OrangeTheory is slowly taking the fitness world by storm and even competing with established brands such as YMCA, f45, and Planet Fitness. What’s great about it is that it managed to come up with a unique solution to the boring gym routine that many of us have. Instead of going to the gym and coming up with your own set of workouts, OrangeTheory does that for you and provides you with daily classes, challenges, and events where members get to compete and challenge their bodies. During the majority of these sessions, you implement something called base, push, and all-out pace, what are they? How do they work exactly? And how can you use them during your workout?
In OrangeTheory, a base pace is what you would use on a treadmill for a long time without getting tired, a push pace is what would give you a challenge without being too uncomfortable, while an all-out is what you would use to empty your tank.
In this article, we’ll talk more in-depth about what a base, push, and all-out pace is at OrangeTheory and some tips to increase them.
Table of Contents
What are Base, Push, and All-Out Paces at OrangeTheory?
As we all know, OrangeTheory has many different classes, challenges, and events that all have different goals and purposes.
These include 2G and 3G workouts, challenges such as Catch me if You Can, 5×5, Lift 45, All Out Mayhem, and events like Marathon month, 12 Days of Fitness, Orange Voyage, and so on.
During the majority of these, you implement something that you’ll hear commonly among OrangeTheory members, and that’s base, push, and all-out paces.
Before taking a deep dive into what every pace represents, we first need to understand what a pace is in the first place.
Pretty much all OrangeTheory workouts involve three separate sections (or shall I say blocks). They usually start with a treadmill section, followed by a rowing one, then a floor.
A pace is the speed as well as the parameters (incline) used during the first (treadmill) section. In other words, the higher the pace, the more intense running on the treadmill will be.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s explain each pace.
OrangeTheory Base Pace:
From the name alone, you can already tell what this one represents. A “base” pace is the starting one that you’ll use the majority of the time.
This is a “base” speed used on the treadmill that you should be able to hold for a long time without getting tired easily.
Here is what a good base pace looks like depending on your style of running:
- For a power walker: 3.5 to 4.5 mph with a 1 to 3% incline.
- For a jogger: 4.5 to 5.5 mph with a 1% incline.
- For a runner: 5.5+ mph with a 1% incline.
OrangeTheory Push Pace:
This is the pace that comes in the middle, so it should give you some sort of challenge without being too uncomfortable. In other words, it should be a little bit more intense than the base pace.
Here is what a good push pace looks like depending on your style of running:
- For a power walker: 4% greater on the incline (or as specified by the coach).
- For a jogger: Approximately 1 to 2 mph faster than base pace.
- For a runner: Approximately 1 to 2 mph faster than base pace.
For example, if you’re a jogger and your base pace is 4.5 mph, then your push pace should be 5.5 mph or 6.5 mph.
OrangeTheory All-Out Pace:
If the name alone hasn’t intimidated you, then this pace in particular will definitely will.
An all-out pace is pretty much what you use when you want to fully empty your tank. In other words, you go all out in terms of speed and intensity.
Here is what a good all-out pace looks like depending on your style of running:
- For a power walker: 10-15% incline.
- For a jogger: Approximately 2 mph or faster than base pace.
- For a runner: Approximately 2 mph or faster than base pace.
So for example, if you’re a jogger and your base pace is 4.5 mph, then your all-out pace should be 6.5 mph or more.
Tips on Increasing Your Pace at OrangeTheory
There are many methods that you can use in order to increase your pace during OrangeTheory classes. Let’s take a look at all of them.
Inchworm Method:
Just like an inchworm, you want to increase your pace little by little until you get the hang of it, then move on to the next one.
For example, during endurance days, leave your push/all-out pace as it is but increase your base one by 0.1 mph until it feels normal (which should take a week or 4 to 5 classes).
And on power days, do the opposite by leaving your base pace as it is but increasing your push/all-out one by 0.1 mph to 0.5 mph until it feels normal.
For example, if you’re a jogger and your base pace is 5.5 mph while your push/all-out paces are 6.5 mph/7.5 mph, you’ll need to increase your base one to 5.6 mph during endurance days, and your push/all-out to 7 mph/8 mph on power days.
Keep in mind that if you improve your base pace, the other paces will improve naturally as well.
All-out Method:
Unlike the inchworm method, this method is quite straightforward. What you do here is increase all your paces by 0.1 mph at the same time.
So for example, if you’re a jogger and your base pace is 5.5 mph while your push/all-out paces are 6.5 mph/7.5 mph, you’ll need to increase your base one to 5.6 mph, and push/all-out ones to 6.6 mph/7.6 mph at the same time.
Conclusion:
As a conclusion, here is a table that summarizes everything that we’ve learned so far:
| Base pace | Push pace | All-out pace | |
| Power walker | 3.5 to 4.5 mph | Same pace with a 4% greater incline | Same pace with 10-15% on the incline |
| Jogger | 4.5 to 5.5 mph | 5.5 to 6.5 mph | 6.5 to 7.5 mph |
| Runner | 5.5+ mph | 6.5+ mph | 7.5+ mph |
