Tuesday: Strength

December 6, 20161 Comment

30 minute warmup on the stationary bike (manual, level 13)

Then into a strength session

Squats
(limited depth to protect my knee, put a Bench behind me and stopped when my butt hit it, it was about 3/4 depth)
45 x 10
95 x 10
145 x 10
165 x 8 x 3 sets

Chin ups
Unassisted x6 (yes! I’m making progress)
assisted x6 x6 x4

Good Mornings
45 x 10
95 x 10
145 x 10 x 3 sets

Push ups
(with rotating handle pads)
10 x 4 sets

Pretty happy with how that went, especially the squats. I really want to work on leg strength and preserve range of motion. I felt safe doing the squats this way.

Not by coincidence, I saw a tweet from Yann La Meur reviewing a paper by Rhea. This was talking about the specificity of squat training. In the experiment they took 28 collegiate athletes and only varied the type of squat exercise that they did within an otherwise identical strength training program. They found that quarter squats translated into bigger improvements in vertical leap and sprint speed than either full squats or half squats.

Now, of course the range of knee motion for rowing is a lot larger than running or jumping, so I am not sure that quarter or half squats are good for specific rowing training, but I found the article very interesting nonetheless. Mainly though, I want to avoid having my knee lock up while I have 200 pounds on my shoulders.

Tomorrow: Stationary Bike endurance session, ~ 60 minutes.

Including Strength Training

December 5, 20161 Comment

I saw this interesting infographic on Twitter, from Yann La Meur. If you are on Twitter, I recommend following him. Good stuff.

This looks like good common sense advice. I think I’ll take it.

Article Review: Optimizing Fat Oxidation Through Exercise and Diet

June 21, 20169 Comments

One of the primary tenets of a polarized training program is to separately train the different energy systems by tailoring the intensity of the specific session. If you are trying to training the Anaerobic Alactic system, then short sprints with long rests allow the athlete to produce more power in each rep and thereby increase the focus on that energy pathway. Similarly, when doing low intensity endurance training, the idea is to keep the intensity high enough to elicit a training response, but low enough so that the metabolism of fat predominates.

The most direct way to determine the proper training intensity is to measure blood lactate levels. This is because the metabolism of fat does not produce pyruvate, which is transformed into lactate, whereas the metabolism of carbohydrate (CHO) does end up producing lactate. The body can use lactate as a fuel, so at a certain exercise intensity, the amount of lactate produce and consumed is at equilibrium and will stay stable over relatively long exercise sessions (60 to 80 minutes at least).

The problem is that routine measurement lactate is expensive, inconvenient and not continuous. So it becomes desirable to find other measures that can be roughly correlated with lactate that are easier to measure, and more importantly to continuously monitor during an exercise session.

That brings us to this review paper:

The key findings are:

Fat metabolism is maximized at a higher percentage of VO2Max for fit people than non fit people.
- 59% to 64% of VO2Max for trained subjects
- 47% to 64% of VO2Max for untrained subjects

That the fat metabolism is maximized at different VO2Max percentages for different modes of exercise
- 58% of VO2Max for walking
- 64% of VO2Max for bicycling
- No data about rowing 😦

That ingesting Carbohydrates immediately before exercise reduces the amount of fat metabolism.
- At the same percentage of V02Max, fasted subjects nearly doubles the fat metabolism of subjects that consumed CHO before exercise.

Men maximize fat metabolism at a higher percentage of VO2Max than women

So, one thing that always trips me up is calibrating myself to VO2Max. The best rule of thumb that I have read is that VO2Max power on an erg is roughly 2K pace or power. So, if you can row a 7:00 2K (302W). If maximizing fat oxidation occurs between 59% and 64% of VO@Max power, then the power range for endurance training would be 179W (2:05.0) to 194W (2:01.7).

Aerobic and Anaerobic thresholds

November 18, 20155 Comments

There is a nifty table in chapter 6 of Rowing Faster which provides targets for aerobic threshold (AeT) and Anaerobic Threshold (AnT) for different classes of rowers.

Since I have these wattages from my recents tests, I thought I’d look at how I stacked up.

I weight about 195lbs (88KG). So, in watts per Kg, my results were:

AeT : 2.16 W/kg
AnT : 3.20 W/kg

So, this lines up with my other tests, that my AnT is “better” than my AeT, and I should work to develop my aerobic base.

GPS Distance Errors

November 8, 20152 Comments

Prolific posting day for me. I saw this on Twitter, An academic paper about system over estimate of distance by GPS devices.

WHY GPS MAKES DISTANCES BIGGER THAN THEY ARE

There is a lot of heavy duty math in the paper and if I manage to understand it, it will take a while. But the basic gist is that the larger the error in the estimated positions along the route trajectory, the more cumulative distance errors occurs.

In the pedestrian example they provided, the error peaked at 2.5 meters of over estimation at 45 minutes into the experiment.

Not all that much error, but it gives you something to think about.

Another taper plan – From Rowing Faster (Ed McNeely)

October 2, 20154 Comments

Based on the a comment from Tom (Stelph), I went and looked at Chapter 19 of the second edition of Rowing Faster. This chapter is written by Ed McNeely and in principle is quite similar to the taper I wrote up from the Shepley Paper.

Basically, the idea is to maintain the intensity of the training, but reduce the volume. In the Shepley paper, the protocol was to warmup, do a small number of ~75sec intervals then cool down.

The chapter defines 3 types of what it calls “minor tapers”. I doubt anyone who isn’t competing at a collegiate or elite level would consider the moderate or major tapers, unless perhaps you are planning to race against blood thirsty cannibals in a set number of months and your life depends on the extra second of pace.

But back to minor tapers. Here is a table of the three that were defined.

The primary difference is that instead of doing the same type of interval and just reducing the number as you approach race day, you change the number, length and intensity of the intervals.

The type of taper is driven by your training load. A 1 day taper for athletes training 6 to 10 hours a week. 3 days for athletes training 10-15 hours. 5 day taper is for those hardy souls training more than 15 hours a week. I checked my log and I am training about 7 to 10 hours a week, so I guess in Ed’s world, I don’t need or deserve a taper. I actually think this is an elite versus masters kind of difference. The amount of taper you need is probably driven by how much recovery you need from whatever training load you are carrying.

The 1 day taper is a misnomer. It just means that you take a complete rest day the day before the race. I don’t like that idea much.

The 3 day taper seems simple enough. It seems like 5 x 2′ at faster than race pace might be a bit harrowing. I did 4 x 2′ at 2k pace on the erg and I don’t think I could have done them 2% faster (1:38 vs 1:40 pace). Maybe an elite athlete could. The 3 x 1′ at 3% faster than race pace looks pretty cool, and I think the 20 minutes of steady state is probably about the same as the warmup and cooldown from the Shepley paper.

I have to admit some confusion about the 5 day taper. This is a taper for a 2000m race, which will probably take somewhere between 6 and 8 minutes. So how is it possible to do 3 x 10 minute intervals at race pace. I have to assume that is a typo. If you can do 10 minutes at race pace, it isn’t race pace. After that there is a steady state session, then 7 x 3′ at faster than race pace, which I would not be capable of doing on my best day. Then the 5×2′ and then the 3×1′ sessions from the 3 day taper.

How would I apply this to my world? I honestly don’t know. I think that I would probably look at the 3 day taper and ignore the other ones. For the 3 day taper, I would need to adapt it by adjusting the pace targets. I would target about race pace for both the 2′ and 1′ intervals.

Unlike the Shepley paper, there is no real evidence presented about the effectiveness of the taper versus other approaches, so it is hard to judge how well it works, but Ed McNeely certainly has impressive credentials so you could do worse than to trust his advice (other than the 3×10′ at race pace thing).

By the way, Rowing Faster is a great book. I have the kindle version of the 2nd edition.

What the best way to taper for a race?

September 30, 2015September 30, 201513 Comments

I’m sure that there are an infinite variety of ways to taper and just as many principles and theories about what works best to delivery peak performance on race day. In the Wolverine Plan, Mike Caviston writes the following…

Tapering is the practice of reducing training volume & intensity prior to competition to ensure peak performance. While it is a common perception among athletes that a taper is necessary to allow maximal performance, this is not clearly supported by scientific research. The benefits of tapering are most evident in situations where athletes were clearly overtraining in the first place. In other words, the benefit is not so much the taper per se, but removing the negative effects of overtraining. In situations where training volume and intensity are properly controlled, the effects of tapering are less substantial. Now, this is not to say we won’t taper before important tests and competitions. We will. Rest assured that we have your best interests at heart. But some athletes expect a vacation and are disappointed when all they get is a modest reduction in a pretty demanding schedule. The fact is the only noticeable reduction in training will occur during the week prior to NCAAs. And the benefits are probably far more psychological than physical.

Needless to say, there are different view points, and in fact some research that contradicts this point of view. For example this paper:

Physiological effects of tapering in highly trained athletes

B. SHEPLEY, J. D. MAcDOUGALL, N. CIPRIANO, J. R. SUTTON, M. A. TARNOPOLSKY, AND G. COATES
Departments of Physical Education and Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada

This paper is from 1992, and it is an interesting experiment. It was a study of collegiate middle distance runners. There were 9 participants that went through a 8 week training period where all of them followed the same training plan. They were then divided into three groups of 3 and each group followed a different taper plan. Then after four weeks they did another taper, and after 4 more weeks a final taper. So each athlete used each taper once. At the end of each taper, there was a series of performance and physiological tests including:

VO2Max
time to exhaustion at 1500m running pace
Strength
Blood lactate
Blood volume
Red Cell Volume

The three tapers were all 7 days long, day 1 and day 6 were both rest days. The Low Intensity and High Intensity tapers both included warm ups in addition to the details below.

rest only
Low Intensity: 10km run at 57 to 60% VO2Max on day 1, 8km on day 2, and so on.
High Intensity: 5 x 500m interval at 115% VO2Max with 6 to 7 minutes rest between. This is roughly 75 seconds of running in each interval, at roughly 1500m pace. On day 2, 4×500, and so on.

The results are interesting. Here is the money plot.

The rest only taper resulted in a 3 percent decline in performance relative to tests right before the taper. A low intensity taper resulted in a 6% improvement. The high intensity taper resulted in a 22% improvement in time to exhaustion at 1500m pace.

This performance measure is backed up with the blood tests.

Both blood volume and red cell volume were increased the most in the HIT group.

Based on this paper, I plan out tapers simply by counting back from race day as follows

Race day
rest day
2 x 500 (or 1:30) with 5 min rests
3 x 500 (or 1:30) with 5 min rests
4 x 500 (or 1:30) with 5 min rests
5 x 500 (or 1:30) with 5 min rests
rest day

I would do this for the most important race of a season. For less important races, I would shorten the taper by 2 days and start with the 3 x 500.

I’d like to thank Ben Redman for pointing me to this paper.

From Polarized to Optimized. New Lecture from Prof. Steven Seiler

September 27, 201511 Comments

I am trying to get a handle on periodizing my training. The book The Science of Winning by Jan Olbrecht makes a big point that an athlete will plateau after 8 to 10 weeks of consistent training and the training durations and intensities must be modulated to maintain progress. This lecture takes a different view. That periodization is highly variable from athlete to athlete and must be evaluated with a view toward individual progress. Changes have to be made if the desired training effect is not seen.

He describes an experiment conducted with well trained cyclists. The 69 cyclists were divided up into 3 groups. Each group followed an 80/20 polarized training plan, but the higher intensity training was varied between the groups. Here is the plot showing the average training hours per athlete per week in the study.

All three groups had 4 week mesocycles with varying workloads and you can see the difference in how well rested the athletes felt in those week.

Each of these three groups were given different a training plan.

Pretty neat experiment, huh? In the traditional group, the intensity build in each mesocycle.

In the hybrid group, each mesocycle had a mix of each type of training. This is very much like the Pete Plan or Wolverine plan.

In the Reverse group, it all started with hell week with 3 high intensity sessions, then moved to intermediate and longer intervals.

The results were interesting. In the traditional group 60% of the athletes made significant gains in VO2max power. The other groups significantly lower part of the group made big gains.

The main point that Seiler made though, was that significant portions of each group did not make progress with the plan that they were on.

As a scientist, the reaction is “Huh?”. As a coach, the reaction needs to be “Change the plan!”.

For me, the big take away is that the lowest level of success was with the hybrid plan and that is basically what I have been using for the past 4 years with very little variation. I think I will start to plan out training loads and intensities following the “Traditional model” for my winter training plan and track progress. Of course all of this is in the context that 80% of the training will be low intensity steady state, but the type and amount of high intensity work will change by mesocycle. The other take away is to monitor progress and make changes when things are not progressing as I expect.

What is the right way to cool down at the end of a hard session. Two articles worth reading

September 27, 20154 Comments

Blood lactate clearance during active recovery after an intense running bout depends on the intensity of the active recovery

Blood lactate removal during recovery at various intensities below the individual anaerobic threshold in triathletes.

The first article compares the lactate clearance rate for different intensity of cool downs. The experiment was a 10 minute warm up, then a 5 minute test at 90% of VO2Max, then straight into one of the cool down scenarios ranging from passive to 100% of LT power for 32 minutes with lactate tests performed during the cool down.

Here is the key graph.

It shows that a cooldown at 60% or greater of LT power clears lactate significantly faster than passive or 40% of LT power. LT power is about the power that can be sustained for a 30 minute time trial. For me on the erg, right now, LT is probably around 250W, so a cooldown power greater than 0.6*250 = 150W (2:12.6 pace).

The second paper is based on triathletes. The protocol here was very similar. A 3 minute warmup, followed by a 6 minute test at about 90% VO2Max, then straight into the different cool down scenarios. This paper defines the cool down intensity in terms of above, at or below the IVT (Individual Ventilatory Threshold), basically an intensity where your breathing gets very regular and deep. This was all a bit too mumbo-jumbo-ish for me, but luckily they included a handy translation table to get from their weird units to % of VO2max.

The findings were that the lower intensity IVT(-50%delT) provided optimal lactate clearance.

So, if you use 2K power as a rough equivalent to VO2Max power, then you can come up with “real” numbers to use for comparison. My current 2K is probably around a 6:50, which is 1:42.5 pace and 325W. So, these intensities would be:

67% * 325 = 218
59% * 325 = 192
51% * 325 = 166

So, this paper says 166W, which is a 2:08.2 pace

So put it together, these two papers say that I should go faster than 2:12.6 and no faster than 2:08.2. I think 2:10 is probably a good pace for my cool downs based on my current fitness level.

Quantified Rowing

Measure – Adjust – Improve

Tag: sports science