Hi,
New member and first post:
I am/was a returning cyclist in my fifties and have often visited this forum to pick up tips on how to get fitter. Over the years I have seen a few requests for an example, so I thought I would share mine.
I want to show you the load response of my body, because it turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought it would. I plotted my data in ways I have not seen before and it showed me:
1) That for the first few years my maximum loading rate was ~5.3 minutes/week
2) That my easy ride power increased by ~6W for every hour per week of training
3) That my body was sensitive to HIIT
- and 2) were evident by plotting the raw data, but could also be predicted with good accuracy by combining certain responses. Once you know these medium term relationships, you can look at things on shorter timescales and start to take a view on them.
My response data is in line with the advice you get from experienced coaches and physiologists: control your rate of loading (it is a year on year approach over many years), take rest seriously (although I will float an alternative view of rest), be consistent with loading (you can’t take weeks off), the higher the loading the fitter you get (so long as you can get your system in balance with the loading), be careful with intensity. I am not saying I achieved high levels of fitness, it is the detail of the transition to higher levels of fitness that I found interesting.
I am not a physiologist. I am more of an Engineering Physicist with some system control experience. Some of the language I use will be influenced by that, but hopefully the data and explanations to come will help to clarify things.
It is obvious that your body is a very complicated system. It can go wrong in a lot of ways, and some of those ways can lead to the loss of the system (i.e death). It is also a dynamic system: it is changing all the time in response to loading. I would assume that it is easy for the system to become unstable.
Therefore, you may take a view as to whether the system is unconditionally stable - that the rules for stability are evolved into the physiological responses of the cells and organs, and that it stays stable for the wide range of external conditions the system may be subject to - or that the system requires active control to stay stable. Biologists use the term homeostasis to describe the process of self regulation, and can point to certain regions of the brain that control certain processes. I suspect that this principle can be applied to all levels of function on all timescales.
I came to the view that the subconscious has significant control of the system, and uses its capabilities to exert control: clocks, memory, data processing, influence of thought and action, manipulation of the “reality” that the subconscious generates for the conscious to experience, and control of hormones (system promoting and inhibiting hormones, maybe also sensitising hormones).
Systems that are under active control generally show subtle signs of control when they are in balance and achieving control setpoints. When unusual conditions are met, stronger control interventions are required. In the following posts I will show you what I think is an obvious sign of system control on the scale of weeks, and how over the following months it rebalanced the system to align with a longer term relationship between load and capability.
I am not an expert in any field. You will have to take the data and any interpretations as you find them.
Safe riding
Oodac
