The single greatest attribute that separates people who struggle to feel energetic, become athletic, or rapidly progress in skill acquisition isn’t a more disciplined training program or investing in supps.
It’s building a ruthlessly capable gas tank.
It allows you to dominate your opponents, feel highly energetic day-day, and develop a lean, athletic, & strong body.
You open yourself to a wide range of opportunities.
You don’t have to shy away from activities you love.
You can easily go on long hikes with your friends, sprint 400m, or train Muay Thai without gassing out.
Most people spend hours building their gas tank incorrectly.
They train too easy to drive top-end adaptations, or too hard for aerobic development.
And even if they train according to conditioning principles they fail to progress because of poor nutrition, biomechanical limitations, or an aroused nervous system.
Your gas tank is an interconnected system which requires a more nuanced approach than hopping on an assault bike and gassing yourself out.
Because if you’re not careful you’ll injure yourself, you’ll make 0 progress, and feel weak & fragile.
I’m not going to bore you with scientific jargon that you can’t apply to your life (you can get that elsewhere).
Instead, I’ll give you a brief breakdown, and a couple highly actionable ideas.
I’ve worked with fighters, entrepreneurs, and busy professionals to develop their gas tanks.
A strong gas tank altered their physiology from fatigued & slow with little energy for work & training.
To becoming ruthless & capable in training, and having all day energy to focus on their work.
In this letter I’ll help you build an unshakeable gas tank without spending hours in the gym, being a pro athlete, or spinning your wheels trying to develop everything at once.
Plus 4 concepts you haven’t considered that quietly kill your endurance.
Gas Tank
What actually is ‘gas tank’?
It’s your 3 energy systems that produce ATP, depending on the intensity and duration of your training:
- Aerobic system — using oxygen to produce ATP from carbs, fats, and proteins.
- Anaerobic glycolytic system — uses glucose and glycogen reserves to produce ATP in the absence of oxygen.
- ATP-PC system — uses stored ATP and creatine phosphate for immediate energy during high-intensity, short duration tasks.
How do you train them?
You train your aerobic system by working at 60–70% max heart rate for 30-90 minutes.
This develops mitochondrial density and capillary networks to process oxygen efficiently and to clear lactate between high-intensity efforts, e.g. heavy bag work, or sprinting.
This work is highly underrated.
You train your anaerobic glycolytic system by working at high intensity, medium duration for 30 seconds-2 minutes, with a work-to-rest ratio of 1:3 to 1:5.
I love training 400M sprints for this.
If you train martial arts, you’ll train this during pad-work, sparring, or rolling.
You train your ATP-PC system with high-intensity, short duration training at less than 10 seconds, with a work-to-rest ratio of 1:12 to 1:20.
This forces adaptation in the heart by stretching the left ventricle to maximize stroke volume (the volume of oxygenated blood delivered per pump).
This energy system helps you throw a punch so hard your opponent forgets they’re in the ring with you.
4 common pitfalls to avoid
“Your aerobic development is a gradual thing. It takes years and years of marathon-type training to develop your aerobic capacity to the fullest.” — Frank Shorter, Olympic marathon gold medallist
1) Lack of concentrated efforts
One of the biggest issues I see is trying to develop all energy systems at once.
With this approach you spread yourself too thin and end up spinning your wheels.
It’s better to split up your training into 8 week blocks.
Choose 1 athletic component you wish to progress whilst maintaining your other qualities.
But before jumping in, you must consider your strength, skills & capacities?
What will give you the highest ROI if improved?
What is your real bottleneck?
You need to coordinate all aspects of training, strength & conditioning, & life stressors, or you’ll at best make little progress in any of them, and at worse pick up an acute or chronic injury.
This is level of detail we build inside the high performance apex coaching program.
2) Not enough Zone 2
Social media sensationalisation of training has led to people LOVING high intensity training and avoiding zone 2.
But without a strong aerobic system, you can’t recover between rounds.
You can’t refuel the anaerobic systems or clear out the waste products needed for effective anaerobic metabolism.
A well accepted notion in endurance science is an 80/20 approach.
80% of weekly conditioning should be spent in zone 2 and 20% at high intensity work.
The key is to ensure you’re actually doing zone 2.
Easy work should be easy — not so hard that you’re training your other energy systems.
If your heart rate goes above a threshold, heart contractions become too fast for the chambers to fill full of blood.
This means you don’t get the correct eccentric stimulus needed in the heart chambers, nor the adaptations in the vascular network to increase oxygen supply to muscles.
3) Ignoring the ATP-PC system
True maximal power and short-burst intensity is important.
If you strategically place sessions you can build this without incurring much additional fatigue.
1x sprints a week is ideal (you don’t need to be doing more (see 80/20)).
Remember. The hard work should be hard.
4) Lack of preparation & recovery
Is your gas tank developed?
Ask yourself. Can your body produce energy for long enough & fast enough?
That’s the crux of it.
If not, you need to get to work.
But is your body properly prepared for this workload?
You wouldn’t hard spar your first day of martial arts, nor would you go from nothing to maximal intensity sprints.
You need a correct training program that is suited to your capabilities and your goals.
Your training is key, but your recovery is just as important.
Treating recovery as a luxury is how you burn out and develop a chronic injury.
If you fix those 4 pitfalls you’re training your gas tank smarter than 90% of people.
But a perfect training program still fails if you ignore these 4 factors outside the gym.
That’s what the next part is for.
4 reasons you’re not improving
I. Movement Efficiency
The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.” — Bruce Lee
Restricted joints cause compensations in your body.
Stuck. Inflamed. Immobile. Weak.
You train slower, everything is harder, and you burn more energy to produce the same movements.
Peak endurance needs mobile joints and relaxation.
To express your fullest ranges of motion when needed.
To contract muscles during force production, then instantly relaxing them.
Fixing restrictions will subtly improve your gas tank.
But nothing causes more energy leaks and losses in mobility, speed, and endurance than carrying excess weight.
Those extra lbs make everything harder.
Less agility. Less speed. Less mobility.
It’s why you see slow, bulky guys that are strong AF with big muscles, but gas out after a flight out stairs.
The excess weight is a killer.
But even if you’re lean & mobile, your gas tank will suffer if you’re stressed out to the 9s.
II. Nervous System
All stress on your body (work, lack of sleep, training, bad relationships) hurt your ability to recover, adapt, and grow.
Stress & high arousal dumps adrenaline into your bloodstream.
In response, your body prematurely burns fast-twitch muscle glycogen, draining your energy.
Most people are highly stressed, on edge & always in 6th gear.
Which makes it 10x harder to shift up when it matters.
If you can downregulate your nervous system with extended exhales, vagus nerve stimulation, mindfulness, etc, you’ll lower your heart rate and conserve energy.
But there’s nuance. You don’t want to be too chill & not able to show up when needed. Be strategic and thoughtful.
III. Local Tissue
Your heart and lungs can deliver oxygen, but if specific working muscles (e.g., shoulders for striking, forearms for grappling, calves for sprinting) lack local capillary density, those tissues will fail independently.
You need to increase the capacity of undeveloped tissues to ensure they can continue contracting when fatigued.
IV. Nutrition & Hydration
Muscle contractions depends on sodium-potassium.
A 2% drop in hydration or sodium degrades neural firing and causes premature fatigue.
You must ensure your electrolytes are in balance.
I see this all the time in Muay Thai.
Fit people gassing out because of a lack of pre-training carbs, or a loss of electrolytes in their sweat.
Tailoring your intra-workout carbs & hydration prevents CNS fatigue & ‘gassing out’ during long sessions.
Final word
I’ve always enjoyed (and hated) developing my gas tank, but it’s the reason I’ve been able to succeed in multiple disciplines and enjoy an abundance of energy to focus on biz pursuits, creative tasks, and enjoying life.
The great thing about your gas tank is that it not only helps you live longer, but it helps you to reach your potential both physically and mentally.
Your homework is to get to work.
Identify what your weakest energy system is and go out there and build it.
If you’re finished & can’t recover after 1 round of hard effort, start with Zone 2.
If you feel flat and weak on max efforts, start with high-intensity work.
Thanks for reading.
Until next week,
Matthew.
P.S. If you want to fix what’s holding you back from building an elite gas tank and a high-performing body & mind — book a free 20-minute strategy call here for our Apex Coaching Program.