VO2max

The monthly newsletter of RunCoachJason.com

Dr. Jason Karp, professional coach, consultant, freelance writer

Director & Coach, REVO₂LT Running Team™

April, 2008

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In this issue:  

Dr. Jason Karp Awarded PowerBar Sponsorship

Free T-Shirts at Carlsbad 5000 & U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials

Dr. Jason Karp to Teach at Miramar College

Workout Speeds

Research on VO₂max

Training Programs

Personal Training

In Press

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Dr. Jason Karp Awarded PowerBar Sponsorship

Dr. Jason Karp, founder of RunCoachJason.com and director and coach of REVO₂LT Running Team™, was recently invited by the sports nutrition company PowerBar to become part of PowerBar Team Elite™, PowerBar’s athletic ambassador program that provides sponsorship to athletes and coaches. *******************************************************************

Free T-Shirts at Carlsbad 5000 & Olympic Marathon Trials

If you’re running in or attending the Carlsbad 5000 on April 6, 2008 in Carlsbad, California or the  U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials on April 20, 2008 in Boston, get a free REVO₂LT Running Team™ T-shirt and coaching info from RunCoachJason.com’s Dr. Jason Karp.

For more information on the Carlsbad 5000, billed as the world’s fastest 5K, go to http://www.eliteracing.com/carlsbad.html.  For more information on the U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials, go to http://www.usatf.org/events/2008/OlympicTrials-Marathon-Women.

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Dr. Jason Karp to Teach at Miramar College

Dr. Jason Karp recently accepted an offer to teach exercise physiology in the Fitness Specialist Program at Miramar College in San Diego.

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Workout Speeds
One of the biggest mistakes runners make is running workouts at incorrect speeds.  If you run your workouts too fast, you won’t meet the purpose of the workout.  At the very least, you’ll add unnecessary fatigue to your legs without extra benefit.  For example, say you want to improve your VO₂max, so you plan to run 1,000-meter repeats at the velocity associated with VO₂max (near 100% max heart rate).  If running each interval at 7:00 mile pace elicits VO₂max (and max heart rate), running each one at 6:30 pace will certainly also elicit VO₂max.  But why run each interval at 6:30 pace when you can run it at 7:00 pace and still get the same benefit?  Running faster is not always better.  On the other hand, if you run your workouts too slow, you may not improve the physiological variable you’re trying to train.  To determine your correct workout speeds, you must know the purpose of each workout.  The goal of training is to obtain the greatest benefit while incurring the least amount of stress, so you want to run as slow as you can while still obtaining the desired result.

Want to learn more?  In my popular CD collection, The 3 Players of Distance Running, you’ll get all the info you could ever want on VO₂max as well as running economy and lactate threshold, including specific workouts to improve your running performance, all presented in colorful slide presentations!  To order, just go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/merchandise or e-mail jason@runcoachjason.com.

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Research on VO₂max

One of the most prominent debates in exercise physiology concerns the limiting factors of VO₂max, and whether those factors are of a central (oxygen delivery) or peripheral (oxygen use) nature.  Central factors include cardiac output and blood flow, while peripheral factors include mitochondrial and capillary volumes.  Although it is more intellectually appealing and accurate to regard this problem as an integration of many factors, there have, and continue to be, many attempts to pin it on a single most-limiting factor.  For example, research supporting central limitations include findings that VO₂max of the quadriceps is greater when they are isolated during exercise compared to whole-body exercise; VO₂max decreases with beta blockers due to a decrease in cardiac output; blood doping increases VO₂max by increasing hemoglobin concentration; and the capacity for VO₂max to increase is much less than that for mitochondrial and capillary volumes.  

Research supporting peripheral limitations include findings that VO₂max decreases as the partial pressure of oxygen in the muscle (the driving force for diffusion from the muscle capillaries to the mitochondria) decreases; and VO₂max increases as a result of an increase in oxygen diffusing capacity when oxygen delivery is held constant.  While unfit people seem to be equally limited by peripheral and central factors (they lack both a high blood flow and abundant metabolic machinery), highly trained distance runners seem to be more centrally limited.  After all, there is a structural limit to how big the left ventricle of your heart—and thus stroke volume and cardiac output—can get with training.  Since VO₂max becomes more stable when one is highly trained, peripheral adaptations to training, resulting in improvements in lactate threshold and running economy, become more important. 

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Training Programs

Know someone who wants to improve his or her running or train for a specific race like a marathon?  With RunCoachJason.com, you’ll get a specific, science-based training program suited to your needs.  To purchase Dr. Jason Karp’s popular customized training programs for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/customprograms.  

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Personal Training

Since moving its headquarters to San Diego, RunCoachJason.com’s personal training services have been taking off with personal training sessions at exotic locations such as Pacific Beach and Mission Bay.  There are only a few open spots left, so don’t miss out.  If you live in the San Diego area and want to get in shape fast, contact Dr. Jason Karp at jason@runcoachjason.com.  For personal training gift certificates, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/merchandise.

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In Press...
Resting Metabolic Rate Revisited, my follow-up article on the contentious issue of the effect that weight training has on resting metabolic rate and weight loss, appears online at Personal Training on the Net, an online education resource for fitness professionals.

Training Characteristics of U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials Qualifiers, my research article documenting how the best marathoners in the U.S. train, with comparisons made between men and women and elite and national-class runners, appears in the March/April, 2008 issue of Colorado Runner magazine.

Show Me The Treadmill: The Best Types of Cardio Equipment, my article that examines the research on the best cardio equipment for burning calories, appears in the Spring, 2008 issue of Duke City Fit.

Stay tuned for my upcoming articles this spring and summer in Shape magazine, Marathon & Beyond, Running Times, IDEA Fitness Journal, New Studies in Athletics, and Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine of United Airlines.
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To view past newsletters, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/newsletter.

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©2008 Dr. Jason Karp.