More cold water on low heart rate training: The effect of slow running is not associated with training myocardial contractility

I thought that a major benefit of running mostly slowly is to avoid over thickening of the heart. By running slowly for months, the heart reconfigures: the heart walls get thinner and more compliant, so refilling can occur easier, and stroke volume at high heart rates can keep up. It doesn't do any good to have musclebound hearts that only move a thimble sized amount of blood, that just quiver at high rates and not really do much.

I've said the simple truth a million times, and of course everyone too cynical to believe it, the benefit of LDS training is in maintaining low body weight. With a relatively high bone density, compared to if you just sat around dieting. That's the "base."

Daniels. And others. Its a fairly standard idea, whether correct or not.

Hi Sergey, sorry I mixed you up with Chloe.

low intensity exercise helps develop mitochondria and vascularization in the peripheral tissue, heart, and lungs. Just cause you have a thicc LV doesn't mean it's gonna do anything if there aren't roads for the blood to take to the muscles.

"Literal experts"?

Presumably elites are doing as much work at medium and high intensities as they are able to recover from, and to me it just makes sense that even us rec runners should be doing the same.

Running ability is often modelled as depending on 1)vo2max 2)running economy and 3) lactate threshold, and I think the consensus is that all these three are best developed by running at paces that broadly speaking are "fast" for you, which will generally require you to run above "low" intensity.

I see low intensity running being pushed for a combination of a)health reasons (i.e training fat burning metabolism or improving mitchondria) and b the generally high interest in the marathon distance from recreational runners (average marathon time>4 hours)

Another thread discussion being dominated by Americans that learned nothing from their darkest distance running hours: the 1990s. I am eternally fascinated by hobby joggers that cling to that methodology and continue to vigorously defend it simply because they do not have nor wish to make time to train properly.

Keep running those ego workouts and collecting Strava kudos! That must soften the sting of mediocre racing performances.

Wow…the OP got taken to the wood shed.

That is rather unfair, there was a baby boom in the 1950s, followed by a running craze starting in the late 1960s that wasn't sustainable, leading to the decline around the 1990s. As it turns out, not even the lull of near effortless running that somehow creates high stimulus still isn't enough to keep most people interested. The b@stard child of LSD and MAF, Zone 2 training, will probably die out as well and get replaced by another fad.

What are you talking about? All anyone did was deny the stroke volume claim was relevant and moved the goal posts, not a single shred of evidence to the contrary was posted. The closest anyone got to a coherent argument was Sage and he literally gets paid to promote low heart rate training.

Let's Jog may as well be a nursing home at this point.

LSD, MAF, and Zone 2 are essentially the same thing.

Work under your LT (first rise in lactate) is the bread and butter zone of effort. That’s all.

It seems most runners could use a basic course in human physiology so they understand how to train. Only a few on this board seem to get it.

Define LT1. Do you mean log-log, Dmax, baseline + 0.5 mmol/L, or any of the dozens of other different methods that don't actually represent a distinct homeostatic perturbation?

See, people who don't actually understand endurance physiology don't get that there isn't a real threshold separating the moderate from the heavy domain, it's an arbitrary classification that is being used to trick hobby joggers into thinking there is a magic intensity they should be training at where they can do less and get more. There are no shortcuts, elites work their asses off and are in a near constant state of overtraining.

Here is a question to no one in particular, if it's all about mitochondrial adaptivity and this can only happen in the magic sub-LT1 zone™, then where are the elite runners spending hours cycling or swimming each day at a low intensity with almost no additional injury risk? Surely 3 hours of cycling in zone 2 would beat a 1 hour run in zone 2 at in terms of improving mitochondrial volume but instead the people who do a lot of cross training diminish their performance.

I already defined LT1…the first rise in lactate over baseline. It’s an easily identifiable point on a power/speed/pace vs lactate plot.

You dropped a bunch of names for mathematical constructs for LT2. log-log, Dmax, etc. I’ve used them all.

So, what are you asking?
Because all I’m saying is that understanding where the delineation from moderate to heavy (LT1) is just as important as from heavy to severe (LT2). I’ve done enough testing that I feel confident I can identify those points from my own protocols. That’s it.

You can’t get better running by swimming or cycling. You know, different muscle groups and adaptations and all. You actually have to practice the sport you compete in, right?

Your stroke volume, not HR, maxes out pretty quickly. So depending on how slow they mean, then yes, everyone knows easy running affects SV.

You crapped on 1990s. Now list all the U.S. sub-1:45 800m men in 00s & 10s who grew up on lower mileage in 1990s.

Lessons learned? What happened, 800m?

U.S. COULD be an elite 800m nation again. U.S. will NEVER be an elite 3000mSC to Marathon nation again.

Not true, or at least misleading. Xtraining trains your cv system and that's useful especially for beginner or young athlete. Maybe as you are coming back from injury or using it on easy days. Nobody has ever said you can just x train and never run.