Cross training, what system and to what effect?

Triathlon Forum
1

There’s been discussion ad nauseum on this sight about the effects of certain types of training, whether that is weight lifting, pushing off the wall, cycling effect on running or some other type of “Cross training effect” and over the years it has made it about as clear as mud for me :slight_smile:

Full disclosure, I’m not a doctor nor educated in physiology in anyway…nor did I sleep in a holiday in last night. That being said the last thread I was reading on the subject, Slowman’s proposal that swimmers pushing off the wall somehow made them better bikers, got me thinking.

Let’s say that sometime in the future we have the ability to swap organ, clone organs and could do so with no recovery time or negative surgical effects.

Let’s say a person trained to run a marathon. They trained so that they could run a marathon in 6 hours. It was at this point a clone was made of them. They then continued to train until they could run the marathon in 3 hours.

The day before they ran this 3 hour marathon they were operated on and had their heart replaced with the clone of their heart as it was prior to the 6 hour marathon. What kind of effect would that have on their performance? How about if their lungs were replaced, leg muscles etc?

It would be interesting…at least to me…to look at the effect of similar “theoretical” exchanges. What effect would there be if the above person had an exact clone that also trained to run a 6 hour marathon. However after that one continued to train but the other decided to do a similar level of “aerobic” exercise but some other form, say cycling, what then happens to the 3 hour runner if the organs are exchanged with the other individual that was cycling rather than running?

~Matt

2

There’s been discussion ad nauseum on this sight about the effects of certain types of training, whether that is weight lifting, pushing off the wall, cycling effect on running or some other type of “Cross training effect” and over the years it has made it about as clear as mud for me :slight_smile:

Full disclosure, I’m not a doctor nor educated in physiology in anyway…nor did I sleep in a holiday in last night. That being said the last thread I was reading on the subject, Slowman’s proposal that swimmers pushing off the wall somehow made them better bikers, got me thinking.

Let’s say that sometime in the future we have the ability to swap organ, clone organs and could do so with no recovery time or negative surgical effects.

Let’s say a person trained to run a marathon. They trained so that they could run a marathon in 6 hours. It was at this point a clone was made of them. They then continued to train until they could run the marathon in 3 hours.

The day before they ran this 3 hour marathon they were operated on and had their heart replaced with the clone of their heart as it was prior to the 6 hour marathon. What kind of effect would that have on their performance? How about if their lungs were replaced, leg muscles etc?

It would be interesting…at least to me…to look at the effect of similar “theoretical” exchanges. What effect would there be if the above person had an exact clone that also trained to run a 6 hour marathon. However after that one continued to train but the other decided to do a similar level of “aerobic” exercise but some other form, say cycling, what then happens to the 3 hour runner if the organs are exchanged with the other individual that was cycling rather than running?

~Matt
Hrm Interesting concept. I don’t think swapping hearts would have much of an effect. There are some hypertrophic changes that can occur in the heart, but if you are training consistently, even for a 6 hour marathon pace, those changes will already have occurred. Same with the lungs, I would think you would see minimal differences, since you don’t create more alveoli or more lung space with consistent training.

I would think one of the biggest differences would be the extra capillary growth into the muscle, and the vascular system changes that come through training.

But, I’m not an MD, I could be way off base here. :wink:

John

3

Hmmm, swapping cloned organs?

I guess that would be kinda like starting a thread with one topic, and then OPing with a hypothetical about a totally different subject.

Tell me that was written under the influence.

4

Devlin is right. “Go fast” fitness is primarily in the muscles. The cardiovascular system and the lungs are not a limiter in any distance raced in triathlon. It’s about metabolic fitness in the muscles (capillaries included). You would want your clones legs, not their heart or luings.

5

I would think the heart would have a pretty large effect. It has been proven that many pro athletes (cyclists come to mind), have much larger than average hearts (sometimes up to 3x as large). This enlarged heart has stronger muscles to pump more blood, and has a larger volume to also pump more blood. This would be needed to deliver blood to all of the extra capillaries that have grown into the muscles. (more vessels=more volume=more blood needed per pump).

Of course, I’m no doctor either, and could be way off here…

6

Swapping just one organ wouldn’t do much. As others have alluded to, it is a combination of physiological changes in many tissues that results in increased fitness and speed. Stroke volume will increase as a result of training, stroke volume * _____________ = cardiac output (sorry, can’t remember what goes in the blank, it is after all 4:26 am and I just woke up)… you need to get oxygen to muscles via increased blood volume and RBC capacity to transport o2 (iron groups on the rbc), you need the capillaries in the muscles, you need the increased mitochondrial density.

If you want to talk about CROSS TRAINING well that’s a different question.

7

Swapping just one organ wouldn’t do much. As others have alluded to, it is a combination of physiological changes in many tissues that results in increased fitness and speed.

Maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong standpoint and maybe the body doesn’t work this way. As an analogy look at a PC. I can take out the Hard drive and replace it with a faster one. The computer will then be “Faster”. It may only be faster when I ask it to do certain things but a “Wide based test” would show that the PC is faster after I put the new HD in than before.

You can do this with any piece to a lesser or larger degree. Replacing the CPU will make the PC faster and likely significantly faster than replacing the HD and in far more situations.

Moving back to the human body does it work similarly or no? If I replace the heart with a “Stronger” heart does the body see any performance gains at all or only when the rest of the system is upgraded as well? If so would a “Downgrade” of the heart also have no effect?

If you want to talk about CROSS TRAINING well that’s a different question.

Well it’s kind of part of the same question.

For instance if the heart has anything to do with it, it would seem that cross training of any type would give you some benefit by default. Since in reality we can’t “Replace” parts as we can in a PC we can however “Improve parts” using different systems. For instance a person who is a strong runner would have a “Strong” heart. Assuming all other things equal would they have an advantage in the pool over their clone that had done no running training?

The second part is a question of “Specificity” and how “Specific”.

Assuming the other systems have no effect one would think in the above case of a running and non running clone jumping into the pool there would be no performance difference.

However something like cycling and running where you are using the same muscles, only in a slightly different motion, you would expect to see some improvement of a “Cycling” clone over a sedentary clone if they both headed over to the track.

~Matt