Really his confidence would have been shattered? If I thought I had 4w/kg and was out climbing people with 5w/kg, I would think I was freaking sorcerer! Kneel before me and my magical climbing abilities! Just imagine how fast I would climb with 5w/kg! Or maybe start using oval rings and get rotor to sponsor me so I could give testimonials of how the rings help me make up for low w/kg.

I believe I am in the current position of having been tested and the results turned out to be what I feel to be, completely wrong. I have yet to receive the final written report, but early indications of a lactate test performed at what I believe(d) to be a respectable Sports department at a local university show me with a lactate threshold at around 175 watts. From my own data, racing, various FTP tests and even hard training sessions, I would put my FTP at 215-220. I know 175 is completely wrong and have questioned the tester on this with no appreciable response given. To put it into perspective, I did an session on the trainer only last week that have 15 mins at 172 watts and I peaked at 142 bpm during these.

I am not entirely sure where it went wrong. I do believe that the test was performed as it should be, that being 4 minutes stepped with 25 watt increments. Measured via an SRM, vo2 from another device and lactate via a handheld scanner. Anyway, I will certainly not be changing any of my cycling zones based on this!

I am going to be doing a run test with the same people, as I have paid for both. Hopefully the results of this will give me something I can use.

Thanks

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On the internet, you can be anything you want. It is a pity so many people choose to be stupid.

my approach with my athletes and myself is based on indicator workouts and performances but i cant say that physiological responses are not a part of it. i dont understand how you can just blindly look at results without looking at the way the athlete achieved the results. i had 15 athletes do the same workout yesterday and each achieved their goal but it was extremely obvious which athletes thrived and which athletes did not. without completely understanding the limits or aerobic and anaerobic systems its hard to see what the athlete is missing and how to train their specific lowest hanging fruit. i always use performance based test but they are completely derived using an understanding of physiological systems.

with lab testing i could easily determine what the athletes strengths are and if they are getting better, but by understanding how the systems display themselves in athletes you can easily determine their athlete profile by workouts and races and therefore use that. faster is faster and a good coach should be able to understand why without the physiological markers from lab equipment but from specific field tests. although, that same person better understand how to analyze blood work data if they had to.

You can figure out those markers without lab tests though.
Their power at 1-3 minute durations vs 20-60minute durations will tell you the breakdown of anaerobic vs aerobic contribution.

So you can then make the decision about what their weakness is and tell them to ride more.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Care to clarify this as it is something I am interested in. What would be the relative difference between the two for a 'normal' ride, in comparison to someone who had either a proportionally large or small anaerobic capacity?

Thanks

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On the internet, you can be anything you want. It is a pity so many people choose to be stupid.

Mathematical modeling of the exercise intensity-duration relationship can be used to differentiate/quantify the contribution of different systems. The classical example is the critical power paradigm, which has been around for decades...here's a more recent/sophisticated approach:

You mean, how would you train them differently for a normal ride based on knowing their aerobic vs anaerobic performance? No idea, that is why I made the subtle joke there about identifying their weakness and having them ride more.

But some useful things you can do with that info, in bike racing at least, is identify strengths and weaknesses to dictate tactics and strategy, or things to improve. Which might lead you to riding more, or more short term intervals, or quite road racing and hit the velodrome.

For triathlon, I don't know. You just want to keep beating on the aerobic system mostly. But then I'm just a layman who was coached only two people and one of them is terrible (me)

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

agreed. my point is that a coach should know how to trigger responses to stimulate results and a good one would be able to by understanding the science behind "i have to raise my 1minute power because its low relative to my 20minute". but yes, if you know how to read workouts you dont need a lab.

I may be alone from my readings here, but I administer semi regular tests to athletes not because of tracking of performance data per se, but rather because it's a test.

Some complain about being nervous or fearful before the hard effort to come, apprehensive of the known or perceived unpleasantness ...which is precisely the point.

The data forms part of the picture but is not the main goal of testing in my view. The most useful data comes from daily data analysis and racing.

Just my 2 cents.

How did you choose where to start and end your 2 linear regressions? ie was there overlap of the selections? Were you guided by your knowledge of 'about where your threshold lies' currently? I also think the type of regression used is important. I am sure you are aware that simple linear regression is not appropriate when there can be some degree of error of both x and y axes. I don't know without seeing the data but probably Deming regression (or maybe Passing-Bablok) would be appropriate.

These are important since if you got entirely different results, the premise of your question may change entirely.

Along these lines, when I eyeball your plot, running an imaginary line through the middle of the lower power data points (your regression line doesn't appear to run through the middle of this as alluded to by the first response) and another through the higher power data points, the crossover is considerably lower (potentially under 200W).

....in which case (and I may not be correct since I haven't seen the raw data and I am making eyeball assessments), *this* physiological testing measure is probably not useful (since you can probably tell from your workouts that your other estimates of 220-225W are about correct).

I am also not sure what the comparison is to, you say 'performance', have you done a recent 1hr test? (or are you comparing to other 'estimates'?).

Ultimately, *if* you come up with FTP= 220-230W from different approaches (and nice if they back each other up), there is most likely no practical difference where in that range you choose (ie FTP estimates are just that: 'estimates', and, as long as you are close, the precise number should not matter).

Randolph

I am curious if the reason for the data shift is related to sweat and body heat? Water has a significant absorbtion in NIRS. Once the sweat was constant or consistent then the reading may have stabilized? As well water would also limit the penetration depth of the NIR signal which has very low energy so it tends to work at or near the surface. Per the paper on the Moxy site the oxy and deoxy hemoglobin absorbtion is just barely in the NIR range as well there are temperature effects, these may explain the shift until you skin reached a steady state? It would be interesting to know if that explains the change in the look of your early, <150 watt, data.

I minimized the overall sums-of-squares while requiring that the two lines intersect. IOW, tbe standard approach used in the literature for objectively identifying breapoints.

Now as for the difference between what this analysis shows vs. an eyeball test, I'd have to agree with you...but I didn't want to bias the analysis by, e.g., excluding the cloud of points at the lower intensities (before the shifta).

Finally, finding that the NIRS breakpoint corresponds to FTP really isn't surprising, as it has previously been shown to correspond to maximal lactate steady state. A limitation of all such research, though, is that NIRS samples from a rather small tissue volume, and hence from only one muscle, and studies using multiple monitors show that the breakpoint intensity can vary in different muscle groups (reflecting differences in recruitment).

A thought about muscle recruitment.

Whatever the mechanism, different fibres are recruited in a muscle depending on force, speed of movement, duration etc. but do the same fibres get used doing exactly the same thing on consecutive days? Does fatigue caused by the previous days workout cause some fibres to be rested and different fibres used the next day? Might this explain why it is possible to get good performance on consecutive days even though the muscles feel fatigued from the previous day?

I gather that blood lactate readings also change with fatigue.

Another thought, by deliberately pushing hard on fatigued muscles are we training muscles / brain or whatever the mechanism is, are we altering recruitment patterns and recruiting fibres which are normally used less often?

We have two sections on our triathlon site about consistency in testing.

http://www.lactate.com/..._consistency_01.html

http://www.lactate.com/..._consistency_02.html

All these factors will affect results from whatever testing method one chooses to use not just lactate tests. So yes, blood lactate readings will change due to different types of fatigue. That is why it is best to test when rested because that is what is closest to what the athlete will be on race day.

A couple anecdotes:

1) A top swim coach told us that he could never get swimmers to test properly after they came back from swim camps operated by US Swimming. He said they were too broken down. So he had to wait a couple weeks to see if the training had any positive effect on the swimmers.

2) We were at a US Rowing conference once and I was talking with the head sports scientist of US Rowing about lactate testing and our analyzers. I said that recently my resting lactates had gone up by about a half mmol/l. His comment was that I was injured or that some of your muscles are injured. I then reflected on this and remembered I had spent 3 days moving heavy things around a friends house who was cleaning out in preparation for moving.

So heavy or high intensity workouts or weights will affect testing and should be avoided prior to the test.

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Jerry Cosgrove

Sports Resource Group
http://www.lactate.com
https://twitter.com/@LactatedotCom

Or that you had been carbohydrate loading, or that you were particularly stressed before that test.

In the context of the rowing conference, Hagerman probably made his assessment after talking with me. Resting lactates will vary during the day and will be affected by diet. Not a lot is known about resting lactates. Stress or emotional problems or lack of sleep can affect lactate levels. So should be considered when the coach looks at the results of testing. Olbrecht told us once that unusual results of a test with an athlete was later attributed to the athlete's girl friend breaking up with him.

I looked well rested at the time and wasn't pleasantly plump so Fritz probably made the correct diagnosis.


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Jerry Cosgrove

Sports Resource Group
http://www.lactate.com
https://twitter.com/@LactatedotCom

Haggerman - read a paper of his about sub maximal testing of rowers on ergs using heart rate.

Don't have the link to hand but this explains.

http://highperformancerowing.net/journal/tag/concept-ii

http://highperformancerowing.net/journal/tag/concept-ii

My uneducated, amateur, boorish sense is that the testing isn't moot, simply because my n=1 observation has shown significant improvement when I executed a training plan structured in percentages of my last test, ie a higher percentage of time at 80% of FTP yielded better results than splitting the same amount of time evenly between 60% and 100%. However, I've (until now) privately wondered if the tests in and of themselves are valid measurements, because I'm aware of how far away from my peak physiological state I am and always will be as an amateur, father of a few, etc. I'm probably wrong about this, but wasn't the testing -and the granular data they yield by which we're told we should train against - researched using mostly elite athletes, which I'm not and never will be? If TSS as a measurement is based on raising the peaks to the 4th power because that corresponds to the 'lactate curve', that *doesn't* capture how much of a wuss I am in tolerating that lactate, whereas some Cat1 stud might drink it for breakfast and fart rocket fuel. How he slides around on that lactate curve is going to be different than mine. If I feel like things are getting easier at the same pace, it's time to try to go faster. I might have a higher FTP, but I might NOT as well because either 1)- I'm less of a wuss at tolerating pain, but simultaneously I'm generating more pain than I used, or 3)I'm becoming more of a wuss but I'm generating less pain that I used to because I've become more efficient.

Maybe it's a simplification to say the testing isn't necessary, but maybe it's not. If the testing is for predictive purposes, then I think it's less informative/borderline useless when compared to analyzing past data to see what training methods worked and what didn't. I do think any number that gets more finicky than 5 is overdoing it. I can't tell the difference between 91 TSS and 99 TSS, and come to think of it, 85 vs 99 either..

When we first met Hagerman, he was using this test but with lactate, not heart rates. The US national team coach gave us a bunch of data from Hagerman's tests one year and we included some of it on our CD-ROM in the rowing section. It is not a bad test but is missing the analysis of an anaerobic capacity which can differ dramatically between rowers.

Hagerman took the lactate reading after the 2k test and used it as a way to evaluate the rowers but not for how Olbrecht uses it. He was interested in high numbers only which was a mistake. This is a 6 minute + test and a lot of lactate can be produced and eliminated during this time so an absolute number is iffy.

One of the rowers being tested had over 7 liters of oxygen during the 2k test. They all rowed with a mask. Hagerman remarked that he had only seen 4 or 5 previous rowers who had this high a VO2 max. However, the rower's max lactate was only about 16 mmol/l and he was not selected. He never realized that the massive aerobic system was removing the lactate that wasn't being removed in other rowers with higher numbers. I didn't understand it at the time but after translating Olbrecht's book it came clear to me what had happened.

An aside - The 80% level mentioned by Seiler definitely did not correspond to the maximal lactate steady state. Maybe an average did but that is useless for an individual athlete, some of who were below and some of who were above.

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Jerry Cosgrove

Sports Resource Group
http://www.lactate.com
https://twitter.com/@LactatedotCom

This is what drives me bonkers!
Put him on an erg and measure the power he can do over a fixed time!
Select based on that!

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I'm afraid that you've wandered a bit off into the weeds here. For starters, normalized power, TSS, etc., were all derived from 1st-principles considerations, and then and only then vetted by seeing how well the ideas worked for athletes of every practically every stripe.

Perhaps more to the point, though, I started this thread with the general question of field/performance testing vs. lab/physiological testing in mind, not focusing on any specific approach.

As for the notion that endurance trained athletes can better tolerate lactate, that really isn't correct, at least on average...instead, they just accumulate less of it, primarily as a result of producing less (as Brooks' own rather-iffy data show).

This is precisely the performance-driven, top-down approach that the Kiwis have adopted for rowing and kayaking, based directly on the tools that Hunter and I have developed (see some of the links here: https://onegiantleap.zendesk.com/hc/en-us). Now that Wiggins' former coach runs the entire show, the EIS is also moving in that direction with rowing. It will be interesting to see how things play out over the next few years.

Well, rowing is also skill based so maybe put him in a calm lake with a stop watch too!

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter