unCoachJasonTM
VO2max
The monthly newsletter of RunCoachJason.com
Dr. Jason Karp, professional coach, consultant, freelance writer
Director & Coach, REVO2LT Running Team™
February, 2008
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In
this issue:
Free T-Shirts at USA National Cross Country Championships
Coach Jason to Speak at ACSM Health & Fitness Summit
Middle Distance Fatigue
Don’t Stretch for Strength
Talent vs. Training
Coaching Gift Certificates
In Press
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Free T-Shirts at USA National Cross Country Championships
If you’re running in or attending the USA National Cross Country Championships on February 16, 2008 at Mission Bay Park in San Diego, California, get a free REVO2LT Running Team™ T-shirt and coaching info from RunCoachJason.com’s Dr. Jason Karp.
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Coach Jason to Speak at ACSM Health & Fitness Summit
For
those of you in the Southern California area, Coach Jason will be
speaking at the American College of Sports Medicine Health & Fitness Summit at the
Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center and Hyatt Regency Hotel on
March 25 & 27, 2008 in Long Beach, CA.
His two presentations will be on periodization
training. The ACSM Health
& Fitness Summit bridges the gap between the science of sports
medicine and practice for fitness professionals. For more information and to
download the event brochure and conference schedule, go to:
http://www.acsm.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Education/Conferences/HealthFitnessSummit/Summit.htm.
Middle Distance Fatigue
(excerpted
from Karp, J.R. A Matter of Survival:
Training to Combat Fatigue. Running
Times, 352, Dec. 2007.
Fatigue
in the middle distances (800 meters/1,500 meters/mile) is primarily caused by
a high rate of oxygen-independent (anaerobic) metabolism, which occurs when
running faster than your heart can provide oxygen to your muscles.
When
you exceed your aerobic metabolic capacity to resynthesize ATP, a number of
problems begin to arise inside your muscles. Your
muscles lose their ability to contract effectively because of an increase in hydrogen
ions, which causes the muscle pH to decrease, a condition called acidosis. Acidosis
has a number of nasty side effects: 1) it inhibits the enzyme that breaks
down ATP inside muscles, which decreases muscle contractile force, 2) it
inhibits the release of calcium (the trigger for muscle contraction) from its
storage site in muscles, and 3) it inhibits the production of ATP from the
metabolic pathway glycolysis by inhibiting glycolysis’ most important
enzyme.
In
addition to hydrogen ion accumulation, other metabolites accumulate when
running fast, including inorganic phosphate, ADP, and potassium, each of which
causes a specific problem inside muscles, from inhibition of specific enzymes
involved in muscle contraction to interference with muscles’ electrical
charges, ultimately leading to a decrease in muscle force production and your
running speed.
While
the effects of anaerobic metabolism cause that heavy, dead-legged feeling when
racing the mile or running 400-meter repeats at mile race pace, limitations in
aerobic metabolism also cause fatigue in the middle distances by limiting the
pace that you can maintain aerobically. Your
legs feel like lead during these short races because you’re not getting
enough oxygen to them. That’s
why it’s so important to run lots of miles even if you’re a
middle-distance runner—you have to develop yourself aerobically to delay the
acidosis and the accumulation of metabolites.
In
addition to the aerobic work of mileage and long intervals to improve VO2max,
you can combat fatigue in the middle distances by running short
intervals (45 seconds to about 2 minutes) at 800-meter to mile race
pace. A couple of examples are: 1) 6
to 8 x 400 meters at mile race pace with a 1-to-1 work-to-rest ratio
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Don’t
Stretch
for Strength
If you currently stretch before you lift weights, you may want to stop. Research has found that muscle strength performance decreases from 4.5 to 28 percent when preceded by stretching exercises. Possible reasons may be a delayed neuromotor response that occurs immediately after stretching and an increase in muscle compliance, which may limit the capacity of muscles to produce force. Research also suggests that stretching doesn’t protect against injury, nor does it diminish muscle soreness following a workout. It seems as if the only, albeit important, benefit of stretching is increased flexibility, with the greatest benefit occurring when stretching is done apart from your cardio or strength workouts.
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Talent vs. Training
Many
elite runners, à la Steve Prefontaine, like to think that their ability to
run fast is due to their hard work and their toughness rather than any genetic
ability that they were born with. One of my friends and former athletes, who is an elite
runner, is one of those people who likes to think such things. Of
course, thinking that running fast all comes down to hard work renders one’s
performance unlimited. If you think it’s
all about talent, that places a limitation on what you can achieve.
Of
the many things I have learned from physiology, one of them is that humans,
like all other animals, do have limits. For
example, while it is
well known that mitochondrial density is highly modifiable and that the number
of mitochondria in skeletal muscle increases in response to endurance
training, there is a threshold above which further increases in training
volume do not result in further increases in mitochondrial density.
Research has also shown that your
muscles’
maximum ability to consume oxygen (VO2max) has a
While hard work is undoubtedly
important, it simply reveals the talent that is already present. And it
reveals the genetic ability to adapt to the work. Since
the ability to improve performance with training is limited, human variation (i.e., genetics) outweighs human adaptation (i.e., training).
As many runners already know, a person with a lot of talent will almost always outperform a person
with little talent and a lot of training. As
a coach, I see this all the time. What is
so great about the sport of distance running is that each of us can find out
what our limits are by training as much and as smart as we can.
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Coaching Gift Certificates
Know someone who wants to lose weight, is training for a marathon, or wants to become a faster runner in 2008? Why don’t you give him or her a personal trainer or coach as a New Year’s gift? With RunCoachJason.com, you’ll get a specific, science-based training program suited to your needs. To purchase personal training or coaching gift certificates, click here. To purchase Coach Jason’s popular customized training programs for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/customprograms.
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In
Press...
High School P.E. Class Revisited, my article that revisits the old
school exercises you did in high school gym class, including those of the
Presidential Physical Fitness Test, appears in the February, 2008 issue of IDEA
Fitness Journal.
The Road to London, my article that discusses the last eight weeks of
marathon preparation leading up to the London Marathon, appears in the
February, 2008 issue of the United Kingdom’s
Ultra-Fit magazine.
The
Three Players of Distance Running: An In-Depth Look at Running Economy, Part
3 of
my series that explores the physiology of
distance running, appears in the Winter, 2008 issue of Track Coach, the
official technical publication of USA Track & Field.
My
Love Affair With Lactate, my article that explores the many myths and
roles of lactic acid, appears
in the
Winter, 2007/2008 issue of The Coach, the
United Kingdom’s track and field coaching magazine.
Magic Muscles, my article that
describes the physiology of muscles and how
they work, appears in the Winter, 2007/2008 issue of Duke
City Fit.
Also look for my walk/run program as a way for beginners to increase their
running time and my advice on staying fit in the winter in the February, 2008
issues of Fitness and Men’s
Fitness magazines.
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To
view past newsletters, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/newsletter.
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unsubscribe from this newsletter, e-mail jason@runcoachjason.com
with the word “unsubscribe” on the subject line.
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©2008
Dr. Jason Karp.
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