Threshold Training: The Pace You Can Hold When It Hurts
Updated: 1 day ago
I'll admit something. For my first few years as a competitive athlete, I didn't have a threshold pace. I had two speeds: easy enough to chat, and as hard as I could possibly go. Every interval session turned into a race against myself, and every race against myself ended the same way, with the back half of the workout slower than the front.
What changed my conditioning wasn't more intensity. It was learning to live in the pace between those two extremes: hard, uncomfortable, but sustainable. That pace has a name, and for CrossFit athletes it may be the most useful gear you can build.
IN THIS ARTICLE
The Pace Between Comfortable and Crushed
Threshold is, in simple terms, the highest intensity you can hold for a long time before fatigue starts building faster than your body can manage it. Below it, you can keep going for a long while. Above it, the clock starts ticking toward the moment you have to slow down or stop.
For trained athletes, threshold pace is often described as the effort you could race at for somewhere around 40 to 60 minutes. It feels hard. Your breathing is deep and quick, you can speak only in short phrases, and you wouldn't choose to stay there for fun. But it's controlled. You're not gasping, your form holds, and you could keep going if you had to.
That last quality is what separates threshold from the all-out efforts most CrossFit athletes default to. Hard isn't the same as maximal. Threshold asks you to stay just below the line, and to stay there.
Finding Yours Without a Lab
Labs can measure threshold precisely, but you don't need one to train it well. Three practical markers get most athletes close enough.
The talk test. At threshold, you can say a few words at a time, but not a full sentence. If you can talk comfortably, you're below it. If you can't get words out, you're above it. I use this one constantly when I coach, because it works on any machine and nobody needs a gadget.
Perceived effort. On a 1 to 10 scale, threshold usually sits around 7 to 8. It feels like work from the first few minutes, but you're not counting down the seconds.
A time trial. A steady, evenly paced 20-minute effort on a rower, bike or run gives you a useful reference. Your average pace across that effort, or a touch slower, is a practical threshold target for intervals. Pace it evenly: a time trial that starts fast and fades tells you more about your pacing than your threshold.
Heart rate can help once you know your numbers, but it lags behind effort in shorter intervals and is affected by heat, sleep and caffeine. Use it as a guide alongside the talk test, not as the only authority.
Why CrossFit Workouts Live Here
Look at the typical class workout: 8 to 20 minutes, mixed movements, steady output. Most of those efforts are raced close to threshold. The athlete with a higher threshold can move faster before crossing the line, and recovers better between hard bursts like a set of thrusters or a sprint to the rower.
Threshold work also teaches something classes rarely do: patience. You learn what sustainable feels like at minute three, when you have the energy to go faster and choose not to. That skill transfers directly into every AMRAP and every long chipper you'll ever do.
I watch this happen with my athletes all the time. The first few weeks of cruise intervals frustrate them, because the pace feels too easy early on. Then one day the class workout comes up, they hold back for the first few minutes like we practiced, and they pass half the room in the back half. That's the moment threshold training stops being a chore.
Coach's cue: Hard enough to respect, steady enough to repeat.
The Session Menu
Pick from these sessions based on your week and your experience. Each assumes a thorough warm-up of 10 minutes or more and an easy cool-down. They work on a rower, bike, ski erg or running, and all target the same effort: threshold, not faster.
Session | Structure | Best for |
|---|---|---|
Cruise intervals | 4 to 6 x 5 min at threshold, 1 min easy | Starting point for most athletes |
Long blocks | 3 x 10 min at threshold, 2 to 3 min easy | Building patience once cruise intervals feel controlled |
Continuous tempo | 20 min steady at threshold or slightly below | Experienced athletes with a reliable pace |
Mixed-modal threshold | 4 x 6 min alternating row, bike and ski, 2 min easy | CrossFit athletes who want varied equipment |
Threshold with skill | 5 rounds: 3 min bike at threshold, then 1 min of easy gymnastics practice | Keeping quality in skills while breathing hard |
As a guideline, 20 to 40 minutes of total threshold time in a session is enough for most athletes. One session per week fits comfortably around a normal class schedule. Two can work if everything else in your week is well managed, with at least a day between them. I once tried two back to back because I felt good on day one. By the next morning my legs felt like wet sand, and the second session was a waste. Progress by adding a few minutes of work across weeks, not by making each interval faster.
Placement matters as much as the session itself. If your class week includes a heavy lower-body day, put threshold work at least a day away from it, and avoid doing it the day after a long, intense class workout. A simple pattern many athletes use: class on Monday, threshold intervals after a lighter class on Tuesday or as a stand-alone session on Wednesday, then an easy aerobic day before the next hard class. Write your paces and splits down each time. After four to six weeks, the same effort should feel calmer or produce a slightly faster pace, and that's your signal the work is landing.
Where Threshold Training Goes Wrong
Going too fast. The most common error by far. The first interval feels easy, so the athlete pushes a little harder, and by the third interval they're above threshold and fading. I did this for years. If your last interval is noticeably slower than your first, you started too fast.
Doing it too often. Threshold work is hard. Stacked on top of intense classes every day, it becomes one more source of fatigue rather than a targeted tool. Pair it with truly easy days. Your easy days make your threshold days work.
Ignoring warning signs. Heavy legs for days, poor sleep and a rising resting heart rate suggest your overall load is too high. Back off for a few days. Chest pain, dizziness or unusual shortness of breath are not training signals: stop and see a doctor.
The Pace You Own
Threshold isn't glamorous. Nobody films their third 10-minute block on the bike. But it quietly raises the ceiling of every workout you do, and it teaches you the discipline that separates athletes who fade from athletes who finish.
If you want threshold, aerobic and conditioning sessions planned for you each week and placed around your classes, Sphere Programming at ATHLETESPHERE gives you the structure, the pacing guidance and a log that shows your threshold climbing over time.
Your turn. Tried this? Tell me how it went in the comments below. I read every one, and your questions help shape what I write next. If it helped, tap the heart so it reaches more athletes.
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Further reading: American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
Coach Fritz Bautista · Head Coach, ATHLETESPHERE
CrossFit Level 2 Trainer (CF-L2) ✓ · CrossFit Programming Certificate · MBA · Digital Marketing Certified · Coaching athletes from all walks of life online
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