Too much lactic threshold work destroys mitochrondria?

not quite. wrote:

Happy Thanksgiving wrote:

That’s correct... lactate is minus the H+ ion. Your reading comprehension and understanding is lacking. For the purposes of this discussion lactic acid ‘gives up’ its H+ ion and is then lactate ...from there it is either used as fuel in the cori cycle inside the muscle cell or converted in the liver back into glucose by the process of gluconeogenesis. Again lactate is a form of fuel; the H+ Is not from ATP hydrolysis but from the lactic acid (H+) , once dissociated becomes fuel-lactate.

No, you are the one with poor reading comprehension and understanding. Lactate does not have a proton to give up at any point nor its monocarboxylate precursors. The proton comes from ATP hydrolysis. Do some research, there is no lactic acid. The acidity comes from the splitting of ATP to ADP

Never did I state that lactATE had a H+ ion; it’s the lacTIC molecule that gives up the H+ ... thus becoming lactATE.

doc strange but loving wrote:

jeepers wrote:

Either you were dangerously dehydrated or more likely and very common, you watch was malfunctioning.

Definitely unlikely for max hr to actually increase by 15 over a 22 year span. Either way it sounds like things are going well for this person and maybe we should all run in the fog more.

Are you pretty small Fogrunr? That sort of max at age 52 is uncommon. You about 130 pounds?

I'm 5 foot 7, 135-140 lbs.

That 201 max was at age 30. I didn't have nearly the base then that I did during the. I described.

Also I had a prelude to my heart's ability to go higher when I spent nearly a whole winter running in a pool. I had read about a guy in Colorado who came out of the pool and once he got his land legs back ran a 4:00 flat mile.

A little more research I found out but standing in chest deep water the heart rate drops about 10 beats because it be assessed from the water pressure.

I wanted to find out what I could do if I dedicated myself to water running.

I started out doing 30 minutes and I could manage 500 calories per hour intensity.

by the end of the winter I could go for 2-1/2 hours averaging 800 calories per hour. My peak for 1 hour was about 900.

you have to really work hard to get your heart rate up over 150 running in the pool. My thought is that the water is assisting the heart during the cardio development and the heart it's working easier it will come out of the training stronger and refreshed.

Towards the end of pool running you need to be walking and running on land. It takes a few weeks to get your timing back.

When I jumped into my first 5k I was running about 5:40 pace I guess, and my heart rate monitor was alarming. I looked at it it said 190. I was running with a friend he was not wearing a heart rate monitor and there are no power lines nearby. I told him what was going on. He said "How do you feel?"

Answer "GREAT! Let's run faster!"

And we did. It's amazing the feeling. The aerobic capacity was really strong.

Each race my max heart rate would go down a little. Until it was averaging typically 170 to 180 during a race pushing hard... I really love the 5000.

So yeah I had a prelude to easy careful patient aerobic training and how I would respond.

I was careful to stay on top of my hydration make sure I'm peeing clear or light yellow.

Also I experimented with detraining.

I'll take a break in my training and not do any exercise for a few days. I'll watch my morning heart rate drop a little lower cuz I'm a little lower until it maybe gets down 36 or 34 even. And then it will start going back up day by day. Until it's up to 50 and I know that I've gone through a complete recovery and am detraining.

That's correct I'm in the aerobic threshold. I'm training at the top of it.

In the fourth month of base building when I can feel I have this huge aerobic engine, I'll run very hard for the last one to two miles of my evening run. I'll run easy and study for the whole run but I'll be running with quick steps preparing myself for the fast running at the end. I'll come off the trail and I'll head over road and it's a gradual a uphill with a steep hill on the way heading back to the car. And then there's a downhill. And I go as hard as I can... as fast as I can.

When I do that at that point of my training I will see my max heart rate go up above 180, and when I say I drop of 65-70 beats in 2 minutes I know I'm really on the right track. Dropping from above 180 to down below 120 in just 2 minutes is a very good sign.

Pretty similar max to me. I was at 213 (on the bike) and could average about 195-198 (if fresh) for about 15 minutes. If your max is 210+ I’d assume you could hold 190+ for 15-30 minutes, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case?

Oh! Holding that heart rate for that long it's really impressive!

No, I don't think I can do that.

Or at least I don't want to!

The resulting stomach convulsions are pretty unpleasant.

My high school mile was just 4:44, freshman college was 4:36.

So 16:04 5K at 35 I think was pretty good. Also 16:41 at 48, and 16:38 at 52. I did some track and road miles in the 4:52 to 4:41 range in my late 40s to early 50s.

I've done a lot of 20 mile runs, and several runs 30 - 32 miles. 50 miles twice. How does 50 miles feel? It hurts!! Lol.

Interesting thing about doing 50 miles: after the race, it took my heart rate about 3 to 4 weeks to drop from 60 beats down to my normal of 40. And I was only averaging 9:30 to 10:30 miles. so my heart rate was elevated 20 beats for 3 to 4 weeks after doing 50 miles. I have a lot of friends who do ultras... Up to 100 miles.

Plenty of incorrect grammar in my posts today, but what can I say? I'm doing it from my phone and not really up to doing all the proofreading today.

Bad Wigins wrote:

inclined_to_agree wrote:

So, as one of the other posters argued, you would say that there is no such thing of doing a certain kind of workout too often, inducing plateauing or burnout? That it rather is a question of listening to one's body and recovering adequately, and of keeping fresh mentally?

I don't see how that would follow from what I wrote. Other things besides acidity can cause those things.

What I meant was when you start feeling acid, it's already spilled out of the muscle cells where it originated. Whether it harmed the muscle before or not, there's no reason to expect greater harm once it overflows. There is reason to expect the muscle's performance to drop, but only until the blood pH returns to optimal levels.

What I had in the mind were commonly made assertions of the kind "too many anaerobic sessions will burn you" or "too many VO2Max sessions will burn you out", where "cause you to plateau" is a common substitute for "burn you out", and where the change in acidity in the blood as a consequence of such workouts is what is typically cited as the cause.

You explained that a change in acidity in the muscles is fundamental to the process of a hard workout. There may sometimes be an overflow into the blood, which is the aforementioned change in acidity cited as problematic. However, the acidity of the blood will return to normal, and fairly quickly I believe (does anybody have any hard numbers?).

Hence the harmful effects do seem to me to be a question of "how often" and more particularly of listening to one's body and allowing recovery (in particular, but not exclusively) allowing acidity to return to normal. You challenged my suggestion earlier in the thread that "how often" was important, I guess because acidity returns to normal quite quickly, more quickly than would be likely to do one workout after another? Hence I concluded that burnout/plateau should not be a consequence of blood acidity coming from repeatedly carrying out these workouts.

I would be very interested if you could you clarify whether you agree or disagree with the above?

inclined_to_agree wrote:

You explained that a change in acidity in the muscles is fundamental to the process of a hard workout. There may sometimes be an overflow into the blood, which is the aforementioned change in acidity cited as problematic. However, the acidity of the blood will return to normal, and fairly quickly I believe (does anybody have any hard numbers?).

Hence the harmful effects do seem to me to be a question of "how often" and more particularly of listening to one's body and allowing recovery (in particular, but not exclusively) allowing acidity to return to normal. You challenged my suggestion earlier in the thread that "how often" was important, I guess because acidity returns to normal quite quickly, more quickly than would be likely to do one workout after another?

Very quickly. It reacts with bicarbonate to produce water and CO2 and exhaled. The blood is the normal route for H+ to exit the muscle. You just don't want that to be excessive because when the blood becomes acidic too, gas exchange breaks down.

So I don't get accused of acting like a know it all, here's a good source.

Please shut up Wigins. Blood does not become acidic. Stop pretending you know anything about the subject.

Happy Thanksgiving wrote:

not quite. wrote:

No, you are the one with poor reading comprehension and understanding. Lactate does not have a proton to give up at any point nor its monocarboxylate precursors. The proton comes from ATP hydrolysis. Do some research, there is no lactic acid. The acidity comes from the splitting of ATP to ADP

Never did I state that lactATE had a H+ ion; it’s the lacTIC molecule that gives up the H+ ... thus becoming lactATE.

And you have no idea about biochemistry either.

In this matter I can just fill in and say this ...too much of whatever it is is just that, too much! )))" Enough ... " is the keyword to success.

- training legends -

not a scientist wrote:

Running too hard too often destroys the aerobic base that you've spent all that time building.

I can't remember where I heard this. Maybe babbled by Sage Canaday?

Is this correct?

Yeah it's called running distance prohibits protein synthesis within the muscle fibers thus making them weaker and smaller due to the lactic acid accumulation effect.

Go look at any distance runner or marathon runner and tell me who's healthier. The cancer looking marathon runner or an NFL linebacker? Which one is healthier?

Which one looks better? Exactly.

Magness figured this out long ago -

Slow-twitch athletes (60%+ ST fibers in legs) can run RIGHT at the threshold for a long time/lots of volume, and press it down.

If you do that with a fast-twitch athlete (45% or less ST), it WILL impair his anaerobic abilities a lot. This is bad, as this is what the fast-twitch runners thrive off. Also, they would struggle to maintain the intensity of a threshold run, so they either need to break it up in something like mile repeats with short rest or faster aerobic intervals.

You don't destroy mitochondria with it, but if you overload the wrong type of runner with massive threshold work he will get worse. It's all about individualization!

He talked about it in detail in his book listing lots of academic resources, but also touches on it in this video:

https://youtu.be/PKzjS6qV8iM?t=49

Just tell me more what Magness has "figured out" and I will destroy his theories word by word.It`s not a question of if the runner is "fast-twitch or slow-twitch". It`s not about individualization in the sense of different amounts of training needed to reach the runners optimum performance.It`s all about doing just enough what it takes to reach the goal and don`t overdo things.The human being`s body is a very fine tuned instrument that compensates where needed.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Just tell me more what Magness has "figured out" and I will destroy his theories word by word.It`s not a question of if the runner is "fast-twitch or slow-twitch". It`s not about individualization in the sense of different amounts of training needed to reach the runners optimum performance.It`s all about doing just enough what it takes to reach the goal and don`t overdo things.The human being`s body is a very fine tuned instrument that compensates where needed.

You just say this to defend your training system, which believes that there are perfect paces for a performance level and doesn't individualize.

Magness's research is based on countless scientific articles. Muscle fiber physiology exists - it's a spectrum from fast-twitch athletes like Bolt all the way to slow-twitch monster marathoners like Kipchoge and Kosgei.

You can prescribe Bolt the perfect paces for your 20x400 and 5xMile intervals or whatever you usually prescribe, he will not become a good distance runner.

You also can't train people with similar 10k PR's the same way. Carlos Lopes and Fernando Mamede both ran ~27:15, but Lopes only had 54s 400m speed (ultra-slow-twitch) while Mamede had 47s (ultra fast-twitch). You would kill Lopes by letting him run quick 400s in 58-60s, like Mamede often did, and Mamede would struggle with fast tempos, fast long runs or fast longer intervals. Their genetics just aren't made for these training sessions.

The fact that both reached world-record times with totally different training already shows how important it is to individualize and take muscle fibers into consideration.

No.....I just say this from almost 50 years experience of running both out from scientific physiology and also running as a national elite runner in practice . My 4 years of coaching different levels of runners with different muscle biopsy is a good practical evidence that amount of FT or ST fibers is only important when it comes to the shorter distances because it`s not possible to make a fast sprinter / mile runner out of a runner with very high level of ST , but it`s possible the other way around to make a fast long distance runner out from high levels of FT.

You would not kill Lopez by running at 58-60 sec sometimes , but then just special repetitions training to run faster at 1500/ mile / 3000m pace with appropriate longer rest between the reps. Mamede didn`t run only very short and very fast intervals , he also like Lopez did fast interval thresholds of 2-3 x 3000m, 4-5 x 2000m , 4-6 x 1500m , 6-10 x 1000m and so on but never that much faster long tempos like Lopez. So to say they had totally different training is not true!

Then as finish of this comment on your statement that my system doesn't individualize I just can tell that is also not true .......the Art of coaching week by week together with the "automatic " individual rest time between interval/ repetition reps take care of that in the very best way.I`m sure Bolt had been a great long distance runner also, but that we will never know. :)

Your reasoning does not match reality. I coach a Kenyan runner with as you say " 47 sec ultra-fast-twitch" and he is strong as a bull with specific long runs of 2 hours 20 min and fast finish at 2:55 min/ km last 20-30 min up at high altitude. And last week he did 8 x 1600m LT interval at 4:34-4:35 min .

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Magness figured this out long ago -

Slow-twitch athletes (60%+ ST fibers in legs) can run RIGHT at the threshold for a long time/lots of volume, and press it down.

If you do that with a fast-twitch athlete (45% or less ST), it WILL impair his anaerobic abilities a lot. This is bad, as this is what the fast-twitch runners thrive off. Also, they would struggle to maintain the intensity of a threshold run, so they either need to break it up in something like mile repeats with short rest or faster aerobic intervals.

Would you be able to summarise the reasoning behind this, or link to a place where Magness gives such reasoning?

Nothing wrong at all with splitting up tempo runs into longish intervals no matter what the type of runner, but I don't immediately see why longer tempo runs could be harmful for a fast twitch runner. More demanding than for a slow twitch runner: perhaps, yes. But actively harmful if followed by appropriate rest?

Yes you are bad Wigins wrote:

Please shut up Wigins. Blood does not become acidic. Stop pretending you know anything about the subject.

lmao source?