I'm not a coach, but I am a legend in my own mind....

Where to start before Paulo, Dr. Coggan, et al show up.....

As a rule VO2 max is not very trainable, though your VO2 max at any one period can depend on your traning state at the time. It generally doesn't take too much training to get to your genetically limited VO2max number.

Absolute VO2 max is defined by cardiac output (heart rate & stroke volume) * the difference in O2 levels between your arterial and venous system. Basically, how much blood (O2) can you deliver to your muscles and how much of that O2 can be utilized by the muscles. The most variable is the stroke volume which can be improved almost immediately with regular training (increased blood volume casued by better H20 management). What is also trainiable to some extent is your ability to utilize O2 in the muscles, this is dependent on the mitochondria in your muscle cells and is influenced by what majority muscle fiber type you were blessed (or cursed) with.

Like I said, once you've been training for a little while, your absolute VO2max will plateau and generally not budge even if you train harder.

Now, your reative VO2max also factors in how much you weigh. So, a long story short, your absolute VO2max has a definite genetic limit and is not very trainiable after a certain point. But, if you want to improve relative VO2max, just drop some pounds.

FWIW - it's best not to worry about your VO2max. it's best to be concerend with your lactate threshold which is expressed as a percentage of your VO2max. This is highly trainable and a better indicator of improvement and relative fitness than your VO2max. Note: The intelligentsia might refer to this as your Functional Threshold and/or Critical Power.

But don't take my word for it.....

Only about half of the variation in baseline VO2max is due to genetic factors.


First, it's pyruvate and lactate, not pyruvic acid and lactic acid. Second, the production of lactate can, and indeed will, occur even when there's plenty of O2 available.


VO2max typically increases by 15-25% following a few months of moderately intense training. With more prolonged and especially more intense training, even greater increases may occur - indeed, increases of >50% have been observed for some individuals (even in the absence of significant weight loss).

Hematocrit goes down, not up, with endurance exercise training.


Ultimately, yes.


1. Training
2. Live high, train low (maybe).


While "plain vanilla" endurance training will induce an increase, eventually you reach a point at which the only way forward (or upward) is via high intensity intervals.


Yes. Or to put it another way: have an adequately high VO2max is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for elite endurance performance.

To follow on with what AC said, there is certainly a "genetic limit" to every aspect of your physiology. The difference between V02max and LT is that LT sees more improvement over the long term.

My knowlege of running states that dramatic improvements in V02max can be achieved in just 4-8 weeks of intense training at which point it begins to level off. Virtually all of your potential can be realized in ~4 years proveided you train hard enough.

LT, on the other hand, should continue to slowly improve throughout the year over a much longer period of time.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

So in effect, the best thing for a MOP racer to do is train consistently and work on body composition. Once the body composition is in a good place, intervals are the key. Beyond that, you're looking at very small percentage increases- up to the individual to decide if the time, money, effort, etc. is worth it.

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If I don't, who will? -Me
It's like being bipolar in opinion is a requirement around here. -TripleThreat

Good info, thanks. The more I learn, the more it seems apparent that being consistent with the basics- training, nutrition, rest/sleep- will get most of us most of the way to where we want to be. If you want to be a good athlete, you have to model your lifestyle this way.

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If I don't, who will? -Me
It's like being bipolar in opinion is a requirement around here. -TripleThreat

One of the adaptations to endurance training is expansion of plasma volume. In other words, the liquid portion of your blood expands, which drives down the percentage of the total volume that is made up of red blood cells.

Phil

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Dr. Philip Skiba
Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes now available on Amazon!

I believe Haematocrit goes down with training because the increase in plasma volume outpaces the increase in red cell volume, but yes red cells do increase as well.

Dang, beat me to it!

"So in effect, the best thing for a MOP racer to do is train consistently and work on body composition. "

Yeah, who would have guessed...

You can add that for runners, there is red cell destruction due to the feet impacting the ground. That also serves to lower hct.

From the sounds of all the wazoo supplements and tons of cash to save a few grams, not much. I've really put a lot of focus on rest, nutrition, and training consistently in the past 4-5 months, and I feel better than ever. Not only does it help racing, but it takes away all kinds of stress and worry from life in general. Simpler really does seem to be better by far.

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If I don't, who will? -Me
It's like being bipolar in opinion is a requirement around here. -TripleThreat

  

Now all you need to do is convince everyone else who'd rather take ridiculous supplements that they just need to train (and eat) better :-)

Phil

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Dr. Philip Skiba
Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes now available on Amazon!

 
Now all you need to do is convince everyone else who'd rather take ridiculous supplements that they just need to train (and eat) better :-)

I'll settle for my family to eat well (overall they do). Living a long time will suck if I don't have my girls there to enjoy it with. Genetics are weird too. I've got a buddy who did 5:09 in his 1st HIM. Now armed with a tri bike and training hard, I'm willing to bet he can do somewhere in the neighborhood of 4:40 at Rockman. Here's a guy who likely CAN benefit from interval training and the lightest equipment. I'm hoping to "crack" 5:30 this year in a HIM, and this will be my 3rd- the 1st was UGLY!

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If I don't, who will? -Me
It's like being bipolar in opinion is a requirement around here. -TripleThreat

Nice thread, and well discussed! Good to see you come out of these classes with some interest, unlike so many others involved in such courses/lectures........

Keep in mind, as per Dr Coggan’s notes, VO2max is not as untrainable as the picture that textbooks and many studies will portray. Well controlled research studies haven't, and in reality can't, be conducted over long durations, hence so much data showing weeks to months giving increases 0f 10-25%, but no more. I'm not saying you definitely can get much more than this, I don't know if anyone can say for sure, but if you were to train thoroughly over many years then I'll bet you can get more than this. I know I have. After a good 6-8 years of training, I did my first max test on the bike. About 8 years after this I now get 15% higher than back then. Now sure, it's genetically determined, but also note that it's trainability is also somewhat genetically determined, ie, take 2 guys with equal backgrounds and VO2max of 50 ml/kg/min, train them up as much as possible, and one might get to 55, the other might get to 65.

Most of the factors that determine VO2max come from the muscles themselves. The delivery system contributes somewhat, ie as some people mentioned, you get and increase in plasma volume with training. This is quite a rapid development too, it goes up significantly in about a week (and is lost even faster!). This is a major contributor to short term increases in VO2max, it helps both cardiac output (increased filling = increased ejection volume) and oxygen offloading to muscles: even if you just inject a bag of saline you can increase VO2max a decent amount (there's the answer to your quick fix question, by the way).

In the long term, however, your heart won’t get any bigger, and your PV won’t increase. The long (and short) term changes will come from changes in and immediately surrounding (capillaries) your muscle: basically more mitochondria and the like. The reason that untrained people can make rapid gains with short term training programs is because training sessions that the likes of us would consider “run of the mill” (eg, ~60-70% of VO2max, probably about LT in an untrained person), result in much greater stress to working muscles, therefore much more activation of the cell signalling pathways (that are quite well characterised) that result in the desired adaptations. Once you get more trained, you don’t necessarily train as much at intensities that continue to result in this much cellular stress, therefore the improvements are much slower, AND the reason why, as Dr Coggan said, higher intensity training is needed to continue to make improvements.

Keep up the interest!!</FON

Are you sure about that? Just because blood volume increases from a saline (or glucose drip for that matter), it doesn't mean there will be an increase in arterial O2 or an ergogenic effect (edit: for VO2max).

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http://www.reathcon.com

Well, it's not as definite as I made it sound, but it does work in certain circumstances. Basically, if you increase PV by, lets say, 10%, you can increase VO2max, but the gain in reduced or removed the more trained you are, suggesting that there probably are gains in PV to be made over the long term.

You are correct, it doesn't result in increased arterial O2 (which is practically at max except in extreme circumstances anyway, since plasma contributes very, very little to blood O2 content). As best I understand the people who have done these studies, of whom the esteemed Dr Coggan is one (and can maybe clarify this??), the advantage is gained through dilution of the red blood cells. If you imagine them being shoved through capillaries that are about the thickness than 1 RBC, packed so tightly that they are squished up against each other, if you can remove some of the squishyness in these tight capillaries, the cells can offload more oxygen becuase they have more contact with the plasma and the capillary walls. So the story is, there are the same number of them there, but they are more spaced out, they can dump off more oxygen.

This business about tight capillaries is also additional to what someone else said about running damaging RBC's through pounding in your feet. Even non-pounding exercise (eg cycling) can damage RBCs: the large increase in blood flow through all these tight capillaries can rupture them more as well.