quote:<HR>Originally posted by Richard99:

Aerobic base building training is not really building an aerobic base. Yes, a few aerobic adaptations are taking place, but research has shown that the largest and most significant adaptations are occurring in the muscle fibers themselves, not the aerobic system. So, base building training is actually building a power base, not an aerobic base. You should still promote base building training but should call it "Power Base Building" so as to acknowledge the largest and most significant physiological changes that really are taking place. Don't change your training beliefs or training methods, just change the name so you are calling it what it really is.

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From http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/86/5/1527[/URL" target="_blank">

quote:<HR>
INTRODUCTION

ENDURANCE TRAINING ENHANCES the function of the cardiorespiratory system and the oxidative capacity and glycogen stores of the muscles.<HR>

quote:<HR>Originally posted by Richard99:
Nobby,

I'm doubtful that you would seriously consider anything I offered as an improvement on conventional training, but let's see. Here's what I offer:

There is a very broad range of genetic talent across the human species. This is not speculation; it is fact. People have vast differences in talent and trainability - some people are born with much more talent than others.

I believe the vast differences in talent has significant training implications - that some have the inborn trainability to benefit from very high training loads while others with much less trainability reach their optimal training at much lower training loads.

In training terms I suggest this means there will be a broad range of optimal training - that one training program won't be right for all or even most. It won't even be close to being right or optimal for the majority.

I invite you to seriously consider the fact that there is a very broad range of talent in humans and what the training implications of this fact are.

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Thanks, but we've already been doing that. I gave my wife about 25MPW training to her 3:47; this young lady I'm coaching now did about 30+ for her 3:41 (and now training about the same amount or a bit more as an 800m runner); I run with her but I do about 60 now; I coached 8 national level female runners who almost all of them train at about 80MPW; maybe one close to 100.

I would also like to add that, this young lady I'm coaching right now, I can SEE how she has improved from last year to this year simply with the way she handles some of tough workouts more easily. The only "in-born" talent I see in her is her natural speed--she's very fast. But I don't necessarily see any limitation based on her talent in terms of her training. I'm sure she has one; but I'm not quite sure what "knowing her limitations" can do for us in terms of her training and her goals. We constantly monitor what she can do and can't do at the moment but also constantly continue to push her envelope upward.

I had a chat with Shalene Flanagan in NY; she told me, in regard to that article in RT that you started that famous (or infamous?) thread with. She did say that she was doing about 50MPW in college, now about 70. But that does not mean she's anti mega-mileage at all. "If I go beyond 70 right now, I seem to break down," she told me. "But if I can handle 120, I'd be doing it," she also said. Which, by the way, if what you say about "genetic talent" is correst, she cannot handle a lot of mileage=she doesn't have a lot of natural talent=she shouldn't be running as fast... Would this be the formula you've been talking about?

Now what you've suggested above has NOTHING to do with "running economy" that you have brought up on this thread. If anything, however, running economy probably has even more wide-range of "inborn" elements. But once again, what you're suggesting, here and elsewhere so far, has nothing to do with any specificity in terms of training. It's the concept (fact, if you want to call it that way) coaches been practicing for decades and nothing new. Seriously, I wasn't "playing games" or anything. I would really very much like to know what specific training suggestion you would have, based on what you claim as "new and innovative" findings of this running economy that might help a runner, any runner, to perform better. As Tinman said, if the science can't help coaches and runners in any way whatsoever, what value would those researches have?

You claim that you have come across this "new and inovative" training principles that "no coaches has ever even considered" for the past 30 years. You claim that the conventional thinking of "aerobic development" is wrong and that all the traning actually don't even "increase oxygen usage but decreases it", insinuating (here I could be wrong) that increased oxygen uptake level has got nothing to do with performance improvement. From these, I had drawn a conclusion that you might remove all the "junk miles" because all they do is "increase aerobic capacity" and probably a long run as well because, once again, it's got things to do with aerobic development. In otder to improve your "running economy", I would think one needs to do a lot more of weight training and technique works--perhaps drills throughout the winter "base-building" phase. It seems to me, from what I thought I interpreted what you're trying to do, that would be a sensible "changes" in Paul's training program. I still wouldn't agree with it; but that at least makes sense. If, after all the singing and blowing horns of "running economy", you don't even come up with one single change in Paul's training program, I would seriously question your own seriousness to all those "research finding". Perhaps you don't even believe in what you're saying??? Of course, you have accused me of interpreting you wrongly; but it seems to me, 99% of other contributors here seem to draw the same conslusion; am I not correct? If that is the case, yes, then your writing must suck that no one can understand what you're saying. That, it seems to me, if you really follow statistics of this message board, is the fact.

It's getting really tiring seeing these threads constantly popping up at the top of this board. martinjames says "You live for the theoretical runner. It's all you have." Well said. You have no results to support any of your arguments. You don't even do any research. You take studies performed by other individuals and re-interpret them in ways the authors did not intend them to be interpreted.

Tell you what Richard, I'll try your training, not immediately because I don't want to compromise my spring race plans, but within the next six months I will give it a good faith effort and post the results. Your responsibility in this bargain if you choose to accept it, will be to provide a concrete training philosophy, explain why it will work, and support it with experiences of real people so that I know I'm not chasing after shadows.

Time to put your money where your mouth is.

quote:<HR>Think about it in this context. Let's say you've been doing a whole lot of training, building up your aerobic system (stuff like increasing the number of capillaries, increasing mitochondrial density, etc.). What is the end result of all that "aerobic" training? The end result is that you are now using less oxygen while running. <HR>

quote:<HR>Exactly. Which brings up the question - if you don't need more oxygen to run faster, what did all that "aerobic" training really accomplish?<HR>

Didn't you just answer yourself:

quote:<HR>Let's say you've been doing a whole lot of training, building up your aerobic system (stuff like increasing the number of capillaries, increasing mitochondrial density, etc.). What is the end result of all that "aerobic" training? The end result is that you are now using less oxygen while running.<HR>

quote:<HR>What is really going on inside the body that results in you being able to run faster without using more oxygen?<HR>

Once again you answered yourself :

quote:<HR> building up your aerobic system (stuff like increasing the number of capillaries, increasing mitochondrial density, etc.). <HR>

Call it whatever you like "aerobic basebuilding" still improves a person's running.


http://This message has been edited by L Master (edited Nov-29-2007).

So you can run 10 miles in 75 minutes and you use x amount of oxygen. Now you go out and train your little buns off for a year running 100-120 miles a week much of that time. After all of that you find that you can run 10 miles in 75 minutes using only 85% of x amount of oxygen. So if you go back to using x amount of oxygen on a ten mile run you'll be able to run noticeably faster than 75 minutes.
That's what we're talking about here, correct? And we think this is new when in fact Lydiard was talking about it in the mid-Sixties. So now we want to know why we use less oxygen on that 75 minute run of ten miles. Well, really, who cares, but since folks like Richard do, obviously as our muscles and neuromuscular system are exposed to more running they become fitter and more efficient and don't require as much oxygen to perform at a particular level as they did before they were trained. Ok, Richard, are you happy now? You should be because I know you're dying to get someone who's a "Lydiard guy" to admit that the muscles are actually doing something through all of this training stuff besides looking at the view and marvelling at how cool the heart is becoming. So there you are.
But what's going on is that you still are enhancing your ability to use oxygen, so to me a term like "aerobic training" makes sense, not just because it seems fairly descriptive of what's going on but as Nobby says, because for half a century or so we, runners, have come to understand what sort of runs you do each day when you're trying to develop this improved efficiency in regards to oxygen use.
Remember when Datsun decided, after years of trying to become a major player in the US market and inaly becoming one, to change its name to Nissan and how its sales dropped off the table only to have begun recovering a few years ago? But go ahead and call it what you want. Not all that many people will know what you're talking about, but that doesn't seem to phase you much.
The point that you keep hammering on and which is absolute nonsense is this business that someone who is less talented, whatever that means, should run fewer miles than someone who is more talented. It just does not work that way. It does work the other way. I've seen it. I've lived it. I spent much of my late teens and early twenties losing to people until I began training more than they did and often I was then able to beat them and I was not, by anything that remotely could be construed as a long shot, the only person to have had this experience. If all you wanted to do here was chat about physiology articles and semantics
I'd be inclined to ignore you. It's that damned ridiculous business of "if you don't have talent you shouldn't train all that much but ought to lift weights or stand under water holding your breath" stuff that is real disservice to people who come here looking or ideas about how to race faster that just has to be countered.