TriHive (TH): Does improving performance differ between sports?

 

Max Testa (MT): Few things are common between all these people. Some of the elements of the training are the same. All are very precise in their training. They all like to be measured. They like to have numbers. Triathletes are a little more difficult to develop because of the three sports. It is something we still don’t understand to the full extent now, to determine the amount of time or load to put into the different disciplines for each athlete. I go by common sense. I look at the back ground of the athlete, whether their back ground is a swimmer, their back ground is a cyclist, then I do a historical evaluation, the performances they have done so far. Then we do some physiology. We try to measure weaknesses. For example “The bike is a problem. Yes or No?” “The run is a problem. Yes or No” And just by learning by mistake, I have now come down to the point where, if they are beginners I look at their weaknesses first. If they are good athletes, I focus more on their strengths. When a really good athlete tries to improve their weaknesses they see some benefit in the early part in the curve and then they tend to plateau. So, to improve their weakness, they improve a little bit, but they put in a lot of time, which will take away from what they are good at. I tend not to disrupt the natural talent of this athlete.

 

 

Steve called me and said “Max, I’m moving back to Davis and I want to be a triathlete,” and he started to talk about Ironman. The first thing I said was, “bottom line, based on what you tell me, you need to learn how to swim,” because he couldn’t swim. He was a decent runner in high school. So, running is probably not an issue. But, he had been a pro cyclist for 10 or 12 years. So we kept cycling strong, and not do much running. “Just do all your running after a riding.” Because, for me running after riding is different then just running. When he won Lake Placid, he was running no more then 30-35 miles a week. Most of these runs were done after a bike. So, when we tried to make him a better runner, because he ran a 3:04 hour marathon when he won Lake Placid, a significant speed for a Ironman marathon is 2:50. That could win Kona. Then, when he started to pick up the running, he had a lot of problems with injuries. His body, for a long time was a cyclist. So he didn’t really get much improvement of timing. He got a lot of injuries.

 

 

MT: 60 to 65 percent were cyclist. Probably 30 percent were triathletes. 5 to 10 percent runners. Here, so far we’ve seen so many cyclists and mountain bike riders. We have a couple of triathletes. One is local, a pretty good one, Heath Thurston. He just started working with us last month. We have some triathletes come from California, but still we haven’t hit the local community.

 

 

MT: That is true. There are different reasons to do testing. We have testing in colleges or high schools as guinea pigs in some study. They say “come to the human performance lab we need guinea pigs for this research, we’ll give you your Vo2 max.” So, you go there, they stress you to maximum, then they give you this magic number. You go home and say “what do I do with this number?” I think the test becomes lively when you use the test in the context of that athlete at that time of the season. The information is to be usable. A Vo2 max test is just one test. There are so many tests: sub maximal tests, lactic tests, economy tests, endurance tests. You have to decide the test and the protocol based on the information you want.

 

This is a great service. The cost is very minor if you compare to the cost of the athlete to perform. In time they dedicate, equipment, vitamins and supplements, traveling. If you get the test for $150 three-times a year, that is going to be a small part of your budget. But it is going to be beneficial to optimizing your training.

 

 

MT: Yes. Normally, what we try to do is decide which kind of test and how often with the different athlete based on their goals. The information that they really need. Athletes that already know they do very well in an area, they are well covered, so, I’d be happy to know their economy. But say they do a 4:34 Ironman bike leg. Maybe I’d like to know their economy but by their results I already know they are good. So, I’m not going sell them a test on economy because it’s not going to give us anything we can use.

 

 

MT: I think that is our specialty. We don’t have a protocol at the lab. The protocol is the one we decide with the person.

 

 

MT: Their history. Their goals. Whatever training program doesn’t work is because sometimes the goals are not set properly. Setting the goals is the key element. Sometimes you have to be able to determine that “this is not the right goal.”

 

 

MT: You can get success only if you train consistently. That is in common with successful athletes. They train well on top of everything else. If you measure Vo2 max and you tell someone “you have a Vo2 max of 35, you can never be in the Tour de France,” You really do something unfair to this person, like killing their dreams. The Vo2 max is something you don’t see. Say, if you have a guy that is 5’ 3″ and he wants to be a power forward in the NBA. You feel okay to say “do something different.” You don’t feel like you are killing his dream.

 

In Ironman, you work at a small percentage of you Vo2 max.

There was a study from South Africa, saying that the average intensity of an Ironman, you work around 50-52 percent of your Vo2 max, because you have to be there for 10, 11, 12 hours for a good age grouper. So, I don’t think the Vo2 max is the limiting factor. It’s more metabolic. I think you have more reason to train for an Ironman then to win a national time-trial in cycling if you have a low Vo2 max. In Ironman you can compensate with training.

 

 

MT: We had three key workouts on the bike (a week), for example. At the end of the key workouts on the bike, he would do three to six miles (of running), at race pace, just to transition. Then he had one recovery ride on bike, and at the end of that he would do a long run with some speed. Speed for me, means one mile repeats, probably eight percent faster then marathon pace for Ironman. I don’t believe in training high speed. Running 100 meters is not like running a marathon. If you are running at your marathon pace, which is limited by your cardiovascular system, you recruit different muscles and your stride is completely different then if you run the 100 meters. If you want to run faster in the marathon, you have to do repetition in fractions of the distance of a marathon fast enough to make you faster, but not to fast otherwise you are training for the 400 meters or the mile because you change the stride. It becomes non-specific.

 

A good runner runs a three hour marathon at the end of an Ironman. That is a seven minute mile. There is no reason to send this person to do 400 meter repetitions, speed training at the track once a week running 1:12 – 1:15 400s. 1:12 – 1:15 is a 5 minute mile. It’s running completely different, using different muscles and the stride is different. I prefer that these athletes run 24, 400s at 1:25-1:30, with one minute of recover (if prepping for a 7 minute mile Ironman marathon). It is more specific to what they do. At the end of the day, 24, 400s at minute six mile pace, assuming the athlete is preparing to run 7 minute miles, this is 15% faster then their Ironman pace.

 

 

MT: That’s what I like to do. Try to get a sense of which range of speed they have to use, this runner or this triathlete. Like we do for cycling, which range of power do we have to train? You don’t want to train all of the ranges of power in cycling. If I have someone who has to do a 112 mile bike, you work at a percentage of power that normally compares to your threshold, or 85 percent of your threshold, what you can hold for 30 minutes. Why should I have this person do one minute all out repetition? I’d be training different energy mechanisms. I’d be training different size muscle fibers. Actually, eventually, those big size fibers are taking oxygen from the fibers that sustain a 112 mile ride. The more you approach the competitive side of a performance you need to be specific to what the performance is. The running is specific to the running for a marathon. The bike is specific to ride 112 miles. It’s completely different then the road cyclist that does an effort of two or three minutes to jump on a break.

 

 

MT: Studies show that the best performances in the marathon are done by the people who pace themselves the best. When they monitored the runners by GPS at the New York Marathon and Boston Marathon, the top guys were the ones who changed the pace the least in the whole group. Every time you change the pace in the marathon you switch to energy mechanisms. It’s always a waste of energy.