Athlete Login
Scott Johnston
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Josh:
I think this looks quite reasonable regarding keeping up the aerobic base training volume when doing the ME period.
Nice work on figuring this out on your own.
ScottGreat questions, and very cool that you have paid attention to what training seems to work well and which seems too difficult to recover from. I would recommend dropping the gym ME progression and substituting uphill power hiking intervals. They will have their own strong ME training stimulus but in a more sport-specific way and have a stronger cardiac training effect.
We normally find Z2-3 tempo training works very well with fit athletes such as yourself for increasing specific endurance. However, it needs to be controlled in terms of the volume and intensity. And it would also need to be accompanied by only Z1 training and some short speed. 1-2 Z2 to low Z3 tempo workouts in a week have proven very effective with our fittest athletes. Not suggesting you change your training at this point in your cycle. You’ve got something that is working well. I’m tossing that out there for your consideration in the future. Something to try.
Scott
Andrew: Thanks for writing in with your question. This is very unusual to see AeT and AnT so close together. I normally see, in the very aerobiacally fit, a spread of 5-8%.
From your consistent historical data, I would say you have done a good job on the tests with only one possible point: Have all your AnT tests been uphill at the same grade? This could matter because running uphill requires more muscular endurance. So, local muscular fatigue in the legs could potentially limit your HR on the uphills. The steeper the hill, the more the ME and local muscular fatigue effect. A 9% grade may produce this effect depending on your specific leg ME. I hope this makes sense.
It is entirely possible to have thresholds this close together for a person will a very well-developed aerobic base. A good test of whether you’ve nailed these zones is: Can you train daily at AeT (165-168) and recover well within 24 hours? Or would it be too fatiguing to train your normal volume at that intensity? With AeT and AnT only 3-4% different, I would expect that training in Z2 would not be possible long-term without risking overtraining. Z2 is just too dang hard, too close to your maximum sustainable effort to be sustained day after day after day.
I hope this helps.
Great question for which I have no answer. I have asked several exercise scientists why in some aerobically deficient people, ventilation does not correlate with AeT. So far, none of them knew why. I’m curious about this too and when/if I find out I will let it be known.
Scott
It might be that this newfound ability to push to new intensities is what is causing the cramping. It could be muscle fatigue that is causing it. I’d try introducing some higher-intensity running to build more specific endurance. If you’ve not been doing any intensity, start with strides only 10-20 sec at a fun, fast pace, not a full sprint. I’d add hill sprints if you are not already doing them. Lastly, I would add tempo runs in Z3. Start with something like 2×10-15minutes with a 2-3 min walking recovery between. Work the tempo run volume up to 60min over a could of months. This will build a very specific type of muscular endurance that might help the cramps.
Scott
The test protocol is not critical. The goal is to provide a small load/stress and see how your body responds. It could be done on a stationary bike. Walking on a treadmill. The main thing is to be consistent in the application. Like, step up and down at the same rate for the same time and then sit down and measure your HR in a minute.
There is no way to compare other people’s data and yours. You need to establish a baseline when you are rested by testing a few times in a week. This will show the HR drop after 1 minute when rested. When the training load is high, you should be able to see a correlation between 1 min HR drop and fatigue state. If your normal 1min HR drop is 50bpm when rested, but later you see a drop of 30bpm, and on that day you have a poor workout due to fatigue, you have learned something from the test. The more data you collect, the more reliable it will be.
Heikki Rusko developed what he called the orthostatic recovery test to be used in a similar way. With a recording HR monitor, you lie quitely for 5 minutes, then immediately stand up. Your HR data will record the lowest HR, the highest standing, and the HR 1min after standing.
These all measure the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. These were more common before HRV became so ubiquitous in HR monitor watches. But I honestly think these tests are more reliable. They just take more work on your part than an HRV test.
Scott
Good question.
There is nothing magical about nose breathing. It can be a good way to get you close to and identify the intensity of your aerobic threshold. In your case, you had no upward HR drift starting at 126. I’d suggest retesting starting at 130. It is not necessary to nose breathe during that test.
I hope this helps.
Scott
Great question. Thanks for asking.
Ski touring is great aerobic base training…….provided the gear is not too heavy or trail-breaking too deep to make every workout into an ME session. You’ll know this if your legs are too shot to do again today what you did tomorrow. 1-2 of these a week, even if they slip more to the ME end of the endurance scale, is fine if you have adequate easy aerobic base between.
I hope this helps,
Scott
Thanks for writing in with your question.
I’m not a doc, but I am 69 and have undergone many significant medical set back and surgeries, mostly orthopedic repairs for injuries. All of them required a lot of sedentary recovery time with the concomitant loss of fitness. The first of these took place at 26yrs and the last one at 65. The most important observation is that the older I got, the harder the recovery became, the more fitness I lost and the slower I was to return to the same level as pre-surgery.
I do not know how the anxiety factors in other than to say: It sure didn’t help the physical stress side of things. But on the physical side: The single biggest hit to fitness during bed rest is to aerobic metabolism. Studies I put in the first book, Training for the New Alpinism, showed a 50% drop in the aerobic enzyme Cytochrome-C after five days of bed rest. In both books, I recommend 1 day of easy aerobic work for every lost day of training due to illness or injury. It takes a lot of energy to heal, and you’ve been through a major traumatic experience. Be patient, be consistent, be gentle, and your fitness will return. The time frame will be months to years, not days to weeks. Four years after my second knee replacement, I am still seeing fitness/strength gains in that leg.
I hope this helps.
ScottHi Bill;
Thanks for your questions. This is actually a pretty common dilemma for both people returning after a long break and those just getting started in climbing.
Focus on just climbing and let the fitness return from the actual time spent moving while climbing and the approach/descent time. That’ll get you a bit of a base of general fitness will you re-hone those movement skills. Later you’ll be better positioned to assess what is holding you back from performing better.
Bouldering I track TSS like strength training (which TSS is not designed for). Assess your fatigue from a session. Chances are a hard bouldering session will be like max strength and leave you tired for 2-3 days. Then 80TSS/hr is in the ball park. Similarly, for sport routes that feel hard. Easy climbing I track more like aerobic work.
Welcome back to climbing.
Scott
@LCB: Great questions.
@Andrew Bollard: Good feedback and analysis.
So I don’t have anything of significance to offer because Andrew did a good job with his reply.
The last time I did this was at age 52, and I was pretty bodily broken then as well. So, I can relate. At 69 I’m not sure I could pull off those times again. You do not want to have to go at a max effort for this portion of the climb because going full out for 6-10 hours at that altitude will completely trash you for a few days. So it needs to be a controlled aerobic effort. It also depends on how well you do at altitude and how well-acclimated you are. The only real way to know is to try it. As a test, you might consider a car-to-car on Rainier’s Disappointment Cleaver or Ingrahm Glacier routes. If you can do that 3000m in under 12 hours, you’d probably have a very good chance of pulling off the 14-summit on Deanli in about the same time.
Like most things in life, the answer depends on so many things.
Scott
Great conversation going on here. I don’t have much to add but a couple to thoughts come to mind.
A max strength protocol ( ~90% 1RM low reps/set for several sets) won’t add mass, will increase strength (unless you are all already very strong), won’t make you sore, does not take much energy, and can speed recovery from your aerobic sessions. To do it at home: Pull-ups, Push-ups with a vest, and/0r elevated feet. Single leg exercises. SL movements like decline squat, pistol squat, Bulgarian Split Squat, SL Romanian DL do not require nearly as much resistance (heavy bar or dumbbell) to get an adequate strength training effect, and they are more specific to running, skiing, hiking where you people yourself one leg at a time and need hip stabilization.
I hope this helps,
Scott
SteelT:
Thanks for your questions. They’re great. Comments below.
During the discussion on intensity and recovery, the comment was made that a rough gauge of intensity is that any workout you do you should be able to repeat day after day and recover from it. Can some clarification be made on how you apply progressive overload in context of this gauge? Sorry if I was not clear enough. What I had intended to say was for aerobic base training, that is, Z1-2, you should be able to recover within 24 hours to repeat the same workout. This idea does not apply to high-intensity training as recovery well be longer. It is one way to tell if you are training in the aerobic realm. It it takes you more than 24 hours, you either went too hard of perhaps too long for your given work capacity.
Additionally, we have the 10% rule to provide general guidance on volume and this seems to contradict the aforementioned recovery gauge. E.g., in my current fitness state I could probably manage 5 miles a day every day of the week. By doing this however, mileage would be up 200-300% from last year and wouldn’t be a wise approach. How does the interplay between recovery feeling and volume work and does one take precedence in planning? I thought I said that 10% would be a big annual increase for some with significant training history. Those just getting going can expect to make bigger increases in the early stages. If last year was just beginning training and you felt like you were nowhere near your limit from a recovery/energy standpoint, then a big jump is not out of the question. 200-300% seems extreme to me, but I don’t know you or your history. If 35 miles/wk is what you think you can manage now, I assume you were training about 10-15 miles/wk last year. For many, this would not be a problem. The biggest risk is an overuse injury. That depends so much on your running form. I do think my 100-mile rule is useful here at the start of most folks running season post winter. You need 100 miles in your legs before you are really ready to train by running. This needs to be gradual to condition the connective tissue, especially in the lower legs, to the repetitive impact loading of running to give your self the best change of avoiding injury. The overall message I had hoped to convey is that gradualness if the key to longevity. Given adequate, not excessive stimulus with adequate rest your body will adapt. No formula can describe this for every individual. Hence my message to pay attention to the feedback your body is giving you. You will have to find these limits on your own by testing.
Additionally, we have the 10% rule to provide general guidance on volume and this seems to contradict the aforementioned recovery gauge. E.g., in my current fitness state I could probably manage 5 miles a day every day of the week. By doing this however, mileage would be up 200-300% from last year and wouldn’t be a wise approach. How does the interplay between recovery feeling and volume work and does one take precedence in planning? The fatigue mechanisms will be mixed and highly individual. Fatigue is a fairly obvious and immediate feedback. Whereas overuse injury tends to creep up and pounce on you unexpectedly, especially in running. So this is a more important concern than fatigue for increasing running volume or intensity.
REDS and energy deficiency; for weight loss, you have to be in a caloric deficit that’s going to involve negative symptoms. Where is the balance between under fueling to the point of harming recovery versus a manageable deficit and how does one read that balance on their own? You can use the bathroom scale to monitor weight combined with a simple pinch test a few times a week. Short-term weight loss or gain will be mostly water, but in the summer, this is a good way to be sure you are staying hydrated after a sweaty run. The pinch test of adipose fat is a cheap and pretty good way to monitor body fat changes. But these need to be combined with your perception of recovery status. If you see weight loss over weeks, reduced adipose fat, and lower energy, you are dipping into REDS. Again there is no formula that can work for everyone. I’m not a fan of counting calories (both in and out) as a way to monitor energy intake and use. I don’t think the chemistry of indirect calorimetry, where they oxidize, by combustion, food to determine how much energy it contains, translates well to the chemical processes our body uses to produce ATP. We don’t combust our food. We don’t even oxidize all our food. A significant portion of our ATP is produced via the non-oxidative glycolytic pathway. Anyway, that’s another discussion. Don’t try finding a formula to answer your question. There is none.
OTS vs under fueling vs deficit fueling; they seem to have many overlapping symptoms. Is there anything in particular to distinguish them other than severity of the issue? They do, which makes them hard to diagnose and treat. The easiest way I know is if eating more makes your energy return you are not eating enough. Fairly immediate feedback and is so easy to try. If resting a few days does not make you feel better even when eating plenty, you’re probably looking at OTS.
I hope this helps, Scott
Michael:
I think the point John was making is that you are likely to have a different AeT for different training modalities and my need to test each. This is vry hard to do skinning or XC skiing (without a roller ski treadmill). I have found that uphill ski striding with poles on a treadmill gives very close results to classic skiing and skimo. Heavy backcountry gear……not so much.
Scott
Silpa;
My responses below.
2.After my 24 week plan I only do ME work last 6-8 wks before my planned trips on Stairmaster. Can I do them on a regular basis once every 10 days? Yes. I have never done Hill sprints, I am a little lost on the concept on how to, Will read the book again. I don’t have access to any hill or tall building stairs, best I have is 4 flights of regular stairs (would that work?) These sprints are no more than 15 seconds long so 4 flights is more than enough. I detail in some depth how to do these in both books. Don’t try these sprints while injured.
3. I meant to say 3% Drift on my initial message. I did feel borderline hard at my AeT . I try to get about 4-5 hrs of Zone 2 in a week and my recovery has been good. Looks like I will do better with below 145. From my understanding, training gets more polarized as you get fitter but, Since I am unable to do Zone 4-5 at this time while recovering from injury, Should I continue to train in Zone 2 or keep it below 145 ? Maybe 1-2 Z2 hikes or bikes/week and the rest in Z1. since training at 155 is too much stress on the body. I work really hard on building my aerobic base and hate to lose it to an injury. I strength train with low weight high reps once a week (exercises from the book) and do Cham fit once a week.
One big question I have is, If I continue just Zone 1 and low Zone 2 and ME training (without any zone 3/4) would I always be slower in the mountains? True speed is directly related to strength/power. The ability to maintain sub-max speed is much more related to endurance. As a mountaineer, pure speed is not as much of a limiter……… But, if you can’t move fast for a short distance, you will never move fast for a long distance. First, you need to increase your max speed with things like max strength training (not high rep low weight, that’s endurance training. Ref Training for the New Alpinism). Next….. you need to develop the endurance to maintain I high percentage of the max speed for a long time. That’s what ME and aerobic base training do. You can improve sub-max speed with hit intensity interval training, but without a base of at least some pure speed work, you will always be limited in speed.
I hope this helps,
Scott
