Scott Johnston
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Christian:
How prescient of you! I addressed just this question in last night’s book group lecture. I think your mental model is good. As mathematician George Box said: All models are wrong (meaning that they are not perfect representations of reality), but some are useful.
Glycolysis and its resultant pyruvate production occur in the cell’s cytosol outside the mitochondria. A process of converting it to acetyl-coA allows it to pass through the mitochondrial membrane and get used in the Kreb’s cycle for aerobic metabolism.
Glycolysis can and will take place in the full spectrum of muscle fiber types. The faster the FT fibers the more they will rely upon glycolysis and the less mitochondrial content they have. Thus they are less endurance endowed.
Yes, one of the main goals of endurance training is to increase the mitochondrial content of faster and faster twitch fibers. Improving their endurance characteristics can provide propelling force for longer before fatiguing. As you point out. This moves the AnT upward in terms of power output. You can run faster for longer (i.e., more endurance).
The vacuum analogy is a perfect example of George Box’s little ditty. The vacuum is comprised of: mitochondria in those same muscle cells where pyruvate is being produced, more remote mitochondria, the liver, and the heart.
While the fibers do apparently exist along a continuum thing of the slower twitch fibers acting as the vacuum for the next level up the FT scale. This is what I talked about in the book group’s second physiology chapter. I think it will help you. But you essentially have it, at least at the macro level we need to understand it.
Scott
Quentin:
I’m sorry to be slow in answering this. I did reply a week ago, but for some reason, my reply didn’t stick. Your English is great. I butcher our language more.
Your race results indicate that you have a good work capacity even though your training volume is not high. I guess you can thank your parents for good genes.
I think using this plan of using training for the 42 km race as A priority is a good way to go. Prepping for the 42 km race will give you a good base for the longer race in October.
I can’t explain the most effective modifications to the Category 1 100km plan. The reason is that I don’t know enough about you and your training and fitness. If your goals are 42 and 75km, why are us using the 100km plan? Could it be that you feel you can handle the volume in that plan? Given the results you have gotten from quite a low volume of training, I’m not sure you need to jump to the 100km plan. A jump in volume like you are contemplating, from 275 hours to 500 hours, is much larger than I would normally think prudent. There is an injury risk when making a bog increase in running volume like you are planning.
Scott
Todd:
Thanks for the thoughtful questions and comments. I’m glad you are paying close attention and are provoked to think more deeply about these things.
You may recall this quote from Per Astrand, one of the fathers of modern exercise science:
“It is an important but unsolved question which type of training is most effective: to maintain a level representing 90% of the maximal oxygen uptake for 40 min, or to tax 100% of the oxygen uptake capacity for 16 min’’
You are asking this same question essentially, and no one knows the answer definitively.
The study I cited is: Adaptations to aerobic interval training: interactive effects of exercise intensity and total work duration. S Seiler, K Jøranson, B V Olesen, K J Hetlelid Scand. J. Med. Sci. Sports 23:74-83, 2013 I recommend you read it since you are curious about it. The summary I was making when I said that the 4x8min group improved their endurance was that they showed significantly greater gains than the other groups in the following qualities: maxVO2, power at maxVO2, power at 4mMol/l blood lactate, and time to exhaustion at 80% of max power. This test was done with cyclists, hence the power data.
All of those qualities combined, but especially the last one, indicate increased endurance.
For anyone but an elite-level athlete, a maximum effort of 8 minutes is going to give an intensity of just over the AnT. Local muscular fatigue will end up being the limitation to sustaining this output. The same holds that for most people, the 16-minute reps are going to be just below AnT or Zone 3 intensity.
This study is not saying that 4x8min is the holy grail of interval workouts and that is all you need to do. It is only showing that these did produce the biggest gains in endurance qualities.
The thing you need to understand is that just as the aerobic base serves as foundation for all the higher intensities but increasing the size of the vacuum cleaner in the ST fibers, each increasingly faster twitch group of fibers serves as the vacuum cleaner for the next higher level of FT fibers just above it. The reason intervals of different lengths are important is that the longer, lower-intensity ones serve as aerobic support for the shorter, higher-intensity ones.
I hope this helps.
It sounds like I might need to write an article or do a podcast about this topic. Thanks for prompting me.
Scott
Great question:
I’ll sum it up with this statement- the best training is not the most training you can do but the least training it takes to get the best results. In other words, DON’T GET GREEDY.
From a training/performance trade-off standpoint, two strength/core sessions/wk will get you where you need to be and allow enough recovery to see progress. Strength training, as with high-intensity training, will show diminishing returns as volume increases. More is not usually better in these cases. What is important is progress. If you are seeing progress with the current program, why change? Your body is responding positively to the training stimulus.
All that being said, if you need this type of stimulus 5-6 x/wk to stay healthy……… go for it. Because the bulk of core musculature is slow twitch it recovers quickly.
Scott
Sorry Folks;
I was busy with some other writing projects like this article https://evokeendurance.com/training-fast-twitch-and-slow-twitch-endurance-athletes/.
@ Rachel: I suspect the root of the problem is that you changed treadmills mid-test. Treadmills, unless they are of laboratory quality like the Woodway are notorious for being inaccurate and inconsistent. Here is an article I wrote about this last fall https://evokeendurance.com/treadmill-season/. I suggest doing your warm-up and test on the same treadmill to minimize this problem. Stop then restart the t-mill after your warm-up, so you get an hour of test data. However, if you only can capture 45 min of test data, you will still get a decent idea of the drift. I hope that helps.
@ kilfatmike: Both these tests sound like they were well done, and you have interpreted the AeT test data well. I’d use the 139 as the AnT because of the shorter test and the slower HR ramp-up. Good job.
Thanks to both of you for writing in. I will review testing in-depth on the Book Group monthly zoom meetings, so don’t miss that.
Scott
Santiago:
Thanks for your question. I would disagree that the results of fat adaptation are mere placebo. There have been exhaustive studies showing conclusively the rate at which fat can be metabolized in a well fat adapted athlete being over 3x that of non fat adapted athlete. I detail all of this on both my books; Training for the New Aplinism and Training for the Uphill Athlete. I too have found Science of Ultra a good resource. You might wat to listen to this podcast that address the fat adaptation subject head on. https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/119
Scott
Thanks for your questions;
We have 1 on 1 coached many military athletes for SFAS, Ranger, the long walk, Dev Gru and more selections. We use esentially the same methods I spoke about in those MOPs and MOEs podcasts that you listened to and have had pretty much a perfect record of getting guys through those selections (one guy got dropped but invited back to the long walk). We don’t advertise this but we’ve been doing this for years and consult with a few of the SOF groups on training programs.
You need tons of Zone 2 work mostly running. Everyone is going to be fit for the first week. What you need though is to be fit and recover well all the way through the progrm and that is what this aerobic base will do for you.
We are still building the Tactical section of our website and I hope to have that up this month. There you will find a hiuge amount of info pertaining to all these selections. They all share one thing: The use long duration, day after day movements and scenarios so require that aerobic base.
We have produced one tactical training plan that has now been tested by a few dozen Rangers and has gotten great reviews. I have not had time to get it up on the site yet but here is a link to it in the Training Peaks store https://www.trainingpeaks.com/training-plans/other/tp-376820/military-athlete-foundational-plan
Stay tuned for more plans and the Tactical Section.
Scott
Alice:
Great questions.
1. In the image of the three athlete metabolic profiles, how are % fats vs % carbs measured in each athlete? Calories of each. Sometimes this is done in grams of each but since fat has roughly twice as many calories/gram as carbs that makes that sort of comparison an apples to oranges thing. So, I prefer cal to cal.
2. What advice do you have for finding the right balance between higher intensity lactate threshold workouts vs low intensity aerobic workouts? If you are aerobically deficient (which we’ll dig into next time) that should be the focus. Fix that isse first and then think about supplementing with HIT. This holds true unless you are within a couple of months of some important event. Then you need to add intensity regardless of your aerobic base. If you are not aerobically deficient, what Kilian and I came up with in the book Training for the Uphill Athete is to add intensity volume at the rate and to the extent that you are still recovering well and not having to reduce overall aerobic base volume by more than 10%. This is a general rule of course and would need to be adjusted if you are tapering for an event., The idea is to not let the aerobic base slide much since it is the support for that high intensity work. I’ve read/heard about the 10/90% guidance, but what I’m more curious about is what athletes should be paying attention to most or measure/track when trying to find this balance? Recovery is the thing to pay attention to. The 90/10 balance is when viewed on an annual basis and will certainly shift to 80/20 or so in during blocks where HIT is a priority. Kilian and I covered this in our podcast last week.
3. When you talk about fat metabolism, what kind of nutrition and fueling should athletes consider? If you are training over about 6-8 hours of aerobic base work a week you are probably getting well fat adapted because you are getting glycogen depleted frequently. This is true especially if you are doing one session over 2 hours. Recall the little joke I made with Kilian about his diet when we first met. He was breakfasting on lots of sugary donuts and rolls. When you are training 20+ hours a week like him you can eat anything you want and still be fat adapted. It might not be the heathiest diet but you will get fat adapted. I don’t think any special diet is needed for most endurance athletes. We see very high level ultra runners with diets ranging from full carnivore to vegan. The most important thing is to get enough calories. Calorie restriction for endurnace athletes is a very dangerous thing to do. Nothing will push you into an overtraining situation faster if you are a serious endurance athlete than a calorie restricted diet. Etlespecially for leaner, smaller athletes who don’t have a lot of body fat reserves. Where is the fat in the “fat metabolism” you mentioned coming from in the body? The fat used for this fat metabolism during exercise is coming from the fat stores in the muscles. The next time you are at the butcher shop look at the grass fed beef. Notice that it has a lot of little fat lines running through the red meat. That’s because grass fed beef spend their days walking around in an aerobic state using fat for fuel. Your muscles develop similar fat stores within them. That makes the fat easily accessible to the muscle cells for energy. The adipose fat, the kind you can grab a hold of is not as easily used for fuel. That is why it is so hard to lose adipose fat. Feed lot fed beef that stand around a lot and eat a very high calorie diet develop a lot of adipose fat. This is the layer of fat you see around the edges of the steak in the butcher case. This is why I mentioned that even the leanest marathon runner will have huge fat stores. You can’t see that fat on their body. It is in the muscles themselves as opposed to between the muscle and the skin. The more fat adapted the athlete the greater the amount of fat stored this way.
4. What are the positive signs that one’s aerobic base training is working? Increased heart rate, decreased pace while maintaining aerobic work? If one is aerobically deficient the HR at aerobic threshold will move up as the aerobic capacity improves. At the same time the pace at AeT will also increase. You will be be moving faster because your aerobic system is now producing more energy (ATP) so it can support a higher power output. Depending on the volume of training and your genetics you should begin to notce that you are moving faster at the same HR after about 4-6 weeks., When you see some improvement in your daily runs, like: “wow I am 3 minutes faster on my normal morning running route than I was a month ago”. When you see that, you know your aerobic metabolism is becoming more productive. Aerobic capacity is increasing and it time to re-evaluate your AeT because there is good chance your AeT HR has gone up as well. Eventually (like after 61-12 months of consistent aerobic base training) the AeT HR will cease to increase. BUT…the AeT pace can and will continue to increase. I have seen AeT pace increase in an elite athlete for 10 consecutive years. This is how Eliud Kipchoge and other can manage to get their AeT pace down to 4:30/mile. In their case it took decades and very good genetics but the rest of can still make masive gains in this area.
Brian:
Bjorn is correct. All your metabolic markers like Aet and AnT are going to be sport specific.
I have seen your exact situation occur hundreds of time and it’s why I advocate for muscular endurance training. The BIGGEST limiting factor to maintain submaximal intensity like Z3/4 or AnT work is going to be local muscular fatigue, even for elites. You have picked up up on this as you see your HR drop from rep to rep in those workouts. That’s not because you heart can’t keep up with muscular demand. It is because as the muscles fatigue and motor units drop out of the recruitment pool, the muscle, doing less work needs less oxygen so the heart rate slows. The heart responds to the muscle not the other way around.
Now, you can develop ME with Z3-4 work. That has been the traditional way and works very well for the very fit elites. But that method imposes a significant global fatigue. Specific ME workouts like no poles uphill skating trash your legs and build ME fast they don’t impose nearly the global fatigue load.
Scott
Thanks for writing in with your questions. Let me see if I can help.
You are wise to continue aerobic base building in between mountaineering goals. There is no such thing as having too much aerobic capacity.
You can use the 16 week aerobic progression from your 16 week plan as guidance. Keep in mind though that these plans are the minimum training load we recommend. You may need more, or less. I suggest instead of following the plan blindly you assess your time and energy capacity for these aerobic sessions. Remember that the biggest stimulus to aerobic capacity developoment is volume. More is always going to better up to the point where you are not recovering between sessions.
You must also keep in mind that the improvement in aeriobic pace takes place very slowly. Since you say that are very slow it seems like that you are relatively new to this kind of training and may have aerobic deficiencey. This is something that will take many months of consistent high aerobic training volume to affect. We typically see significant improvements in pace after 6 months of 6-8 hours/week of Z1-2 training. Patience is key here.
Another contributing factor to your speed being slow when you are on a mountain is strength and movement economy. While treadmills and stair machines can build fitness, walking on rough terrain especially with a heavy pack requires strength and skills that must be developed with strength and muscular endurance training coupled with moving in alpine terrain.
All this is to say; don’t give up hope. Since I started writing about these methods, thousands of people have hd good success with them. You will too. I just takes time.
Scott
Nick;
Great questions. The longer shallow sprints are good for building actual leg turnover speed that a sprinter might want to develop. They do entail much more injury risk, especially hamstring. Which is why we don’t advocate them for mountain athletes, almost all of whom will not have a sprinting background. We recommend minimum of 20% grade in the books. The mountain athlete is looking for leg power. The steep sprints give you that without nearly as much injury risk.
The 5 second sprints are going to pay off better for steep uphill mountain running or mountaineering. Don’t worry about the work rest ratio. That kind of advice is only applicable to an endurance training session. That ratio is not important here because we are not training endurance but power. All that matters in max efforts like either one of these is that you are fully recovered between reps. Notice that I specific at least a 3 minute rest between sprints in the books. As soon as you feel the power drop of from one rep to the next, try lengthing the recovery. If that does not allow you to reach the same high point on the next rep, the workout is over.
See if you can find some steep stairs, like the fire stairs in a bulding that you can sprint up for 10 seconds or so. I think those will be more effective than the 5 second version you’re using.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Thanks for writing in with your questions.
If you didn’t change the speed or grade during your test it is likely that your AeT is below 123. What was your perceived level of exertion?
Based on what you have said I would try to retest at 15% and 2mph.
Fitness is relative. And comparisons to others are futile. Unless you are planning to compete, what matters is comparison with yourself.
Based on the information that you gave: 2x/wk of 1-2 hours total time hiking to and from climbs and one 1/week easy hike (maybe 1-2 hours??) you will want to increase the time spent hiking on the great terrain you have around LV if you want to build fitness for long days in the Sierra and Red Rocks. Duration is the single biggest stimulus for increasing aerobic capacity. There is a lot upside potential for you in this regard. we generally advise that if you are targeting a goal of many hours in one day, like Whtiney you should be able to comfortably handle that many hours of steady movement in one week and be able to do do this frequently. This is not to say you could not climb Whitney now. But could you do it quickly without making it a sufferfest?
Training for endurance is a process and results take consistency over many months and years to bring big changes. But those changes are available to all of us if we choose them.
I hope this helps.
ScottBrian:
You are probably not getting the same acclimatization benefit as someone who lives at 7000ft. In experience training XC skiers who lived at 5500ft in Colorado but trained at altitudes between 8-9000ft is that they did get some acclimaitization effoct but the main thing we saw was that when they races at low elevations they had gotten slower but training so high. As you have already experienced, you have to move a lot slower at 7000ft than you do at low elevations. There’s just not enough O2 to support faster movement. Doing this day and day out engrains slow movement patterns. Most of your Skimo races are at altitude so this is not such a big problem since you are not racing Skimo at sea level. However I think you mmight see some benefit from doing a speed or endurance intensity session as low as you can easily find 1x/week.
Scott
Brian:
Thanks so much for writing in with your nice story and your questions about strength. At the point you have reached in terms of max strength, 60% of BW, I think you’d find good gains by moving to more power type training like hill sprints. The transfer over to your running performance will be better with hill sprints because the mechanics and rate of contraction are the same as running. Make the transition more gradual and go 2-3 weeks with 1 max and 1 hill sprint each week if you see gains that way then you might shift to 2x HS/week. My normal prescription is to keep 1x/wk HS when I move to the ME block.
I hope this helps.
Scott
Hey Nick:
Thanks so much for writing this wonderful story. It warms all the hearts here at Evoke to hear this. We know that opur approach works. Thousands of people have proven it. You don’t need to be a mutant, or a 20 year old. You just need these three things: Consistency, Gradualness and Modulation to make what, at first, appears to be a totally conunterintuitive approach work.
Congratulations. I think you have just scratched the surface of what you are capable of.
Scott
