ElJamoquio

What is the physiological reason for FTP (or more specifically, the aerobic portion of FTP) improvement? How does your body improve its intake/use of Oxygen?

Cavalão

https://www.biketechreview.com/perfor...tochondria.htm

Snuffleupagus

Nice.

To tie in with that a little bit, and at a far less descriptive level: https://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/...els.asp#table2

waterrockets 

Dude, I was totally pondering this question all week. No time to research it really, but I just don't see how it makes sense that my LTHR is static, my weight and body fat are static, but my FTP goes up. I know it's not abnormal, but it certainly is interesting.

I'll read up on the links.

Hocam

Those articles make me want to go hit the hills some more.

I need to get my full mitochondrial potential!!!

Snuffleupagus

Only for 60 minutes at a go though Hard. It's basically bearing out the SST based training regimens that are growingly popular.

waterrockets 

So, if I get a lot of mitochondrial development going, will Quai-Gon and Obi Wan think I'm going to be a Jedi because of a blood test?

Snuffleupagus

I swear, I wish I could say I didn't get that...

But I do

ElJamoquio

Yeah, I thought of the same joke earlier, but wasn't secure enough in my dork-osity to make it.

Hocam

I just thought of something, according to this theory shouldn't body builders with huge legs be monsters on the bike? I mean they've got a lot of excess kg in the upper body but on a flat course that shouldn't matter.

Hocam

I have a perfect course for this, 20 minute warm up, 60 minutes of knee busting ups and downs followed by a 20 minute cool down.

If only there weren't so many cars.

LT Intolerant

Here's the part that has me scratching my head...

"In general, it appears that in order to push mitochondrial densities to their maximum when building one’s aerobic engine, it would be wise to regularly include intensities which approach VO2max or harder, or about 20MP or harder, on a regular basis within an overall training program. Perhaps, this can reasonably be broken down into 2-3, one or so hour rides per week with 20MP+ intervals as long as possible for a given intensity, accumulating 10-30 minutes per day.

Sounds like he's advocating a steady diet (3 times a week??) of 20 min intervals at a v high intensity (> than FTP) if I'm going to be "approaching vo2 max"!?

I'm typically working vo2 w 3-5 minute intervals, certainly not 20 minute intervals, unless I'm doing a 20 and trying to blow up in the last 3 minutes.

This certainly doesn't sound like SST to me. Maybe I'm missing something.

ElJamoquio

I was going through a similar thought process. Last May my FTP was around 250. Yesterday I did two hours at 260. I was breathing easily. Too easy.

OK, not too easy, but the difference was amazing.

LT Intolerant

Here's where I'm struggling...

Willet says... "it would be wise to regularly include intensities which approach VO2max or harder, or about 20MP or harder, on a regular basis within an overall training program." source: Mitochondria: The Aerobic Engines 5/18/06

Andy Coggan says... "at very high intensities, the adaptations induced are either qualitatively different (e.g., true sprint training), or, due to the ever-increasing physiological strain, you simply cannot do enough total volume to achieve the same degree of overload and resultant physiological adaptation(increase in FTP)... the absolute effectiveness of Level 3/4, in that you get more of an effect since the stress is lower than Level 4, and you can go longer (plus you get the added benefit of more glycogen storage)." source: Training in the ‘sweet spot’

Dario Fredrick writes.. "training at 85-93 percent of MSS can improve the aerobic capacity of Type IIa fibers. At 90-93 percent of MSS, not only do the Type IIa fibers increase their aerobic qualities, some Type IIb fibers convert to Type IIa." source: MAKING THE MOST OF MUSCLE - Wholeathlete.com - NOTE: (MSS = 30-minute performance threshold)

Kirk seems to advocate high intensity, Dr. Coggan the "sweet spot", and Dario tempo or low end of the sweet spot (my interpretation), as a means of increasing aerobic fitness.

Can all of them be right?

dmotoguy

yes, because you need to do all of those... you cant just do any of those by themselves and be training to your full potential.

LT Intolerant

I would agree, but the opinions expressed are somewhat absolute IMO. Willet saying you won't see improvements unless you train at high intensity because you must approach vo2 max to see improvement. Coggan saying if you train at too high an intensity you won't see improvement because you can't sustain it. Dario saying if you train at high intensity you won't see aerobic improvement because you can't recruit Type IIa fibers to act as slow twitch fibers.

The opinions expressed seem to be binary. Do it this way or you won't see improvement. Again, I may be reading this all wrong.

Andrew Coggan

Perhaps this will help clarify matters: my argument for the notion of a "sweet spot" in terms of the intensity/duration trade-off is that, at some point, either you can't perform as much training so as to maximize the adaptations to training that account for the increase in muscular metabolic fitness (i.e., a quantitative argument), and/or the adaptations that are induced are qualitatively different. Precisely where the curve begins downward, though, is a bit uncertain, although I would hypothesize that it is around critical/maximal lactate steady state/functional threshold power. I would be the first to admit, however, that this is really all just speculation based as much on my own involvement in endurance sports as it is anything published in the scientific literature.

As for Kirk Willett's conclusions, I don't think they are really supported by the studies that have been published, at least not if you recognize the differences between rats and humans in terms of fiber type distribution, recruitment, etc...

Andrew Coggan

Sorry if it appears that I'm nit-picking, but aren't those Frank Overton's words (or a combination of our words), not mine?

EDIT: The reason that I mention this is because I don't believe I have ever written anything specific with respect to the "sweet spot" idea...

LT Intolerant

Thanks for weighing in Andy. I've got to say I was kind of surprised when I read Kirk's article because it seemed like an approach that is hell bent for burnout/over-reaching/et al, either physically or psychologically, and runs contrary to much of today's thinking around SST that seems to be working for people in real life applications.

LT Intolerant

My apologies Andy. I have a 2 page, PDF doc, that I downloaded a while ago that is entitled...Training in the ‘sweet spot’ – the relationship of volume, physiological strain, and training effect BY ANDREW COGGAN, PH.D.

In fact you (or whoever was posing as you) thank Frank in the article for proposing the term sweet spot. I couldn't upload the article because of the 100 kb file size limitation but here is a link to the article on another site. They sure make it look like you wrote it.

https://www.freewebs.com/velodynamics2/loadeffect.pdf

Andrew Coggan

Yeah, I wrote that...in a personal email to Charles, who (as he often does) then turned into an article (always with my permission, of course, but not always a priori). Anyway, the source of my confusion is that I didn't (and still don't) recognize the specific quote you put up before, which I think is something that Frank wrote in one of his articles. (Can you tell that I spend far too much time tossing things up on the web? )

LT Intolerant

I excerpted it from paragraphs 2 and 4 in the article. A bit of mash up there made it look like one continous quote, which it was not. My bad.

And all I've got to say is THANK GOD you do. I've learned more about how, why and what to train in the past 18 months than in the previous 20 years. I just wish you were around posting this kind of insight back when I started in this crazy sport in the late 80s. Given how much more efficient my training is now my wife and I might still be on speaking terms...well, then again, maybe not

Andrew Coggan

Shore 'nuff, I see it now.

Did the 'net even exist back then? ;-)

Hmmm...it seems that I may need to expand on my standard exclaimer about not offering training advice to also include the fact that I also don't offer relationship advice! ;-)

semiring

Just to encourage further debate, what do folks think of the following two studies conducted on humans?

Short-term sprint interval versus traditional endurance training: similar initial adaptations in human skeletal muscle and exercise performance

Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans

The overall training duration is disappointing but some of the biochemical analysis in the 2006 paper is interesting nonetheless.

Andrew Coggan

I'd say that the results are entirely unsurprising. While countless genes are involved in the muscular adaptations to training, muscle only has a very limited set of "genetic programs" with which to respond to increased use. One of these "programs", of course, consists of increasing the ability to generate energy aerobically, via mitochondrial biogenesis, capillary neorformations, etc. The only real question, then, is whether any particular training program results in a sufficient overload with respect to energy demand to result in activation of this "program", and it is obviously easier to do (even with very short intervals) when muscle respiratory capacity is initially low (i.e., in untrained individuals).