How easy is 'too easy'?

“It is better to run a long way slowly rather than to curtail the mileage possible by running too fast”
- Arthur Lydiard

Lydiard is the guy on the right in the pic above. Much of Lydiard’s training theory consisted of going easier (and longer) in the short term so that you can go harder and faster in the long term.

There are few questions related to training that elicit as much confusion as the two antipolar inquiries:

“How easy is too easy?”

“How hard is too hard?”

Sports science has done just as much to add to the confusion as it has to definitively answer either of these questions. In this post, I want to present the primary considerations (from my perspective) that each individual athlete must contemplate in order to arrive at an informed answer to these two questions.

Consideration #1: Cardiovascular development

Several studies have investigated the minimal training intensity necessary to stimulate an improvement in VO2max in both de-conditioned and conditioned subjects, e.g. Hollman and Venrath (1963), Karvonen et al (1957), or more recently, Swain and Franklin (2002). While the definition of “conditioned subjects” in these studies probably doesn’t extend to the level of conditioning of you guys & gals, the overall trend is still significant. Basically, these researchers concluded that the level of intensity necessary to elicit an improvement in VO2max was correlated to the starting fitness level of the subject. Generally speaking, the range was 30-60% of VO2max (~50-70% of maximum heart rate) for individuals with VO2max values ranging from 30-45ml/kg/min – average values for healthy college aged males and females. Considering most of you are (hopefully) fitter than your average college freshman (‘freshman 15’ included :-), we can assume that ~70% max heart rate is the minimal threshold necessary for improvements in your cardiovascular system.

These numbers tie in nicely with the findings of one of the forefathers of exercise physiology, Per Olaf Astrand, when he investigated the exercise intensity necessary to elicit maximal stroke volume of the heart during activity. This concept is analogous to utilizing a load that will recruit the maximal number of muscle fibers when hitting the bench press without regard for the speed at which the load is lifted. Beyond a certain point, the heart is contracting as ‘strongly’ as it is able. Any further demands in Cardiac output are met by increasing the heart rate rather than increasing the force with which the heart contracts. In a similar way that the absolute load of the bench press is fundamentally more physiologically significant than the speed that you lift it, most of the cardiovascular benefit of aerobic training is reached once this maximal stroke volume is achieved.

Recently, studies have shown that the point at which this occurs is not a uniform 40% VO2max as Astrand suggested, but is rather a function of the individual’s fitness, with elite athletes exhibiting no plateau in stroke volume up to, and in some cases, beyond the anaerobic threshold (Gledhill et al. 1994). So, for the fitness range encompassing recreational athletes to elites, from a cardiovascular standpoint, the minimal intensity required to elicit improvements in VO2max can range from heart rates of ~70% max heart rate for folks of similar fitness levels to healthy college age subjects up to ~90% max heart rate in the case of elite athletes. This has important implications on the level of athlete that ‘needs’ speedwork, but that sounds like a topic for another blog.

Consideration #2: Substrate development


So, to improve our cardiovascular indices of fitness, the minimal required intensity can range anywhere between 50 and 90% of the individual’s maximal heart rate depending on their relative fitness. Now, what of our metabolic fitness? We know that in competitions that last longer than 60-90 minutes that glycogen depletion can be a limiting factor. We also know that athletes who oxidize a greater amount of energy from fatty acids as opposed to Carbohydrate for a given workload are able to ‘spare’ their carbohydrate stores and last longer before being forced to slow down. We also know that from a training perspective, using less Carbohydrate at rest and during recovery activity enables us to recover more quickly and thus accumulate more work at sport specific intensities. Clearly, improving our ability to oxidize fat is an objective that is at least as important as improving our mechanisms for Oxygen delivery.

So, what is the minimal intensity required to meet this objective?

The chart above illustrates the fat oxidation trends of two individuals, one fit male with a VO2max of 56ml/kg/min and one deconditioned female with a VO2max of 33ml/kg/min. The y axis of the chart represents the total fat burned per minute, while the x axis represents intensity via heart rate. Clearly, the range at which the male and female are burning the most fat is quite different (and quite narrow). For the female, the heart rates that elicit her highest fat oxidation rates are 102-122bpm, or 55-66% of her maximal heart rate. For the male, the 133-156bpm represents 73-86% of his maximum heart rate. Therefore, the training zone that maximally trains the ability to burn fat will be markedly different for both subjects. This is one of the reasons that training systems based on a % of any given point (maximal heart rate, HRR, FT etc) are pretty useless. They do not account for the huge inter-individual variability that we see in the real world. It is also worth noting just how narrow these bands are. In the male’s case, there is very little stimulus for fat oxidation occurring below a heart rate of 130bpm and after 156bpm, fat oxidation falls off the proverbial cliff.

So, again it seems that the question of how easy is too easy (in a sense of improving metabolic fitness) is also strongly related to the individual’s starting fitness level, which I want to point out is not always indicated by their fitness in a VO2max sense. We have witnessed very ‘VO2max fit’ individuals with very poor substrate profiles and vice versa. Generally, though, I would feel confident saying that the minimal intensity necessary to elicit an improvement in fat oxidation ranges from 50-80% of max heart rate. This is backed up by a great study by Gonzalez-Haro et al (2007) that found that maximal lipolytic power was found anywhere from 33-75% VO2max in accordance with the individual’s fitness.

The trick, of course, for you as an athlete, is to discover your own ‘sweet spot’ for both 'max fat-burning' and 'max fitness' zones. Using non-customized formulae such as the MAF formula or % of Heart Rate Reserve is honestly nothing better than a blindfolded stab in the dark. The only way for you to really know ‘how easy is too easy’ and ‘how hard is too hard’ to stimulate your desired training adaptations is to test, test, test.

Single Sport Focus Periods: The Key to Success for the Working Athlete

After my first double digit hour week on the bike in a while (no doubt motivated by watching Le Tour), I thought it might be pertinent to chat through one of the most under-utilized training prescriptions – Single Sport Focus Periods.

But first, I had a request from one of my athletes to complete the ‘black belt trilogy’ and give some data on what a black belt week in the pool might look like. Here goes:

31000m in less than 10hrs
* 5km FS timed less than 1:30
* 4x100 IM @ 2:15, 2x200IM @ 4:30, 400IM @ 9:00, 2x200IM @ 4:30, 4x100IM @ 2:15
* 40x100m descending swim @ 1:45, 1:40, 1:35, 1:30
* 4x (4x100 FS @ 1:20) w/200 swim down
* 10x25!FS + 75 recovery @ 2:15 (w/sprints less than 17s/25m

The more mathematically astute of you, will have put together that a ‘black belt week’ for SBR will put you somewhere around the 30 hour mark – beyond what is feasible for most top AG athletes. While, I think there is big value to sporadic ‘stretch weeks’ that are in that neighbourhood for a top AG athlete, to do so on a regular basis, taking into account the addition of work and family stress is a quick recipe for burnout.

My absolute favourite training principle for the working athlete has to be the maintenance principle, which basically states that:

It takes substantially less volume to maintain a fitness level than it does to initially achieve it.

Specifically, studies have shown that a drop in training volume of 20-35% will maintain performance for a period of at least 4 weeks (Anderson et al., 1992, Costill et al. 1985, Mujika et al., 1995).

Using this principle, the time (or energy) limited athlete can incorporate cycles in which one discipline is emphasized, while the others are held at maintenance level. This can be done on the macro level, by spending a period of a month or more focusing on a weak discipline, or on the micro level by alternating the focus of your weeks.

Rod Cedaro, coach of former world champion, Jackie Gallagher is a big advocate of the microcyclic approach of cycling Swim/Bike/Run/Recovery weeks as his short term periodization strategy. For our prospective Top AGer/Kona qualifier, this may mean one week each month of 15hrs+ on the bike, while the others are maintenance weeks in the vicinity of 10hrs.

On the flipside, an athlete with a weak run leg may spend 6 weeks or more building their run volume in preparation for a fall marathon while dropping their swim and bike mileage back to maintenance levels.

A combination of these approaches that I will frequently use with my athletes is a cycle of 2 weeks focused on the athlete’s weak event followed by one week focused on maintaining the athlete’s strengths. I have seen good results with this approach.

This method is not just for top AG athletes, based on what I have seen, most working athletes exceed their capacity to absorb appropriate SBR training volume within a week pretty early in the piece. If you are a sub 13hr IM, working athlete, you are going to have a hard time hitting appropriate (single sport) training volume each week. Generally, an ad-hoc single sport focus will result, with the athlete tending to do more of the sport that is convenient or the sport that they enjoy, rather than the sport that is limiting. There is tremendous value to most athletes in being deliberate in choosing what sport they need to focus on.

At the other end of the spectrum, many elite athletes will have a hard time summoning the energy levels to maintain appropriate training intensity while hitting appropriate training volume in all 3 sports simultaneously, even when time is not a limiting factor.

When we get down to it, for all levels of athlete, time and energy are much greater limiters than genetics or inherent ability in a sport like triathlon. Any way that we can eek out more training stimulus for a given period of training time is obviously worth consideration.

Athletic Balance

No, today’s blog isn’t about that kind of balance. The balance that I am talking about in the title of today’s post is the balance across the training intensity spectrum.

But, before I get into that, Mat has written a great post this week on some of the limiters to Ironman performance that, as athletes we often fail to/don’t want to consider (e.g. day to day nutrition…Sugar addicts stand up! :-) Check it out - http://msteinmetz.blogspot.com/

In his post, Mat talks about the components of fitness. I want to explore that a little more in my own post this week.

In my mind there are two schools of thought on preparation for Ironman racing. On one side of the fence we have the following basic theory of training:

Position 1: Raise the athlete’s functional threshold to the highest level possible - since functional threshold is the best predictor of athletic performance in all aerobic events (yeah, right!) then make sure the athlete paces the race at the appropriate % of this functional threshold. If the athlete races under what their functional threshold # would indicate, it is clearly a pacing problem.

I hope you feel the sarcastic tone in the above paragraph. This myopic viewpoint of training really bugs me on a pretty deep level and the fact that there are a number of PhD’s (often in unrelated fields) out there espousing this viewpoint right now, bugs me even more. Excuse my grumpiness this morning. I’m a little undercaffeinated :-)

Anyhow, position 2: Miles make champions. Increase aerobic training volume to the limits of the athlete’s long term tolerance. Avoid high intensity training as it will ultimately limit the athlete’s training volume.

I want to point out that I have a strong lean (almost to the point of falling over sideways) toward this position. However, recently my experience in coaching and testing athletes has led me to reach the conclusion that despite the fact that 80% of the Ironman field would benefit from simply doing more, there is a select portion that is distinctly lacking in the top end abilities required to reach the next level of athletic performance.

I also believe that this 20% or so is growing as more and more people are selecting “training for an Ironman” as their first foray into triathlon training (or their reintroduction after a long lay-off) without following the natural progression of sprint tri, Olympic tri, Half Ironman followed by an Ironman several years into their triathletic development.

It can be very difficult for an athlete to determine how much ‘top end’ is enough? Folks like Gordo perform at the elite level of Ironman racing with, what would be considered, relatively pedestrian values of functional threshold, and especially, VO2max (within his elite peer group). However, I’m willing to stake a guess that Gordo’s functional threshold is higher than yours! OK, so you’re not looking to challenge Gordo at Vineman or even your age-group winner for that matter, but the question remains are you lacking in top end horsepower?

More numerically inclined exercise physiologists have been trying to equate relative performances over various race distances for years. Folks from Gardner and Purdy (1970), to Tom Osler (1978), Davies and Thompson (1979) all the way to Daniels and Gilbert’s famous VDOT tables (1979), have looked to equate a given VO2max value with performances from 800m through to (and in some cases beyond) the marathon. For the most part, these tables do show a relatively high predictive validity within this race duration spectrum. This makes a lot of sense when we consider that the relative ergogenesis of these events consists of an aerobic (glycolytic) contribution ranging from 80-99% (Hawley and Hopkins, 1995).

However, when put into practice, coaches who subscribe to this training model have noticed that for middle distance runners (400-1500m), the numbers don’t line up. Athletes in this category (unsurprisingly) tend to under-perform at the longer end of the duration spectrum and over-perform at the short end, despite having equal VO2max values to distance runners in the same performance category. For this reason, folks like Daniels (1998) and Martin and Coe (1995) have deduced modified ‘ideal’ performance tables for these athletes due to their ability to contribute anaerobic resources to performance that are independent of VO2max. Unfortunately, with the relative lack of sports science interest in ultra-endurance events, similar calculations have not been made for events in which aerobic lipolytic energy production begins to outweigh the aerobic glycolytic energy production that is largely dependent on physiological qualities like VO2max and Anaerobic (or Functional) Threshold. This is the major oversight that folks who espouse the Functional Threshold model of training fail to ‘get’.

So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty, if we take this lipolytic energy contribution into play, how does it affect the relative performance-duration curve?

I’ve presented a couple of predictive curves below. A distance curve from the tables of Daniels and Gilbert, a middle distance curve from Martin and Coe and an ultra-distance curve from real world data on elite ultra endurance athletes (ultra-runners and Ironman elites).

The x axis at the bottom of the chart reflects race duration (in hours). The y axis reflects the % of their vVO2 that the athlete sustains for the event.

The chart indicates that elite Ironman athletes’ race specific pace (and presumably power) is ~5% higher than what would be predicted from the normative curves of shorter distance athletes (on which many training models are based). In specific preparation for an ultra-distance event, this 5% greater endurance is something that should be trained before an effort is made to further elevate the functional threshold or VO2max of the athlete, especially since this adaptation is ultimately more trainable over the long term. Practical example:

Athlete with a PR of a 20:00 5K should be able to hold >70% of their vVO2max after an 8hr big day (~9:10/mi) before any emphasis should be given to speed training to further elevate the VO2max or Functional Threshold.

Keep in mind that the blue line on the chart is indicative of very well trained (although not ‘ultra trained’ distance runners, often running 100mi plus per week). It is likely that the difference between your own ‘blue line’ and ‘red line’ is substantially greater, especially if you have been emphasizing higher intensity training (FT/FT+ training) within your own training program.

It is for this reason that most (though not all) Ironman athletes can vastly benefit from a multi-month period that focuses on building base and raising the % of your vVO2 or max power that you can hold over the race duration.

If, on the other hand, you’re running an IM marathon at or close to 70% of your vVO2, a focus on ‘speedwork’ may be prudent. But first, of course (you know what I'm going to say), you must prove it!

Welcome to Big A's Dojo!

In keeping with my aikido theme of last week, I thought I’d open with a pic of Aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba.

One of the things that I love about Martial Arts is the long term discipline required/expected when a new student enters the dojo for the first time. It is not uncommon for a judo student, for instance, to spend a year simply learning how to fall, before even a thought is given on how to go about instigating a throw. In the more legitimate schools, obtaining a black belt is a ten year deal!

On a spiritual training level, in my mind, it is this ‘patience training’ that makes martial arts so valuable to the individual in terms of dealing with the fact that success in the modern world is largely the result of sacrificing short-term wants for long term gains. Unfortunately, this mind set hasn’t trickled down to all sports. In the world of AG triathlon, for instance, the “I have 16 weeks to qualify for Kona” mind set is all too pervasive.

Another sport that does a good job focusing on the long term development of the athlete is swimming. My first job out of college was with Jones Aquatic Club in Australia. To this day, that short period of time in my life has left a significant impression on me. Let me paint the picture for you: A small, somewhat dingey indoor 25m pool bustling as a production line for the next Aussie swim superstars. In a 6 lane, 25m pool, every square foot was utilized in a mechanistic schedule that was running as smoothly as any Henry Ford production line ever did. The first 3 lanes were split in two, making for 9 ‘levels’ of swimming development. Each of these levels was denoted by a little colored token that the kid received when they checked in for the day. Once a child performed all of the (very specific) session criteria perfectly, one of the supervisors (that was my job), handed the kid a colored token indicating that they had been ‘promoted’ to the next level. It never ceased to amaze me, the joy that a small, inanimate token could bring to these kids. They would compete with the ferocity of an Olympic champion for the recognition of being the ‘kid who got the token’.

Of course, this method is paralleled in the Martial Arts, where the student’s long term development is broken up into a number of colored belt levels. I may be losing the plot here, but I have a sense that doing the same in any sport that requires a decade or more of commitment to truly realize your potential could only enhance long term motivation.

In keeping with my overall philosophy that if you want to train more or train harder, you must first prove it by training/racing faster, here are my virtual belt rankings from my own triathletic dojo :-) The following are my criteria for moving to the next level in running (similar criteria can be given for swim and bike training). I have derived these criteria from a number of sources (e.g. Daniels, Glover and Glover, McPhee) along with my own experience in working with athletes of a range of ability levels.

White Belt: All newbies come in as a white belt. In order to move up to a yellow belt they must achieve the following:

Yellow Belt:
- A 30mi (flat) run week in less than 4:36
- The ability to execute a functional strength routine with good form and optimal range of motion

- The ability to do 6x200m strides (pain free) in <47s/200

Blue Belt:
- A 40mi (flat) run week in less than 5:24 including:
- A 7mi long run in less than 60min
- 6x200m strides in less than 45s/200
- 3x1mi intervals in less than 7:00/mi w/1min rest

Black Belt:
- A 50mi (flat) run week in less than 6:30 including:
- An 11mi long run in less than 1:30
- 6x200m strides in less than 42s/200
- 8x400’s @ 3:30 w/a 400 jog in less than 1:26/400
- 4x1200’s @ 9:00 w/a 800 jog in less than 4:30/1200

After completing the ‘black belt’ program, the athlete is ready to move on to studying a specific school, e.g. Ironman training. This is not to say that athletes cannot complete an Ironman before reaching their black belt, however, in my mind at any belt level below black belt, the athlete is in a position to complete, but not compete.

This is an important distinction. It is also important to note that completing too many very long events during the athlete’s formative development will ultimately delay the point at which the athlete can begin to compete in said events. At the extreme, this can result in athletes who put in big volume but are never truly competitive as AG athletes because they lack a balanced development (but that sounds like the subject for another blog post)

Hope you’ve enjoyed my musings for this week.

Keep your focus, but keep it fun!

Sensai A :-)

**********************************

Had a question from a reader on what a similar "black belt" week on the bike might look like. Some ideas below:

15hrs of cycling @ 2.8W/kg (211W NP for a 75kg cyclist)

w/the following key sessions:

- 60min Z3-Z4 Climb @ 3.8W/kg (285W NP for a 75kg cyclist)

- 5x5mins on/5mins off intervals @ >4.4W/kg (>330W for a 75kg cyclist)

- Big Gear Power Starts (10x30-60s in 53/12 w/2-5min easy spin recovery)

Getting your 'black belt' in Big A's Dojo isn't easy. Nothing worthwhile is.

Cheers,

AC