LiveMultiSport » Need For Speed

Points for Working out

Cliff — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:13:59 +0000

Quantifying a workout even when you have all the gadgets is still hard to evaluate. How does one compare an easy long ride to a short hard time trial? Enter the point system combined with a lactate test.

A lactate test will give you the specified zones you need to work in.

Zone 1 = Fat burning/base

Zone 2 = Mostly fat burning but carbohydrates are beginning to be used more

Zone 3 = Transition point where lactate begins to build up

Zone 4 = Carbohydrates are the dominant fuel source for the muscles

Zone 5 = Carbohydrate inferno

Using the information above, it can be easy to quantify every workout. For each zone above, a number is given for each minute spent at that intensity; so 1 point for 1 minute in zone 1, 2 points for 1 minute ins zone 2, and so on.

So if we take a sprint distance triathlon as an example to quantify, we get:

Swim 750m (say 10 minutes) in Zone 4 = 10*4=40 points

Bike 20Km (say 35 minutes) in Zone 3 = 35*3=105 points

Run 5Km (say 20 minues) in Zone 4 = 20*4=80 points

Total workout = 225 points.

This means in training, an equivalent workout could be:

Zone 1 = 225 minutes (3 hours and 45 minutes) / 1 point = 3.75 hours

Zone 2 = 225 minutes / 2 points = 1.875 hours

Zone 3 = 225/3 = 1.25 hours

Zone 4 = 225/4 = 56.25 minutes That is a huge amount of zone 4 work! Leave this one to the pros!

Zone 5 = 225/5 = No chance.

This is easy way to help quantify workouts. Also to help compare races to training.

Overtraining

Cliff — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 01:39:40 +0000

I was doing my nightly website blogging and came across Joe Friels: Overtraining article. Much to my displeasure, he never came up with a clear answer. Honestly I’ve come up with a small list of things that happen that typically lead down the road to being overtrained.

1 – Canker sores. Yes, breakdown of your mouth as well as your muscles. This is caused by eating too many sugary foods..

2 – Craving carbs. Sugars especially! The body in the overtrained state craves energy. It will take whatever it can get but I find it’s the simple sugar it wants the most.

3 – Wake up in the middle of the night to pee like an old person. Yup, another sign your on the overtrained wagon. Your body just can’t get the full rest it needs.

4 – No libido. Not the worst thing in the world if your done having kids or do not have a girlfriend/boyfriend. But I think this is very unnatural.

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/

Need Help Getting Started This Year?

Cliff — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:05:21 +0000

In University, I was not a huge fan of taking tests. The stress of trying to guess what the teacher deemed “important” never really appealed to me.

Less stressful is testing yourself in training. Figuring out what stage your at can help put motivation into every workout. Testing also gives you a benchmark for that year; a moment captured in time of what you did.

Checkout these tests and more as they keep being updated!

Build the House

Cliff — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:20:45 +0000

Over the past 2 months (has it been that long) I’ve been yammering about ‘Building the house’. My analogy was that training is just like building a house. What are the keys to a good house? By ‘good’ I mean an ideal home that won’t fall down and can stand the test of time. Materials, a solid foundation, a stable base, and for it to be build within ‘its means’, i.e. the bottom can support the top.

I’m going to summarize my thoughts and then hopefully, come on no-writers block, put it into a program so that it can be the start of group programs.

First my disclaimer: Most of what I talk about is applied to endurance training. If you have an opinion that you think I’m wrong, or right, please leave a comment. I like opinions so don’t hesitate to contact me!

Below are the key points of my series of posts. In the parathesis is the post if you want to read more about it.

The first key of endurance training is to understand that your goal is to turn your body into a lean and mean fat burning machine (post). This is done by staying in the ‘fat burning zone’ which as shown figure 1, is between 60-70% of your exercise intensity.

Figure 1 – Shows that as intensity increases, the primary source of energy used is carbohydrate.

Training at high intensity is required to get you to the highest level possible (post). Although fat burning is key for endurance, doing speed work is necessary to help make the body more efficient at carrying nutrients around.
Longevity in the sport gives you sport specific strength (post). Consistenty and motivated training will produce the best results, period.
Nutrition and recovery play vital roles in helping you achieve the maximum of your capabilities (post). Focus some time on these two areas and you will see your longevity improve and thus improvements as well.
Stretching which is often forgotten is a vital piece of the puzzle for longevity and recovery (post). Do not skimp on this simple tool!
Know your tired signs (post). Is it because your too lazy or is it because your overtrained? By understanding the warning signs your body sends, you can help prevent sickness and injuries that would prevent you from reaching your goals.

Two topics I didn’t talk about directly were genetics and motivation. Although indirectly, I talked about the factors that are dictated by them, i.e. being recovered for a workout (genetics play a role in how you recover and motivation depends on how recovered you are) or the different energy systems (some people can just burn more fat which is good genetics) .

Genetics and motivation combined with nutrition are the three deciding factors, in my opinion, that determine what kind of athlete you’ll be. When it comes down to a sprint finish, it comes down to just two things; who is more motivated and who has the genetics to get them to the line faster. How everyone got to the line though is a different matter.

For example, a highly talented (genetic/motivated) individual can be beat by a less skilled player if he/she is more motivated or was better prepared nutritionally. These people are the under-dogs but did everything they could to enable themselves to perform at the highest level. This driving force is what makes a somewhat normal person great.

Next post will be defining how each ‘bit’ of training (tempo, lactate, aerobic) contributes to your house. What factors make the house stronger or taller? How can I get fast, fast?!

Aerobic Metabolism

Cliff — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:08:21 +0000

In my last post I talked about recognizing that there were different energy systems in your body. Understanding how to train each one is effective in progressing as an athlete (endurance, sprinter, hockey, etc.). Training your energy system is the backbone for development (especially in endurance sports). In my house analogy, training your energy systems is in all the materials that go into your house. Teaching the body to consume fat instead of carbohydrate is key not only with endurance but also with weight loss.

Aerobic Metabolism

There are three fuel sources, fat, carbohydrates (carbs) and protein. Fat is the ideal source to use because it has twice as many calories (9 versus 4) as carbs. However, this is often overlooked when training for an event.

Training at very intense levels (>80% VO2) challenges the energy systems to burn mostly carbohydrate as fuel. This is due to the inability of converting lactate from pyruvate to energy and fat has a harder time entering general circulation due to priority of the other major arteries. Exercising in this zone has a limited supply of fuel (carbs). This is why you don’t have to eat anything during a 5K or 10K race but a half marathon needs to be reconsidered. Burning fat is the key for longevity.

Figure 1 – Shows that at lower intensities, fat is the primary source contributing energy to the body during exercise. This is key for training in endurance sports. To learn way more than you need to know about fat go here.

Buying into the idea? Your probably thinking that you might be walking at 60% of your VO2 (and for some this is true!). So how do we go fast but still able to burn fat as fuel? By training of course!

Your body wants to burn fat. It has an abundance of storage even for the leanest people (in excess of 10, 000 calories for a 3% body fat individual). Training the system aerobically (or with oxygen as opposed to anaerobic which is without oxygen so think very intense exercise) will shift the lines in figure 1 to the right. The payoff is at higher intensities, your body can now use fat for the primary source of energy instead of carbohydrates.

The body is smart and it learns that for survival it has to adapt to the training stimulus that you apply. It does this by changing enzymes which are proteins that catalyze the thousands of reactions that constitute our metabolism. Think of enzymes as little buses which shuttle nutrition (fat, carbs and protein to a lesser extent) to their destination; cells. There are two ways to make these shuttles go faster, speed them up (increase the speed limit) or make more of them! And that, is the key with training. Exercise promotes an increase in the rate and Vmax of the enzymes in the trained muscle.

So the delivery system is faster, what about the ‘power plant’ that burns the energy. That too increases with training. Beta oxidation, which in a nutshell is how fat becomes usable to the cell, increases in a couple of different ways. Enzymes required in the beta oxidation reaction as mentioned above increase in rate and quantity. Another step is that the chain of events after the fat enters the cell is sped up (called the Citric cycle or Crebs cycle). Over time, training puts fat near the muscles which means its closer to the cells so it can be burned faster. Muscles also change to allow for more oxygen to be used which helps speed up beta oxidation. All these benefits for taking it easier!

Carbohydrate is still ‘the stronger’ fuel for the body when it comes to intense exercise. Even with all these changes from endurance exercise to promote fat as the key energy source, the fire in the cells burns hotter ( i.e. faster) than fat can. This means that if you need to go above your fat burning threshold, the point where you move from burning more fat than carbohydrate, you’ll be taxing a different energy system. This is the key for endurance training and fat loss!

When creating a training plan, it should be designed for taxing the right system of energy. Specific workouts should be chosen to help promote the benefits mentioned above. Cyclists training for the Tour spend countless hours in their aerobic threshold burning fat and teaching their bodies to use fat for energy, sparing carbs for the final sprint. When you hear Phil say a rider has “cracked”, that rider probably spent too much time above his fat burning threshold and burned through his carb stores. Once this happens, you have to slow down as fat takes longer to process. So that poor cyclist will be dropped off the back only wishing he stayed in the right zone! Now there are ways you can help build your storage’s, carbs and fat, to a high level to help prevent ‘cracking’ or ‘bonking’ as it is usually called. But that is a story for another time.

For endurance sports, the majority of the time should be spent training in the fat burning range. It only makes sense. But, as the adaptations are being made you have to adjust. If not,the benefits will not increase. Checkout my last post to see how you can also add some speedwork into your training.

Taxing the different energy systems is an effective way of generating speed (or fat loss), which at the end of the day is all that matters!

Training Systems

Cliff — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:42:47 +0000

Why do we train? Well some want to get stronger, some want to go further and some want to get faster. When you boil it down training means getting better at something.

Typically, the longer you train the “better” you get. Now this assumes that the individual continues to apply a stress that challenges the body to promote gains (muscle breakdown). If you take my house analogy, the more you train, the longer and wider your base of the house gets. Often referred to as “old man strength” its years of adaptions of continuous fiber breakdown and synthesis that create a stronger, faster, and increased endurance, athlete. So how can you maximize your gains? And how long am I going to have to wait? Here are some systems to help train to give you that stable base to build upon.

Lactate – Lactic Acid – Lactate Threshold

My legs hurt! The acid, it burnnnnnns! But isn’t lactic acid from milk? Hmmm.

Let’s clear up a few things. Lactate is produced constantly in the body by red blood cells and resting muscle. Lactate can become fuel (glucose) for muscles after being converted in the liver or oxidized by other tissues in the body. Lactate transport in and out of the muscle is dependent on the intensity. During exercise beyond VO2 max, lactate concentration will increase in the muscle fiber, and lactate will appear in the blood (this is why your finger is pricked for testing). Low levels of lactate will be 1.0 mMol and can go higher than 11+ mMols in very intense exercise.

For lactate to get into the blood,a protein called monocarboxylate transporter (MCT) must be used. Lactate moves across the cell membrane into the blood as the undissociated acid, lactic acid. Studies have shown that endurance training can increase the content of MCT transporters. So a benefit of training is that you can oxidize more lactate and use it as energy.

Lactate as energy? Not a believer? Here is the general process of the fate of lactate.

Glycolysisis the process of converting glucose-6 phosphate (previously glucose or energy) into pyruvate. Pyruvate has a couple of fates. It can either enter the cell and be converted to ATP through the electron transfer chain or it can be converted to lactate and then to ATP. If oxygen is present (aerobic), then pyruvate will enter the cell and produce 6 ATP. If oxygen is not present (anaerobic), then pyruvate will be converted to lactate and yield 2 ATP. As you can see staying aerobic is key to the endurance athlete.

Getting tested is the easiest way to find out your “lactate threshold”. It’s about energy systems. Think about your race in terms of quantifying fuel. How much energy do I need? How much do I have (in storage i.e. liver)? What does this translate into speed?

You don’t have to guess about these systems, you can get tested to see how much energy your using at different levels. The figure above is how they determine what fuel sources are being used (fat, carbohydrate or protein) by the oxygen output. At higher intensities, the primary energy source being used is carbohydrate , which your body can only store a small amount to be readily used. At lower levels, fat is being broken down for energy;fat burning becomes the key for longevity (see picture below). Fat contains twice as many calories as compared to carbohydrate (9 versus 2). Plus your body has an abundance of it. Training then becomes teaching your body how to use fat as fuel and store carbohydrate. I will talk about that more in my next post (aerobic metabolism).

Why work above your lactate system if your primarily training for endurance? Well the obvious reason is to go faster. Training at higher levels will help promote protein transport (GLUT-4) of glucose. Studies have demonstrated that trained athletes have an increase glycogen concentration storage than beginners. This means that by training, you can swim, bike, and run using carbohydrates longer than an untrained individual. Burning fat is important but is a slower operation (called beta oxidation) in comparison to carbohydrate usage. So training gives a bigger gas tank and accelerate usage of the fuel. Now you can see why longevity in sport is key for performance. Old man strength could just be a more efficient energy transfer system due to years of exercise.

Training energy systems is a huge topic and one that I will try to break down into smaller, manageable, posts. It’s interesting stuff and once you buy into it, you can effectively train your system to burn certain types of energy.

Recovery Part III

Cliff — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 16:13:16 +0000

In the previous two sections (Part 1 and Part 2) I have established what methods and some warning signs to keep you on the road of injury prevention. Nutrition is my final topic for the recovery trilogy.

Nutrition in my house analogy is hard to quantify. It not only determines the height and width of the house but it is also in the materials that make it. It’s in my own opinion that I think nutrition can contribute a 20% increase in performance. The worst you eat (daily and yearly), the better your chance of increasing your potential if you improve your diet. After making the initial “cuts” like, fast food, processed food, and junk food (chips and candy) to name a few, the gains to be made are harder to achieve. Optimization the diet becomes more about timing than it is about what your eating (assuming the food you eat is “healthy”).

Most endurance athletes go down the road of eating like crap and then slowly make a change over to the healthier side. Why? Because the food you eat becomes the fuel you have to truly have to keep you going. If you consume poor quality foods then your efforts can show this. The energy you have will be in quick but sub maximal efforts. Not great for endurance!

Here is a list of things to consider when taking your nutrition to the next level.

At the grocery store, stay away from the middle aisles or packaged goods section. Consider stocking up on fruits, vegetables, eggs and meats instead of products have a long shelf life (chips, cookies, cereals). Baking needs are ok!
Purchase foods at a local market instead of the grocery store as you can get produce and meats sooner (i.e. fresher). Buying local will help support the farmers around you.
Learn to time your foods for different workouts. Workouts shorter than an hour, don’t require eating 3 hours before to get the benefits. Read this for more info: http://www.livemultisport.com/2010/08/nutrition-questions-unanswered/
The key for doing any exercise is to find out your metabolic rate (MBR). This little number tells you how much energy you need for the day. From here, you can start to find out how much you need in your workouts (either calculated or estimated based on hunger). There are a few ways to find the MBR: you can do it through a digital scale such as a Tanita (not very accurate). The next step is getting measured by electrical impedance through both your arms and legs (same premise as the Tanita). This gives a better understanding. Lastly is the Dexa machine which is an x ray-like machine that can scan your body for muscle density. This is one of the most accurate devices but you’ll have to go to a hospital to use it.
Hydration, hydration and hydration!
Trying to replace all the calories you lost during exercise is pointless. You’ll probably end up cramping especially if the intensity is high. Your body has plenty of stores of fat to be converted to fuel. They key is to replace carbohydrates at a steady rate (200-300cals/hr) if your working for long durations.

Nutrition is building blocks for your body or house. Unlike muscle strength which takes a long time to form; the food you eat can help you perform better tomorrow. Hopefully you have a better understanding of how nutrition plays a vital role in your exercise regime.

Recovery Part II

Cliff — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 03:26:55 +0000

***Instead of having a huge explanation, I’m going to try to keep it short and simple. My time seems to be slipping away so I figure more frequent posts will be better for LiveMultiSport.***

In the first section of recovery I reviewed the different techniques to keep you “playing”. Now I’d like to talk about learning the warning signs your body sends to say “take a break“. Recovery is the key for growth in endurance, power, strength, you name it. Knowing the warning signs your body tells you to take a break can save you time from sitting on the side lines. If you need ways to help you recover, check the last post out.

Using my house analogy, recovery is in every piece of the building from the foundation straight to the roof. It is often overlooked in training programs either too little (burnout or over-training) or equally as bad, too much (ie: never getting off the couch in the first place!). So what is the balance?

Realistically most people, at least the ones that would read this site, tend to overdue it. So here are some key signs to pick up on to hold you back from going overboard:

If you can’t get out of bed in the morning because you’re too tired.
No enjoyment in the workout.
Stress starts early on in the day for no apparent reason.
Sugar cravings.
Low libido.
Waking up in the middle of the night to go pee.
Thirsty all the time (probably has something to do with 6!).
Selfishness increases.

These aren’t in any specific order however in my case, 1 and 4 are some of the early warning signs of pushing the limits. My motto for exercise is simple: apply a stimulus, let it recover and repeat. Knowing how big to a apply a stimulus and how long to let it recover is… well, complicated. This can almost seem overwhelming, especially if you’re new to a sport. Learning, however, is a part of doing. Mistakes are also allowed, just don’t do it twice! Get to know your warning signs and keep your foundation intact.

This is a part of the Building the House Series.

Recovery Part I

Cliff — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 20:41:43 +0000

This is the second part in “Building the House“ compilation.

One thing that annoys me with most books is they put the recovery and nutrition chapters last. After you’ve read through the should dos, the shouldn’t dos, the could dos, and would dos; you put the book down and probably stop reading altogether! You’ve missed two huge issues that need some attention. First I’m going to cover the controversial topic of recovery and then nutrition.

Without recovery, your body will never be able to adapt to the stress you put on it. Using my house analogy, if you don’t take the time to patch up the leaks in the foundation, your home is going to crumble. If you think of your day as 24 hours, you may spend what, 1-4 hours training? So maybe at the most 1/6? Even a long day, like 8 hours is still only 1/4 of the time. That leaves the majority of the day to do other things, rest, hopefully being one of them.

It’s difficult to measure rest as compared to the other training parameters My running race pace is XX:XX min/k. I can swim at X:XX per 100ms and my resting is…. well… what is it? Outside of sleep, it’s hard to quantify relaxation. There are ways of course but it requires a lab to study the electric pulses in your body. Unfortunately, this isn’t really meant as a home recovery system. Resting heart rate is another but hard to capture for the working individual.

What I think would be great is to invent a way to measure the ionic capacity of the muscle, maybe using a simple “battery indicator”. A relaxing muscle should show very little output where as a damaged muscle (ie. post workout) will show more. This could give a green light as to when to return to training. There may be ways to do this but I haven’t come across them.

Ok so outside my made up technology and a device that you can’t use what other ways can you help recovery?

Stretching is the first one. There are a plethora of science papers exploring the world of stretching. There seems to be a conflict between if it works and if it doesn’t. Most of the papers that claim stretching isn’t effective are done with short term studies (8-12 weeks). If you read the previous post, your body hasn’t even had time to build any strength from the workouts in 8 weeks. So I can see why stretching in a short term wouldn’t work. Longer durations, ie. years, needs to be completed before the book can be truly closed on stretching.

Does stretching work? I think it does. My reasoning is this: a lengthened muscle can move faster or has the potential too than a short cramped one. If you think of a stretched elastic band, the second the tension is released it moves super fast. The same can be said about your muscle. The only problem with a really stretched out muscle is that it has a problem generating force. Take that same elastic band example and instead of a single loop outstretched, wrap it around twice. The force will be increased but the velocity will be a bit less. So for the muscle, there is a happy medium between being able to generate force and velocity. Stretching is a good way to stay limber as exercise tends to shorten the elasticity of the muscle.

A few other ideas, again all controversial, are hot/cold (saunas/ice baths), legs over the head and the compression socks. Lets start with compression socks.

Compression socks work by pushing/compressing the blood out of your calves and thus creating a vacuum pressure which is replaced by fresh blood. The science seems like it would work but do they? A paper studying the effects of post workout fatigue with athletes wearing the socks and without found that there was no harm done. In the science world that means it is plausible they could help. From experience, they work if you have the right compression (ie. not loose fit).

Legs over the head has been around since… Adam and Eve I guess. The idea is the same as the compression socks; by holding your legs over the head the blood flows out and is returned once your legs are back below your heart. This one is a little harder to do at the office… You may be called into see the boss man if your doing the computer reports upside down. Performance gains from this are unknown.

Lastly the ice batch and sauna. Let’s tackle the sauna. The thought is that you sweat out your impurities. For a cold or flu this maybe true (however it hasn’t been fully proven), however my thought is if your already dehydrated and you enter a spot to sweat more… how is this helping? Your asking the body to work harder to help cool the circulatory system. You may want to save the sauna for the warm up.

If you have ever tried an ice bath you know what a shocker it is to the muscles; especially on cold winter days! The thought process behind the ice bath is again like the socks and legs over the head: pressure differential causes blood to flow in and out of the legs/back/body. After being immersed in cold water the fibers begin to constrict as the blood flows out. But throw some hot water on and they begin to stretch out as the fluids come rushing back. Science again isn’t a fan of this technique. However, I personally feel it does work. There are days when an ice bath helps me relax more than a stretching session.

So we got the recovery techniques covered. These should help aid in keeping your house together. Next up is learning the signs of your body to tell when it is breaking down (crucial for making any gains).

Longevity in Sport

Cliff — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:49:42 +0000

This is the first part in “Building the House“; compilation.

Building the house – I got sick and tired of reading countless magazines/books that all proposed their ideas as the right ones. On top of that, each author has their own system. Zone 5b, power level at CP30, swim at percieved effort 4; what the heck does it all mean?! It’s a no wonder why people turn to coaches, they can’t even understand the training programs that are suppose to be easy to follow!

I’ve read many books and asked a lot of questions about training. What I can’t get over is why there isn’t a system that is easy to understand and follow. Training isn’t rocket science, it’s more like building a house.

Longevity in sport.

Progressing in sport takes time. The earlier you start, the more you get to reap the benefits later. It comes as no surprise that the longer you do something the stronger you should become. When you first start training, most of the adaptions that come are neural, not strength related. This means that muscle growth lags the time that you “learn to do something”. Lifting weights is a good example because you may see a huge increase in strength, ie. lift more than before, but lack size. You’ve effectivity got better at doing the motions of the exercise but the muscle fibers take much longer to grow.

If you think of the time you have spent doing a sport (or even being active) as the materials for your house, the longer you’ve been doing something, the”better” your materials will be. If you’ve spent 10 years in a sport without injury, chances are your house is going to be made of brick and have thick pillars holding it up. At 5 years you’ve got a solid wood house but could use some more stability in the foundation. If your a newbie, 1-2 years in, you’ve got a bungalow. Watch-out for tornadoes.

How do you speed up the growth process? Well, steroids work well. But I really don’t want to get into that. Growth depends a lot on genetics but also maximizing nutrition and rest. My simple recipe is: apply a stimulus, let it rest and repeat. Motivation is another factor which is being studied a lot now. Just going through the motions of training will get you the neural adaptions but won’t make you stronger. You need to challenge the system. You may have heard of plateauing, where the individual is stagnant and can’t go to the next level. At this point trying to stimulate the muscle further becomes increasingly difficult. This is where outside expertise is needed to analyze the training regime, nutrition, motivation and rest. This is also where athletes tend to leave their coaches and go try something new.

How about cross over in sport? Can longevity in one sport help in another? Absolutely, but within reason (shot putter to marathoner.. maybe, but probably not). A good example of this is Andy Potts. Potts was going for the US Olympic team but came up short, and then took up running. Someone suggested cycling and within 5 years he was a world champion triathlete. People think its an amazing transformation. I think it’s almost natural! Being a national class swimmer would have given him the tools like, huge training base, knowledge of training/resting/eating and motivation. Cycling an running are also arguably, the easier of the 3 disciplines ot learn. So yes, cross over is possible.

Bottom line is muscle adaptions take time. Increased strength in anything you do, swimming, biking, running, weight lifting, rock climbing, etc., all require putting in the hours. How much you need depends on the task, the goal and the person. To complete an Ironman is going to require more time than a sprint triathlon. Making sure you have the right materials for the job when choosing your next goal.

Longevity = stronger materials for the house = strength within the sport.

Now that you have an understanding of the materials of your house, we now need to define the size of it!