VO2max

The monthly newsletter of RunCoachJason.com

Dr. Jason Karp, running & fitness coach, consultant, freelance writer

Founder & Coach, REVO₂LT Running Team™

April, 2010

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In this issue:  

SCW Fitness MANIA & FitnessFest

How to Do Long Runs Correctly 

Coaching Consultations

Workout Speeds

Stretching

In Press
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SCW Fitness MANIA 

This month, I will be speaking at SCW Fitness MANIA April 9-11 at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, California and FitnessFest April 30-May 2 at the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center in Scottsdale, Arizona.

At SCW Fitness MANIA, I will be giving three presentations:

* Fitness Myths, Misconceptions, and Misinformation

* The Resting Metabolic Rate Debate

* Marathon Training 101: Chasing Pheidippides

At FitnessFest, I will also be giving three presentations:

* Top 7 Lessons for Runners

* The Resting Metabolic Rate Debate

* Flexibility Training for Athletic Performance

 

SCW Fitness Education’s MANIA fitness conventions bring industry leaders to the backyards of fitness professionals throughout the country.  Each of the seven MANIA conventions held annually offers workshops on every fitness topic imaginable, ranging from personal training to Pilates, yoga to pregnancy, and aquatics to aging.  SCW is the largest producer of fitness education events in the United States.  For more information and to download the event brochure and convention schedule, go to http://www.scwfitness.com/california.

 

FitnessFest is the largest fitness and wellness conference in the Southwest, attracting novice and veteran group exercise instructors, personal trainers, aquatic instructors, and mind/body practitioners.  For more information and to download the event brochure and convention schedule, go to http://www.waterworksonwheels.com/fitnessfest.

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How to Do Long Runs Correctly
With the popularity of marathon running has also come the popularity of carbohydrate drinks, gels, and bars to replenish blood glucose while running.  It seems that everyone now does Saturday or Sunday long runs with a fuel belt around their waists.  While ingesting carbs during long runs may make you feel better, it defeats the purpose of the run and turns off the exact signals you’re trying to turn on.  

Scientists first discovered in the 1960s that the ability to contract muscles for prolonged periods is strongly influenced by the amount of carbohydrate stored in skeletal muscles (glycogen), with muscle glycogen depletion becoming the decisive factor limiting prolonged exercise.  Carbohydrates are the muscles’ preferred fuel.  Running out of glycogen presents an enormous threat to your muscles’ survival, so when it happens, a very strong signal is sent to cause 3 things to happen: 

1) More glycogen is synthesized and stored in your muscles than what was previously present, thus assuaging the threat and increasing endurance for future efforts.  Research shows that the more your glycogen tank is emptied, the faster and more it’s refilled.  That’s a good thing, because the more glycogen you have packed into your muscles, the greater your ability to hold your marathon pace to the finish.  To create the largest muscle glycogen storage possible, you need to deplete muscle glycogen on a regular basis.  

2) Your muscles are forced to rely on fat as fuel, making them much more effective at using fat for energy.  The better your muscles are at using fat for energy, the longer it will take to run out of your limited store of glycogen and the less your pace is going to slow toward the end of the race.   

3) Your very smart liver, sensing that muscle glycogen and blood glucose are low, synthesizes new glucose from non-carbohydrate sources, namely amino acids and lactate.  The new glucose is then used for energy so you can maintain your marathon pace.  

Ingesting carbohydrates during your long runs provides muscles with a ready fuel, blunting all three of the above adaptations.  To maximize your physiological adaptations, it’s better to leave the fuel belt at home when you go for a long run. 

In the marathon itself, however, you do want to consume carbohydrates since it’s important to maintain blood glucose levels for as long as you can so you can use it as fuel.  Research has shown that supplementation with carbohydrate during prolonged exercise delays fatigue.  Begin ingesting glucose about thirty minutes before you start to feel fatigued so the glucose has time to be absorbed into your blood where it can be used for energy.  Continue ingesting glucose about every 20 minutes. 

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Coaching Consultations

I meet runners all the time who say they want to get better, but don’t do anything to make it happen.  Same is true for people who want  to lose weight and get fit.  What are you waiting for?  RunCoachJason.com offers the best consultations in the business.  If you want to improve your running performance, or you want the opportunity to have your fitness and running questions answered immediately, now is your chance.  To book a consultation, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/consulting. 

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Workout Speeds

One of the biggest mistakes runners make is running workouts at speeds that are either too fast or too slow to obtain the desired result.  Problem is, they don’t know what the desired result is.  To determine the correct speed, you must know the purpose of each workout.  Is it to improve lactate threshold?  VO₂max?  Anaerobic capacity?  Muscle power?  Technique?  Each one of these variables requires a different speed that will optimize the workout.  

Each of the next few newsletters will focus on a specific type of workout and discuss the correct speed for that workout.  The last four newsletters discussed easy/long runs, lactate threshold (tempo) runs, VO₂max intervals, and anaerobic capacity intervals.  We continue this month with anaerobic power intervals.

Anaerobic power intervals are used to improve speed and the ability of muscles to produce force quickly.  They recruit fast-twitch muscle fibers and increase the expression of creatine kinase, the enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of creatine phopshate.  These intervals, lasting 5 to 20 seconds with recovery periods of 3 to 5 minutes, should be nearly all-out sprinting to ensure the use of the phosphagen system, which uses muscles’ store of creatine phosphate and their small store of ATP to anaerobically power short bursts of running.  The long rest periods associated with this type of workout allow for creatine phosphate to be replenished in the muscles so it can be reused for the next work period.  The result of this type of training is that you will get faster, more powerful muscles.  And who doesn’t want that?

Want to know more about how to do workouts correctly to see results?  Order one of my DVDs, including Lactate Threshold Training, Marathon Training 101, and Periodization for Distance Runners.  Be one of the first 10 people to order a DVD and receive 20% off!  http://www.runcoachjason.com/merchandise.
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Stretching

Most runners believe that stretching is an essential component to their training, but does stretching really do any good?  While it is a common belief that stretching prevents injuries, recent research tells a different story.  Muscles, as very pliable organs, immediately return to their pre-contracted resting length when you stop running.  Stretching’s purpose is to increase the flexibility of a muscle-tendon unit (i.e., a joint), not necessarily to affect the muscle itself.  In fact, a muscle’s physiological response to stretching is to contract.  This is called the “stretch reflex” and is the responsibility of the muscle spindle, a sensory receptor located in the muscle belly that senses changes in the muscle’s length. 

Sports involving bouncing, ballistic or jumping movements, such as volleyball, basketball and plyometric training require a compliant muscle-tendon unit that can store and release high amounts of elastic energy.  If the muscle-tendon unit’s compliance is insufficient, the activity’s demands for energy absorption and release may exceed the muscle-tendon unit’s capacity, which may increase injury risk.  Studies examining explosive or jumping sports have shown that stretching can reduce injuries by increasing tendon compliance and improve their ability to absorb energy.

By contrast, in sports that don’t include ballistic movements, such as running, cycling and swimming, motion results from converting metabolic energy directly into mechanical work rather than a spring-like energy release.  In running, the muscle’s contraction is directly transferred via tendons to the skeletal system.  Tendons do not need to act like springs to store and release energy.  While there is a lack of research on stretching’s efficacy for reducing injury risk, the available research is either inconclusive or indicates that stretching does not prevent injuries in people who participate in sports in which there is no need for very compliant tendons.

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In Press...
How to Survive Your PhD: The Insider’s Guide to Avoiding Mistakes, Choosing the Right Program, Working with Professors, and Just How a Person Actually Writes a 200-Page Paper, my self-help book for graduate students published by Sourcebooks, Inc., appears in bookstores nationwide and online at Amazon.com.  Special autographed copies of the book can be ordered at http://www.runcoachjason.com/publications.

Mountaineering Experience Decreases the Net Oxygen Cost of Climbing Mont Blanc, a scientific research article co-authored with esteemed physiologist Véronique Billat and her colleagues in France, appears online ahead of print in European Journal of Applied Physiology.

Training to Combat Fatigue, my article on the specific causes of fatigue in different races, with workouts to combat fatigue, appears in the April, 2010 issue of the United Kingdom’s Ultra-Fit magazine.

It’s All Downhill From Here, my article on everything you wanted to know about running downhill with tips on how to prepare for downhill races, appears in the Spring, 2010 issue of Duke City Fit, Albuquerque, New Mexico’s premier fitness magazine.

Beyond Good: How to Turn Key Workouts Up a Notch or Two For Better Fitness and Faster Times, my article on how to make each of your workouts better, appears in the May, 2010 issue of Runner’s World magazine, on newsstands in April.

Also look for my quotes on the fat burning zone and strategies for training when fatigued in the April, 2010 issue of Runner’s World magazine, on how to get rid of fat in the April, 2010 issue of Experience Life magazine, and on fitness tips and goals in the May, 2010 issue of Oxygen magazine, on newsstands in April.

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To view past newsletters, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/newsletter.

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©2010 Dr. Jason Karp.