Quote:
This is a little confusing as these statements are polar opposites.
What is meant here I believe is that maximal glycolytic capacity is almost impossible to increase and is pretty much genetically determined. Jan says he has seen some athletes increase it a little after years of training.
Now given that, the glycolytic capacity at any moment (VLamax) is less than this maximal glycolytic capacity and is affected by training. Most of the training for endurance athletes tends to reduce the glycolytic capacity. For example, long slow distance and efforts near the threshold reduce glycolytic capacity. Thus, the current glycolytic capacity for a triathlete will usually be much lower than maximum and that is desirable. But for a 100 m swimmer and especially a 50 m swimmer maximum glycolytic capacity is essential. Certainly not the only thing but extremely necessary.
Most of a swimmer's training is aerobic and some aerobic workouts will tend to lower anaerobic capacity. So it is important to include anaerobic capacity work during the training period to ensure it does not get too low and then during the pre-competition period bring it back up without losing aerobic capacity. This return to normal higher levels is what can happen quickly.
As the race distance gets longer, the objective is to fine tune the anaerobic capacity to the aerobic capacity for an optimum performance. The higher the aerobic capacity, the higher the anaerobic capacity can be but it will never be near max for an endurance athlete.
To see how anaerobic capacity can help during an endurance event, google the men's 10k swimming event in Rio and look at the end. It was a sprint to the finish. Jan's swimmer won it. His swimmers were second in the men's 50 free, first, second and fifth in the men's 100 free and first in the men's 10,000 free. I don't know if he will provide their aerobic and glycolytic capacities but they all had to be different and the glycolytic capacity fine tuned for the race and the swimmer's aerobic capacity. Olbrecht does not do the fine tuning, the coaches who he advises do it through their training plans. Here is a good video of the 10K race and the ability to sprint at the end.
http://bit.ly/2bmJHtv Your other points. Loss of glycogen reserves will affect the glycolytic system but is easily corrected over a day or so so I would look to a change in something else that is causing the lower glycolytic capacity. Because there is little interest in this concept in the exercise physiology literature, there is little discussion of it. Certain enzymes I believe are affected. But VO2 max is intensively researched and a lot is known about it. The reason I believe is that VO2 max is extremely important for health and performance and easy to measure while glycolytic activity is at best very difficult to measure. That is why blood lactate measures have been used.
Pretty soon Sebastian Weber will publish for all, a software program based on the ideas of Alois Mader that estimates VLAmax from lactate testing. We will see how many adopt this testing approach. See
http://bit.ly/26EgiRi and
http://bit.ly/29dGfly Sebastian will be in San Francisco next week and presenting his methodology to some cycling coaches
http://www.lactate.com/lactate_cycling.html I am not a good person to judge the efficacy of specific training prescriptions.
Hope this helps. I will forward your question and my answer to Jan to get his thoughts if he has time to answer.
-------------------------
Jerry Cosgrove
Sports Resource Group
http://www.lactate.com https://twitter.com/@LactatedotCom