all posts post new thread

Other/Mixed Aerobic Improvement vs Something Else

  • Thread starter Deleted member 5559
  • Start date
Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)
Status
Closed Thread. (Continue Discussion of This Topic by Starting a New Thread.)
offwidth said:
Another thing one can do, although more complicated and fussy, is to measure their AeT and AnT periodically. If one is ‘improving’ then one would expect to see their AeT climb and the gap between AeT and AnT decrease.
Click to expand...
Tell me more.
//
The genesis of this topic is from seeing pretty big swings in HR from high summer temps. I've been able to nasal breath at the same pace but my heart rate is into the mid 150s when it's usually 15-20 bpm lower at the same pace and breathing. I don't think my aerobic function suddenly got terrible and it makes me question any benefits I do experience and whether or not it's related to aerobic function or some other physical attribute such as relative strength or strength endurance, etc.

When a person starts increasing long endurance volume, is the benefit aerobic or just that they have performed millions of partial unilateral squats and the muscles and other systems are simply better at doing the work.
 
Well... one thing for sure that I notice is that my heart rate is definitely higher in the summer for comparable efforts. (it’s going to clock 44C here today... the main reason I was riding in the dark at 0400 this morning)

I ‘think’ that when one increases long endurance volume the benefit is coming from multiple sources...
  • improvements in CV efficiency (namely an increased AeT - i.e. a ‘bigger‘ Z1 - Z2 range)
  • improvements in musculoskeletal systems
  • efficiencies due to better movement technique
Training for the Uphill Athlete does a good job of explaining some of this stuff, as do the articles and podcasts available from Steve and Scott.
 
Heat will definitely affect HR. The circulatory system is used for cooling as well aerobic energy. One of the most common questions Maffetone gets is whether to follow the HR up in the heat, os stay below MAF. His answer is always to stick to the MAF HR and slow down as conditions dictate. HR is the marker of overall stress and the method is stay below MAF. If not, you’re doing something else. As he often quips, what part of MAXIMUM is unclear?

Maffetone isn’t the final word by any means, but often people think they’re doing it when they’re really doing something else.
 
Bro Mo said:
Tell me more.
//
The genesis of this topic is from seeing pretty big swings in HR from high summer temps. I've been able to nasal breath at the same pace but my heart rate is into the mid 150s when it's usually 15-20 bpm lower at the same pace and breathing. I don't think my aerobic function suddenly got terrible and it makes me question any benefits I do experience and whether or not it's related to aerobic function or some other physical attribute such as relative strength or strength endurance, etc.

When a person starts increasing long endurance volume, is the benefit aerobic or just that they have performed millions of partial unilateral squats and the muscles and other systems are simply better at doing the work.
Click to expand...
If you don’t like using the “rule of thumb” aka HR and you want actual measurements of aerobic and lactate threshold, you’ll end up in a lab, hooked up to measure exhaled CO2 or having your blood drawn to test for lactate.

HR can be easily affected by things like weather, sleep, diet and stress. None of that makes it “less good” at guiding training. Ebbs and flows from known causes are just part of the natural rhythm of training.

The reality is humans are too complicated to determine the actual source of improvement. In 20 years we might discover that “aerobic training” had nothing to do with developing the aerobic system, and what we called aerobic was actually developing XYZ. It doesn’t invalidate the how, only the why.
 
Bro Mo said:
Tell me more.
//
The genesis of this topic is from seeing pretty big swings in HR from high summer temps. I've been able to nasal breath at the same pace but my heart rate is into the mid 150s when it's usually 15-20 bpm lower at the same pace and breathing. I don't think my aerobic function suddenly got terrible and it makes me question any benefits I do experience and whether or not it's related to aerobic function or some other physical attribute such as relative strength or strength endurance, etc.

When a person starts increasing long endurance volume, is the benefit aerobic or just that they have performed millions of partial unilateral squats and the muscles and other systems are simply better at doing the work.
Click to expand...
The other thing I thought of over dinner is your heart rate isn’t just higher because it’s hot. Running is physiologically actually harder when it’s hot, so you’re heart rate is higher. You Can become heat adapted (which would lower HR in the heat), but hot weather will always be harder to run in than mild weather. The nice thing about heart rate as an indicator of training is it varies based on how physiologically taxing what you’re doing is - heat, dehydration, sleep, stress, hills... that’s actually a good thing, because it helps you maintain a “physiologic effort level” regardless of mental effort, recovery, or what have you.

Anyways. I like HR training. It isn’t the end all be all for everyone. Good luck with your training.
 
I'm not trying to invalidate HR training at all. I understand the benefits of autoregulation using HR training. I just thought there might be a different measure of aerobic function other than the time to go a certain distance at a given heart rate due to the significant variability of it.
 
Bro Mo said:
I'm not trying to invalidate HR training at all. I understand the benefits of autoregulation using HR training. I just thought there might be a different measure of aerobic function other than the time to go a certain distance at a given heart rate due to the significant variability of it.
Click to expand...
I get that. Unfortunately, I'm only aware of a couple "tests" - exhaled CO2, blood lactate, VO2 max ... All of which require a lab. If you're not training to a heart rate, I don't see how you could assess whether you were staying aerobic.

And this may just be where I'm just out of my depth! I think aerobic function and heart rate are entwined to an extent that you can't separate the two like that; variability in your heart rate IS variability in your aerobic system.

If you want to rule out the improvements just coming from skill or environmental fluctuations, you could try this: Train with whatever modality you want (e.g. running), using HR as your guide. Once a month, perform a MAF test indoor on a different modality (e.g. cycle). Keep your sleep and diet as similar as possible the day before and during the MAF test. Provided you haven't been practicing your cycling, any improvements you see should be due to aerobic increases.

My main concern here is that you may not be skilled enough to be able to actualize aerobic improvements in a different skill. If I only cycle once a month for the MAF test, I would be concerned that if I didn't see improvements it could be because I'm bleeding energy from a million points due to gross inefficiency.

You can also use this with rucking. Rucking has been found to increase running ability, but running doesn't seem to increase rucking ability (or it does, but only to a certain point/weight). So you could train via rucking in zone 2, adjusting weight and speed to maintain your HR, and then test in running. So here you could train with rucking and test with a MAF test run.

Honestly this reminds me of Al's "Simple Endurance" protocol - test before, then just swing for a month, test after. The training is dissimilar to the tests, so any improvements in the tests would be attributed to improvement in physiology not skill. The main difference is in his protocol you aren't using HR as a guide, and the test is a MAF test. Both are easily modified, so I could easily see this become an unholy hybrid of his simple endurance and his heart rate training combined into one - so you perform the simple endurance protocol with a bell that allows you to meet the heart rate training requirements, but rather than performing them OTM you end up just having "session time caps" - you swing like he describes in his HR training article, but for the total time as he lays out in his simple endurance article.

Again, I don't think this is what you're looking for because you're still "limited" by your heart rate and its variability, but it would allow you to train and assess while minimizing any skill component.

Sorry for the long post and rambling... I enjoy this train of thought and the conversation, and its early and I have coffee... :) Sadly the coffee just ran out, so its time to go train! (Wait that's not sad...)
 
I love this topic. I've learned about it and trained with it for 12 years now since I started cycling. Mixing in kettlebell training brought a whole new dimension to the questions and answers. I'm still learning.

Agree with the MAF test descriptions. I usually do them on a stationary bike with equal conditions each time. Same time of day, same bike, same warm-up and cool-down, approximately same pedaling cadence, and same time. During the testing time (I usually do 30 minutes, not including the warm-up and cool-down), I aim to keep the HR as close as possible to MAF value. Then I see what "distance" I went. During the times I tested the most (before and after A+A protocols usually), I didn't see a lot of change. But I've been a cyclist since 2008 so my aerobic base is pretty well established and hasn't changed much over the past 8 years or so.

I've also been tested in a lab twice on my bike on the trainer. Hooked up to the mask to measure O2 and CO2, lactate measurements taken from the earlobe, HR measured the whole time. After a warm-up period, resistance increased at regular intervals (2 min or so) until max. VO2 max measured at that last stage. These are quite enlightening!

Aerobic fitness is mitochondrial mass, cardiovascular function (heart and lungs; volume and efficiency), and aerobic enzymes, among other things. Slow twitch muscle fiber development and endurance of it becomes important for longer efforts. I don't know to what degree these things track together as one gets more or less aerobically fit.

Agree that any endurance activity will be specific. I can ride a bike for 3+ hours, but my running endurance at similar same heart rate and level of effort is limited to 45 min or so currently. My feet and hips aren't conditioned for the repeated weight bearing. Runners may be the opposite as they would have a hard time maintaining posture on the bike for that long and producing force in that particular pattern for hours on end.

Time spent walking is underrated... and other low-level activity falls in that same category. People who live in cities and walk a lot, or people who stand/walk/do physical work all day for their jobs get a "credit" they don't always count in their aerobic fitness. It really makes a difference.

For health, these are great evidence-based guidelines (Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans) " To attain the most health benefits from physical activity, adults need at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, like brisk walking or fast dancing, each week. Adults also need muscle-strengthening activity, like lifting weights or doing push-ups, at least 2 days each week."

How many of us actually get 150 to 300 minutes of aerobic activity every week? Estimates are that less than 20% of Americans meet this guideline, and some estimate it's more like 12%. And that's for health benefits! Performance benefits would go much farther than that.

Suffice to say we all have a lot of untapped potential in this area.
 
Anna C said:
my aerobic base is pretty well established and hasn't changed much over the past 8 years or so.
Click to expand...
Have you ever tracked how long it takes to recover from a heart rate down to recovered heart rate? I was thinking maybe that might be something less variable.
Anna C said:
Aerobic fitness is mitochondrial mass, cardiovascular function (heart and lungs; volume and efficiency), and aerobic enzymes,
Click to expand...
To conceptualize similarity in the process?
For strength
  1. make new muscle
  2. coordinate the new muscle
  3. make the coordination happen quicker
For cardiorespiratory
  1. Make new mitochondria
  2. pump more blood to the new mitochondria
  3. speed the energy transfer with more enzymes
 
Bro Mo said:
Have you ever tracked how long it takes to recover from a heart rate down to recovered heart rate? I was thinking maybe that might be something less variable.
Click to expand...

It's definitely a good indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness, but I think there are too many other variables about getting the HR up to a certain value to have the recovery back down be measurable or comparable. I do think HR patterns from A+A type efforts are insightful. Same for HIIT, such as all-out 15-20 sec sprint intervals on an Airdyne. But some things make the HR recover faster (such as sitting down between efforts) that aren't necessarily "good" -- they just are a factor.

Bro Mo said:
o conceptualize similarity in the process?
For strength
  1. make new muscle
  2. coordinate the new muscle
  3. make the coordination happen quicker
For cardiorespiratory
  1. Make new mitochondria
  2. pump more blood to the new mitochondria
  3. speed the energy transfer with more enzymes
Click to expand...

Yes, interesting... there's definitely a muscle component to cardioresperatory, too... slow-twitch muscle fiber is primarily where the mitochondrial mass is increased.
 
How about heat?

I'd say that anything that disrupts the homeostasis and raises heart rate is a stimulus for adaptation. @Harald Motz told me one can't scare me into better shape - I question why.

The sauna has been proven to have similar cardiovascular health benefits as exercise. What is the effect? I'd wager it's not the peripheral muscles but the heart and the lungs.

Also, regarding improvements in metabolism, I wonder how specific exactly they are. For example running vs cycling, if the muscles aren't used the same way in the exercises, will the mitochondrial development be specific as well? This also makes me question how beneficial or important the mitochondrial development is to general health.
 
Bro Mo said:
Is it possible to see test times drop from improvement in movement efficiency, strength, weight loss, relative effort but not actually have any aerobic improvement?
Click to expand...

Yes, extremely possible.

Using a rowing ergometer and myself:

--After a hypertrophy and conditioning weightlifting block for lower body, my strokes / per minute increases

--After a power clean block, my watts per stroke goes up

--VO2 Max and heart rate stays about the same

Increased muscular work capacity and power production work leads to better performance without needing vastly better cardio.
 
Last edited:
Status
Closed Thread. (Continue Discussion of This Topic by Starting a New Thread.)
Back
Top Bottom