that cardiorespiratory fitness/CRF (i.e., the bodies ability to harness oxygen to perform work) and QOL are very closely linked.

The authors noted, “CRF is inversely associated with long-term mortality with no observed upper limit of benefit.”** In layman's terms, the higher your fitness (defined by oxygen consumption), the greater your quality of life.

Thus, deliberately training to improve CRF can delay, repair, and/or “SQUARE THE CURVE” of adulting, resulting in improved longevity, health, and well-being...or as we like to say, helping you live your #bestlife.

** JAMA Network Open. 2018;1(6):e183605. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.360

Improving cardiorespiratory fitness requires a structured and balanced approach that is difficult to achieve through any single exercise modality alone (i.e., “cardio”, HIIT, bootcamp, circuit training, “weights”, etc.).
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Because the human body relies on several distinct physiological pathways to harness energy that allows us to move our muscles, targeting each pathway through intentional training is necessary to achieve the highest levels of CRF. The energy systems include:

ATP-CP -used for very short maximal efforts
Anaerobic Glycolysis - utilized for brief intense efforts without oxygen
Anaerobic Threshold - point where oxygen is no longer sufficient to meet energy demands
Aerobic Glycolysis - intensities are lower and oxygen is sufficient
Aerobic Lipolysis - used for long duration low intensity efforts

square:code's focus on Energy System Training allows us to specifically target each of the energy pathways that contribute to long-term cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness as well as short-term body composition improvements that will keep you coming back for more.

Combined with your personal base:code, square:code purposefully varies exercise intensity, duration, recovery, and volume through Ratio Factor Programming (RFP) to ensure each class is precisely stressing the target energy system. Without deliberate consideration of these four variables, workouts tends to devolve into a “go until you puke” format that doesn’t target any of the energy systems particularly well and often leads to overtraining, burnout, and injury.

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Ratio Factor Programming (RFP)

RFP isolates the targeted energy system ensuring each class is structured to elicit the cardiorespiratory and musculoskeletal adaptations that enhance long-term mortality, improve short-term fitness, and result in healthy body-composition changes.

Programming principles manipulating Intensity, Duration, Recovery, and Volume are used to design daily training.

Intensity of effort (% of max energy production)
Duration: length of work effort
Recovery: time between efforts (intensity of recovery effort)
Volume: total amount of work completed

Intensity of effort experienced within each class through manipulation of the RFP variables (I, D, R, V) serves to isolate the target energy system.

The interaction between intensity of effort and volume of work further differentiates the RFP programming.