unCoachJasonTM
VO2max
The monthly newsletter of RunCoachJason.com
Dr. Jason Karp, running & fitness coach, consultant, freelance writer
Director & Coach, REVO2LT Running Team™
January, 2009
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In
this issue:
REVO2LT Marathon Training™
VO2max Distance Running Clinic
Dr. Jason Karp to Speak at San Diego State University Writers’ Conference
Training Theory
Fat Burning Zone
New Year’s Gifts
In
Press
New Year’s Message
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REVO2LT Marathon Training™
From
January 3 to May 31, 2009, Dr. Jason Karp will coach REVO2LT
Marathon Training™, the official marathon training program of
RunCoachJason.com for experienced runners
who want to run the 2009 San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. An acronym for the
three main physiological factors of distance running performance—Running
Economy, VO2max, and Lactate Threshold—REVO2LT
Marathon Training™
is a unique,
science-based program that targets each of these factors so
runners can run their best marathon.
Runners in the program will be coached through mid-week track workouts
and weekend long runs at
various locations around San Diego. Runners will also receive weekly
educational seminars, half-price admission to the third annual VO2max
Distance Running Clinic, a 10%
discount at Road
Runner Sports, free PowerBar
products, a pre-marathon pasta party, an official REVO2LT
Marathon Training™ dri-fit T-shirt, scenic group long runs with course
support
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VO2max Distance Running Clinic
RunCoachJason.com’s
semi-annual VO2max
Distance Running Clinic for runners, coaches, and fitness professionals
will be held on January 17, 2009 at the Marina Village Conference Center in
San Diego, California.
Named after the most popular physiological variable related to distance
running, the VO2max Distance Running Clinic will transform your
running.
Speakers include
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Dr. Jason Karp to Speak at San Diego State University Writers’ Conference
Dr.
Jason
Karp will be speaking at the
25th Annual San Diego State University Writers’
Conference
on
February 6-8, 2009 at
the Doubletree Hotel in San Diego’s
famous Mission Valley.
Dr.
Karp’s presentation, Writing and Publishing What You Know, will offer
attendees an
insider’s perspective on how they
can use their
education to write magazine articles in their
fields
and get
editors to publish their
work.
The
San Diego State University Writers’
Conference brings writers,
editors, and agents from all genres together to help writers improve their
writing skills, develop their marketing awareness, and introduce them to the
writing professionals who can facilitate the next step in their publishing
career. For more information and to register for the conference, go to http://www.ces.sdsu.edu/writers.
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Training Theory
If
you spend any time talking to evolutionary biologists, they’ll tell you that
an organism’s
structure evolves to cope with the stresses to which it is subjected.
This idea has led to the theory of symmorphosis—that an
organism’s structural design is regulated by its functional demand.
As
preeminent anatomist Ewald Weibel
wrote, “...the quantity
of structure incorporated into an animal’s functional system is matched to
what is needed: enough but not too much.”
Remarkably,
structural changes also
occur in the short term in
response to exercise training: bones increase their density, muscle fibers
increase their metabolic machinery, and cardiac muscle grows larger.
If the quantity of structure incorporated into our system is matched to
what is needed, it’s logical to assume that if we increase the need, we’ll
ultimately increase the amount of change that takes place to match the
increased need. And
that’s exactly what happens when we run or do other forms of
exercise.
Following a training stress,
your body adapts and physiologically overcompensates so that the same stress,
when encountered again, does not cause the same degree of physiological
disruption. In short, your body
adapts to be able to handle the stress. Following
the adaptation, your body can do more work. The
aim of training, therefore, is to introduce training stimuli in such a fashion
that higher and higher levels of adaptation are achieved.
Think of these training stimuli as small threats to the body’s
survival. If you repeatedly
threaten the body’s survival, you will cause adaptations to be made to
assuage the threat. A classic example of this is the long run of
marathoners. Repeatedly
running for long periods of time (longer than two hours),
presents a threat to the muscles’ survival by depleting their storage
of preferred fuel (glycogen, the stored form of carbohydrates).
If you run out of fuel, the muscles say, “Hey, this person is running
for so long that I don’t have any more fuel.
I won’t be able to survive. If
this activity is going to be a regular habit, I need to make more fuel.”
So, guess what happens? When
you consume carbohydrates following your long run, you respond to the empty
tank by synthesizing and storing more glycogen than usual in your skeletal
muscles, thus increasing your storage of fuel (and therefore your endurance)
for future efforts. Imagine if you
kept driving your car until the gas tank was empty and your car responded to
that threat by making its tank bigger so it could hold more gasoline.
Pretty elegant adaptation.
Unfortunately,
our ability to adapt to a training stimulus doesn’t keep occurring
indefinitely. There will come a
point, which is specific to each runner, when more training, at best, does not
lead to better results and, at worst, causes injury.
The main difference between Olympic athletes and the rest of us is that
Olympic athletes continue to make physiological adaptations with more and more
training, upwards of 100 miles per week, and do so while not getting injured.
Most of us will stop adapting far short of 100 miles per week, and
would probably get injured with that amount of training.
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Fat Burning Zone
People
often assume that low-intensity exercise is best for burning fat.
During exercise at a very low intensity (e.g., walking), fat does
account for most of the energy expenditure, while at a moderate intensity
(e.g., 80% maximum heart rate or about 70-75% VO2max), fat accounts
for only about half of the energy used. While
you use both fat and carbohydrates for energy during exercise, these two fuels
provide that energy on a sliding scale—as you increase your intensity up to
your lactate threshold, the contribution from fat decreases while the
contribution from carbohydrates increases. When
you exercise at an intensity above your lactate threshold, you use only
carbohydrates. While there is only
a minimal amount of fat used when exercising just below your lactate
threshold, the number of calories used per minute and the total number of
calories expended are much greater than when exercising at a lower intensity,
so the amount of fat used is also greater.
What matters is the rate of energy expenditure, rather than simply the percentage of
energy expenditure derived from fat. Since
you use only carbohydrates when exercising at a high intensity, does
that mean that if you run fast or take a high-intensity Spinning class, you
won’t get rid of that flabby belly? Of
course not.
Despite what most people think, you don’t have to use fat during
exercise to lose fat from your waistline.
After all, have you ever seen a fat sprinter?
Sprinters primarily train anaerobically, never using fat during their
workouts. Carbohydrates are
actually the muscles’ preferred fuel during exercise.
The little amount of fat that is used in combination with carbohydrates
during exercise below the lactate threshold is in the form of intramuscular
triglycerides—tiny droplets of fat within your muscles.
Your adipose fat (the fat on your waistline and thighs) is burned
during the hours before and after your workout.
Since fat is oxidized inside your muscles’ mitochondria, it is more
efficient to use fat during exercise that is physically closer to the
mitochondria, when you need to regenerate ATP quickly for muscle contraction.
To use adipose fat, it has to be transported to the mitochondria where
it can be oxidized.
To become a better fat burning machine, you must enhance the metabolic
profile of the muscles. Endurance
training enhances fat oxidation by increasing skeletal muscle mitochondrial
content and cellular respiratory capacity, allowing for a greater use of fat
and the sparing of muscle glycogen. This
steering in fuel use to a greater reliance on fat at the same exercise
intensity is one of the hallmark adaptations to endurance training.
Since a metabolic priority of recovering muscle is to replenish glycogen
stores, the way to not gain excess fat is to constantly use your glycogen
stores during exercise so that the carbohydrates you ingest will be used to
replenish the glycogen stores rather than be stored as fat. If your
glycogen stores are already full, as they are in most of the population that
doesn’t exercise, any extra calories are stored as fat.
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New Year’s Gifts
Know someone who wants to lose weight and get fit, is training for a marathon, or wants to become a better runner in 2009? A personal trainer or coach is the perfect new year’s gift to achieve results. In these hard economic times, investing in your health and fitness is a smart financial decision. To purchase coaching or personal training sessions, consultations, or my popular customized training programs, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/personaltraining, http://www.runcoachjason.com/consulting, or http://www.runcoachjason.com/customprograms.
I have a few copies left of the DVD,
Chasing Mercury, Battling Hercules: Getting Fitter and Stronger with
Periodization Training, my presentation
from the 2008 American College of Sports Medicine Health & Fitness Summit.
The DVD provides an overview of the theory of periodized training, reviews
research findings, discusses the use of training cycles, and provides examples
of how to properly periodize training programs. To
order a DVD, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/merchandise.
My CD collection, The 3 Players
of Distance Running also makes a great gift for runners who want to
maximize their training in 2009. You’ll get all the info you could
ever want on VO2max, running economy, and lactate threshold,
including specific workouts to help you reach your running goals, all
presented in colorful slide presentations!
To order, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/merchandise.
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In
Press...
Ultimate
Training: Guide For 10K Through Ultramarathon, my article that discusses
the multiple training components for long distance running events, including
sample training programs for the 10K, marathon, and ultramarathon, appears in
the 2009 annual race issue of Trail Runner, on newsstands now.
Muscle Activity and Body Position, my
research-based article that discusses variations in body positions and grips
that change the muscular emphasis of a variety of strength training exercises, appears in
the January, 2009 issue of IDEA Fitness
Journal.
Both
weight machines and free weights have their advantages and disadvantages.
So which type of equipment is better?
Weight Machines vs.
Free Weights, my “boxing-match” comparison of the two types of weight
training, appears in the January,
2009 issue of the United Kingdom’s
Ultra-Fit magazine.
Do This... Don’t
Do That, my article that describes
new takes on old, traditional ways of exercising, appears in the
Winter, 2008-2009 issue of Albuquerque, New Mexico’s
Duke City Fit.
The
Fat Burning Zone: Myth or Magic?, a podcast of my article that busts the
myths of the fat burning zone, can be heard live at http://www.itrainerlive.com.
Also check out my quotes on how genetics affect your running performance in
the January/February, 2009 issue of Runner’s
World.
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New Year’s Message
Humans often have a funny habit. We get in our own ways. Although we perceive that external obstacles prevent us from accomplishing things, it’s often the obstacles that lie within us that prevent us from meeting our potential. We let our fears, thoughts, and emotions control our actions. Ever since I was a kid, running has been the source of my greatest passion. It has been my way to explore who I am and who I want to be. It drives me forward. In this new year, when you walk out your door each day to run, remind yourself who you want to be and what you want to accomplish and use each run to help you get out of your own way so that you can be that person and accomplish those things. Happy New Year!
Coach
Jason
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To
view past newsletters, go to http://www.runcoachjason.com/newsletter.
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©2009
Dr. Jason Karp.
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