HIIT vs Norwegian 4x4: The Science Behind Interval Prescription

0:00  later that's not a problem. For your info another housekeeping item webinar is going to be recorded so there's a recording available afterwards okay.

0:13  So let me explain a little bit what is in front of you coming here. So I'm first going to dive into a little bit of science looking into some of you know good so landmark papers which look at the training effects especially on a muscular level on a performance level of in generally speaking HIIT training high intense interval training of you know you will be aware there's different kinds of trainings in terms of like on durations off durations and I will be contrasting that a little bit to longer intervals which are then normally more like in the threshold

1:01  area and I will look at it from two sides one is the training effect or training stimulus what the science tells us about the training stimulus on the aerobic system so improving bio-to-max improving aerobic enzymes improving strophal, yada yada yada and then I will also look at the other side of the coin which is hey what's about how those intervals might affect anaerobic adaptation so glycolytic energy supply and that's so to speak the first part we will look a little bit more on the science and then in

1:39  the second part we will take a look together how we can apply these findings when it comes to training zones and when it comes to yeah in general you know training zones and understanding those intervals a little bit better so to speak okay again if there are any questions in the meantime then please put it in here and again I will have some small interruptions maybe in between as I need to switch between different applications with that let's get right into it I will start with the effect of those interval trainings on

2:21  aerobic metabolism okay so the one thing that is very popular in terms of knowledge out there is to look at the time spent at a high bio-to-max during these kind of intervals because there is well at least some literature let's put it this way that seems to predict that the more time people spend at a higher percentage of bio-to-max the better the training adaptation I took the time here in the last days to dive deeper into the literature and did some research and the body of knowledge around that

3:05  specific view to max utilization is not as strong as you know at least in my perception as the popularity is okay one of the um popular papers here is um this one here always coming back from the runner start group out of scandinavia so here in this example we are looking at a series of 30 seconds on and 15 seconds off which is the left bar here I think you can see my uh my mouse a little bit and contrasting that to more like kind of threshold intervals is like five minutes on in this case and two and a half minute off so always

3:46  two to one work to rest ratio and what is simply looking at here is the seconds so the time spent at a high vo2 max you can see the bars are indicating the average of a group and that each line is an individual athlete and you can see that in most athletes the shorter more high intense intervals especially with the short breaks as we are going to see breaks that are so short that um the vo2 is doesn't have so to speak a lot of time to really go down uh means that there's more time spent at a higher at a higher vo2 max

4:26  and again that's one something we're going to look at so this is what happens so to speak during the training and then in terms of the adaptation what has been found if you look at a block of training and we look at the development here of vo2 max on the y-axis for again the short intense intervals and it's a little bit longer so more like threshold intervals we can see that the performance improvements at least in this study and in this group of um vo2 max so aerobic capacity is better for the shorter

5:04  group with the higher intensity and this coincides again let me go back with more time spent at a higher percentage of the auto max uh in this case the threshold was chosen as 90 percent which is so to speak a very popular um threshold to understand the intensity um and this led to the conclusion that um you know the more time you spend at this high percentage of vo2 max the better the aerobic adaptation as we are basically seeing here and as i mentioned previously that is i would argue at least to my

5:41  experience a lot of like common knowledge or very popular knowledge out there so i'm not saying it's wrong i'm just saying it might not be as easy when you take a deeper dive into the literature so let me show you for example this one here which is comparing more training modalities which are also um you know pretty popular uh so here we have long slow distance training lsd on the on the left bar and we have more like a continuous threshold training uh so 85 percent this always it's not as precise it

6:18  always goes from heart rate max so you have to take the total insensitive with a grain of salt so to speak um and then 15 seconds on 50 seconds off which of course is only half the time in terms of 15 seconds versus 30 seconds from the runner studies which will have a big effect um as we are going to see on the vo2 kinetics and then classic so to speak four by four so very similar and what we see here is that if you look at vo2 max which is a white bar that in this in this uh in this setup the four by four

6:57  so the threshold are a little bit better actually than the shorter ones and as we're going to see in the second part here when we look at vo2 data during these efforts uh we will see that this could likely be because of the 15 seconds being a little bit too short um you know that because there's not enough time to for vo2 to climb up so to speak but we can see similar adaptation so again not a contradicting picture just not as straightforward to say yeah just do shorter high intense intervals

7:30  and the results in terms of vo2 max improvement will be will be better and then what is really important i would like to take a look at more individual responses okay so what you see here is a training group data from a training group of runners who so to speak just added a threshold session into the normal training so you could argue not as controlled but on the other hand has the benefit of being like more real world so to speak right because other studies is not you know it's artificial

8:06  training situations just setting up some training region he has just added to the normal training and what we are looking at here is and here gets a little bit technical so bear with me is muscle biopsy data so looking into the muscle and the marker we are using is here citrate synthase citrate synthase is an enzyme of the aerobic metabolism so generally if you have more of that you have more citrate synthase then this is a marker for more aerobic capacity in terms of capacity to produce energy and here we can

8:41  see that in general in these runners for three months adding this threshold threshold session into the training that there is an improvement of aerobic capacity in terms of the muscular level so you could also argue that this is a marker for mitochondria but if you look at the individual responses so each colored line here is one individual athlete you can see that there you know there are quite big differences so you could argue that the red one for example has the biggest improvement and then the purple one

9:12  it's a gray down here actually have a decline so it's not that straightforward and the other ones are always are actually in between okay so there must be that's a point here there must be something else than just you know throwing in the intensity and i assume that many of you listening to this will have a similar experience either as an athlete or as a coach it is not just as easy as throwing in you know uh some intervals and there's a training program and all of a sudden the performance will improve so to speak

9:46  quite easily or for everyone but the takeaway message is what we can confirm obviously which might sound too trivial maybe um that in general adding intervals adding high intense work efforts helps or is a good you know stimulus is the training of choice so to speak when it comes to improving aerobic capacity and we can see that high intensity training works of course and that the time spent at a high VO2 might be a thing as we have also seen comparing the 30-15 intervals versus the 15-15

10:30  time period um to say that one is superior to the other however so high intense interval training of like 30 seconds is in general superior to um four or five minutes more like threshold that's a more difficult story okay so that is not that straightforward so that's a takeaway message here and uh quick note as well yes of course this is recorded here so you can watch the the point one afterwards um so on the aerobic side again individual responses are um you know there's quite some differences some variability in individual responses but in general this is the

11:16  takeaway message how aerobic energy or aerobic capacity adaptation works no surprise for you maybe so slow start here in terms of of uh new knowledge maybe so the question then we should look at how is the effect of those trainings on the glycolytic metabolism because you know we cannot assume just because our intention for interval training is to increase the automatics that nothing else is adapting just because we we wish so right for example there's great studies not part of today but there's great studies showing that it can

11:56  increase running economy and runners it can especially increase buffering capacity so the ability of the muscle to cope with acidosis so it's of course overlying overlapping training um stimulus to other systems not only to the aerobic system and today we wanted to dive specifically into the effect on the glycolytic metabolism so what's about that so here we are looking first at why is that of interest so why from an endurance perspective should we even care about what happens to the glycolytic metabolism and i have two graphs for you here to show you what happens to endurance performance when we change the glycolytic metabolism

12:41  and what we're looking at here is fat combustion graphs it's in this case it's from cycling where they could be running or whatsoever it's fat combustion graphs in green in kilocalories power on the y-axis and carbohydrate combustion graphs in red also in kilocalories but also in grams power and you see two graphs you see the solid line so this one here and this one here is from one athlete so to speak and then the dashed line this here and this here so the green dashed and the red dashed

13:18  line is from another athlete and the only difference between those two curves between those two profiles is the dashed one has a higher glycolytic capacity compared to the one with the solid lines so what we can see is that the higher glycolytic athlete has a higher carbohydrate combustion right if you look at the same intensity so to speak at every power output the dashed line is higher than the solid line meaning more carbide combustion and but you know the effect of that obviously is that it combusts less fat so you might have seen that from us but you say oh maybe that's something those inside guys came up with why is that but it's pretty straightforward

14:08  because if you have more glycolytic capacity more glycolytic activity the glycolytic activity produces more lactate and the only source for lactate is carbohydrates in terms of glycogen or glucose so when you have more glycolytic activity because the system is better trained then it will produce more lactate hence the refrain back to the blamx and the source of that is carbohydrates glucose or glycogen and therefore the combustion will be higher so in short takeaway message higher glycolytic capacity means higher carboyed combustion and lower fat combustion and if we look at another endurance metric so to speak the most popular maybe endurance metric in terms of threshold okay so threshold in terms of anaerobic threshold maximum lactate steady state happens

15:06  at an intensity at which the ability of the attic to combust lactate which is the blue curve here equals the actual lactate production and here we are looking looking at the same scenario dashed line higher glycolytic capacity solid red line our solid lines lower glycolytic capacity so lower glycolytic capacity means lower lactate production and therefore a higher threshold which is this pink or purple interception of the so in short some of you will be aware of that so sorry for repeating what you might already know bear with me here

15:50  um just wanted to bring everybody on the same page what you see is that a higher glycolytic capacity of course is beneficial when you are maybe a football player a 400 meter runner 200 meter freestyler so some athlete who wants who needs higher glycolytic power maybe even a road cyclist for sprinting but if you're primarily interested in endurance performance in terms of higher threshold better fat combustion and carbohydrates bearing you would be more interested in the lower glycolytic capacity so therefore going back to the question here what is the effect on those trainings which we are talking

16:34  about today on this part of the metabolism and there we can also see some very interesting findings in the literature i go back to the same study which we have previously uh looking at runners who edit threshold interval training or threshold training sorry into their normal training regime and now we are looking at before if you remember this blue bars we looked at citrate synthase as a marker for you know which is a marker which is maybe the most popular marker for mitochondria and aerobic capacity of

17:14  the muscles now we are looking at an enzyme which is called pfk phosphofructokinase which is in short sorry you know i don't want to bother you with biochemistry terms but this is the key enzyme of the glycolytic metabolism meaning this is an enzyme that dictates the speed the capacity at which the glycolytic metabolism can produce energy and what you see here in those runners who added one time per week only a threshold session into the training is that their glycolytic metabolism decreased in average because the blue bars you can see is lower

17:59  post 14 weeks of this kind of training compared to pre however the colored lines again are the individual responses and you can see that individual responses are again quite different you can have athletes like the pink and purple line who decrease quite a lot and you can have athletes who like the orange one here who has almost no difference and you can even have athletes like the red one here who show an increased one um so that is to be taken into account that and because that individual responses can be much much different and

18:43  that is what we should care for when it comes to coaching i always mentioned that when i was coaching in elite and professional sports because there we are interested in improving the performance of one athlete and we don't care about averages but at the end if you doesn't matter if you coach professional elite or recreational athletes it's the same thing you have one individual athlete who is looking to improve his or her performance and he or she is not caring about averages he or she is just caring about his or her performance so

19:16  what is the best training for her and this is where i was trying to to get to excuse me

19:27  um so what else do we have in the literature about that here's another one here we looked at cyclists it's a more controlled study and here we are looking at a good month so to speak of training and we're looking at six sessions uh within 28 days of five minutes at 80 percent of power output so this is likely above threshold i put 100 to 105 actually it could be what up to 110 percent so very similar what we're going to look at here today and you can also see the differences in the table on again same enzyme cytosine so the marker for

20:15  aerobic metabolism there's a slight tendency to increase it um and then there's also a tendency to increase the anaerobic enzymes but the authors uh concluded as you can see in red here north neither of these changes in uh hk is another anaerobic enzyme a hexokinase were significant and they say that some subjects seem to respond and others seem not to respond and that is as we all aware when it comes to coaching a big issue in coaching to be able to understand why or which who who of the athlete is going to respond to that and this is what we are going to look at here in a few

21:02  minutes um when we look at practical application why some athletes are likely to respond to this kind of training for example there's an increased glycolytic capacity either wanted or not wanted and why others don't but this is what i'm trying to say this is exactly what you find in the literature as i've seen as i've shown in the previous graph you see athletes who have an increasing effect on glycolytic capacity and other sort of a decreasing effect and so also a few who already work with metrics like vlmx in monitoring and steering training might have the same experience

21:42  um and another one which is going a bit more extreme so before remember we looked at more like threshold intervals and now here we are looking at um shorter intervals very similar to the runner-start stuff so 20 seconds on 10 seconds off right still two to one ratio just the the ranges are a little bit shorter and when we look at again i always choose the same enzymes here citrate synthase so a here on the left hand side marker for aerobic adaptation you see a big improvement great because

22:19  just remember before in the runner-start study we were just just looking at vlmx and we are looking at stroke volume so what we see here is that on a muscular level on the mitochondrial level we see the same type of response but what we also do see we see significant and quite substantial improvements in terms of increase of pfk so glycolytic enzyme activity so in contrast and that's the takeaway here in contrast to the lower intensity longer intervals we do see a much more pronounced improvement in anaerobic capacity in

23:02  glycolytic capacity in in the key enzyme of glycolysis

23:08  and then there are other studies which show similar things um here we have one that goes to fatigue and here we also have changes in phosphophanate kinase but again not necessarily uh significant like here's a change in using hit training is not significant in another enzyme of glycolytic metabolism it is so take away message for the glycolytic adaptation is the glycolytic and what we see is is threshold interval training can have which we have seen individual responses an increasing or decreasing effect on glycolytic uh enzymes on glycolytic capacity and to be fair threshold is maybe not i should have put

23:55  it better here apologies for that because the studies we looked at were also a little bit above threshold and what we see is hit training in general has a much stronger stimulus to increase glycolytic enzymes but not um that is stronger but still you have individual differences okay and that is so to speak the one thing that i would ask you to keep in mind when we now look at um you know when we now look at individual responses during both kinds of trainings okay and this is

24:30  what i would i would like to do here next in the meantime a quick answer to the question uh from george here in the vlmx comparison between two athletes um so this was basically um this one here which we were looking at um you were looking at lactate production not accumulation so this is gross lactate production uh okay so this is gross okay so this is gross okay so this is gross okay so this is gross okay so now i need to take you into how this works now here um i'm going to take you into looking at um individual

25:20  responses in in those trainings okay sorry for that give me a second

25:38  so for that as i mentioned the switching here might cause some problems um but i should be right back with you here okay okay so now let's look at a comparison of the activation of vo2 so this is what i wanted to show you we first start again we are looking at the aerobic stimulus so what you're looking at here is view to percentage of vo2 max utilized in four minute efforts so the red curve here shows the adaptation of uh or the time course not the adaptation of vo2

26:27  during four times four efforts and what is the difference here the difference is between the dashed and the solid line the solid line that the solid line that the solid line has a vo2 max of 0.75 and the dashed line one of 0.4 and so what we have done here we prescribed training for both athletes as 100 percent of threshold during the on phase and 50 percent of threshold during the off phase okay so what we see and i'm going to explain because that is a really important take of a message here what we see is the

27:25  the athlete with the lower vlmx receives a significant higher training stimulus and if i'm going to explain now why that is it's going to be you're going to say yeah of course of course it is what we've seen before what we've seen before is that a higher vlmx athlete has a lower threshold but here in those athletes they both have a vo2 max of 55 so the vo2 max is both 55 the difference here is that the athlete with the vlmx of 0.4 just say the lower vlmx utilizes has their threshold for example at close to 80 percent of vo2 max so

28:12  the fractional utilization of vo2 max at threshold is higher compared to the solid line the high vlmx guy has the same vo2 max but what you've seen before right because of the higher glycolytic capacity the athlete produces more lactate and therefore the threshold sits at the lower percentage of vo2 max so in other words let's say i'm just simplifying things so one guy has a threshold at 80 percent rounded the 80 percent ish of vo2 max the dashed line the solid line has the threshold at let's say 65

29:06  just for the sake of an example 65 of vo2 max so now if we are now prescribing interval at 100 percent of threshold it is absolutely no surprise it's absolutely logical that one athlete is going to sit at 80 percent of vo2 max because this is where the threshold sits and the other guy sits only approximately at 65 percent the other guy sits at the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of

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41:00  the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the

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42:00  the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the

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43:00  the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the lower percentage of the

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44:00  so just keeps us in mind so just keeps us in mind and now we are changing to an athlete with a different metabolic profile so these same generic training zones applied to an athlete with a VO2 max of only 50. VLMX is the same lower VO2 max and you can see it's similar lower utilization of the LMAX a little bit lower even in the VO2 max and just lower percentages of VO2 max. So prescribing uh prescribing training in these zones uh this is traditional way in terms of VO2 max for threshold no harm taken likely right not a big problem.

44:43  However if you now look at somebody with a high VLMX so your high glycolytic guy there things will change because you can see of course no problem in terms of VLMX utilization because the VO2 max is so high but you can see the aerobic stimulus is much much lower again going back to the problem because the threshold sits at a lower percentage of VO2 max and therefore uh and therefore the athlete receives a lower training stimulus. So in short if we would prescribe with these threshold based training zones

45:25  prescribes the same kind of threshold intervals or hit VO2 max intervals to these three different athletes then they get quite some different training stimulus on not only on the VLMX this one would decrease and if this is for example more like a sprinter type of athlete you maybe doesn't want to decrease and you're a aerobic stimulus pretty weak. Um your aerobic stimulus pretty weak and this metabolic profile aerobic stimulus not so great VLMX on a decreasing pathway and in this athlete maybe like a slight uh increasing VLMX stimulus but much much better aerobic. So

46:05  very different aerobic and anaerobic energy contribution then you set it up based on threshold. Again somewhat mimicking what we see in the literature. So how can we solve that and I indicated that before that in the literature when it comes to aerobic adaptation people prescribe it not based on threshold and what we did here we did it a little bit different because for most people most people care a lot about what happens to the VLMX because as we've seen there's such a big influence on your threshold and fat combustion and

46:45  carbohydrate utilization so especially in endurance sports that's of high interest. So what we did here we created a set of intervals which are all sitting at 10 percent of VLMX because this will always give us the highest intensity which where the athlete can go but still being in the safe zone if you don't want to increase VLMX still sitting in the safe zone and then what we did is we are looking at different durations. Remember what we said in the very beginning. So if you're looking at the high VLMX to increase VLMX to increase VLMX it's either spending more time at the high VLMX

47:32  at the high VLMX or having a higher VLMX or having a higher VLMX have a higher percentage and the higher percentage is what clashes this because it's intensity what can clash potentially this is a high stimulus on the glycolytic system on the VLMX.

48:18  So if you're looking at the high VLMX we start again with a 60 0.5 and we will get a certain intensity because it's always 10 percent of VLMX. In this athlete by the way it's all 123 percent of threshold. The power output as you see is always the same. And the VO2MX is slightly higher in the longer intervals because obviously it takes time for the VO2 to go up. But we can see now the formative interval, the purple one here, is maybe best because it gives us the highest VO2MX

49:01  utilization. Of course six minutes similar but then you know it's much much longer. So these two are superior so to speak and we can choose one of those to set up the interval training programs. Now if we do the same for the athlete with the same VLMX but lower VO2MX you're going to see that the percentage of anaerobic threshold is quite different. So this athlete with the same VLMX has to go 10 percent higher in terms of threshold. Again this is why extrapolating from threshold doesn't work.

49:36  And then we also have above 80 percent of VO2MX. So what we did here clamping or fixing the VLMX percentage, we ensure that they all have a high aerobic stimulus, a high percentage of VO2MX, which is what we wanted in the first place. But what you can see is that the percentage of threshold is vastly different. Right? So let's have a look at how this is with the high VLMX guy. You will see again much much different different picture here. Much better, much better now. Remember before in the threshold-based interval,

50:19  this athlete had only 74 percent of VO2MX for his intervals. So below what is considered in the literature as being effective. Now with this way to set the training zone, he goes to 85 mid-80s. Conserving VLMX, so no harm on VLMX, but you can see the differences in threshold obviously is much much different. So what I showed you is that the solution to finding the right training intensity here, depending on what you want to do, improving VLMX or not improving VLMX, lies in setting up the training intensity, not based on a threshold, because the threshold sits at so many different

51:07  percentages of VO2MX, and you can argue even more VLMX, that it will be misleading. It will create entirely different training adaptation in different athletes. Prescribing it, for example, like we did here, based on VLMX, so that you don't have to worry about that you get unwanted changes in adaptation in VLMX, gives pretty stable VO2MX stimulus across all athletes, one or two percent. We don't have to argue about that. And it just is then resulting in different percent of thresholds, which you really should not care about. So a different way to set up those intervals to ensure that the training

51:51  stimulus that you want is the same, independent of what kind of metabolic profile, what kind of athlete phenotype you're looking at. So that's what I wanted to show today. Sorry that it was a little bit longer again, like 15 minutes, like I always say, I try 45. And I know there was a lot of information. Again, there is a recording, we're going into questions now. And I can just emphasize if, you know, there's questions afterwards that come up that you didn't understand really how this works, how to set it up,

52:29  then always reach out afterwards. Okay, I'm going to look at the questions now here, and going to start answering those. So if you have other questions, remarks, something that isn't quite clear whatsoever, don't hesitate, okay, bring it on. Now's the time to start typing while I'm reading the ones that I've already got. So Jonathan here, let me read. Okay, so interesting and tricky one. So Jonathan trains athletes at an altitude of 2000 to 3100 meters. And the standard VO2 ride is a hill of 53 kilometers. And the question is, if the training intensity

53:25  responders will be the same. The athletes are attitude adjusted. This is the key part here. This is the key, the key things that you mentioned, they are all attitude adjusted. So that means that the attitude adjusters, you can set up those training zones, based on performance tests, or that you do at altitude, because they adapted to it. Now, if I understand you're right, you're 53 kilometer climb. If it's going up from 2000 meter to 3100, then yes, you should lower the intensity based on how high they go. It's quite a common thing for example, to do an altitude training camps to test the sensitivity for

54:15  that altitude. And then you have to lower the intensity. If you can, it could be interesting to go, let's say, if I understand right, people adjusted to 2000 meters to go lower below 2000 meters, and do those high intense intervals there. Because then you might see an even better aerobic training stimulus.

54:42  Let me see if the cyclist shows lactate spikes at lower watt, but is able to continue the test to a much higher power. I'm not sure if I understand the question right. If the cyclist shows lactate spikes at lower watts, but is able to continue the test to a much higher power of the VO2 max and lactate threshold test. Ah, so okay. So if you see high lactate, depends on what high lactate means for you. But if you see an increase in lactate, that's the low intensities. It's, if it's a running test, then it's often people need to adjust

55:14  running of the treadmill. So it's a running economies, energy demand thing. Often, no offense, it's an error of measurement. And in some cases, it could be also, besides the running economy, that if there isn't a warm up, that the aerobic metal is a little bit slower, the lactate shuttling is a little bit slower, and therefore, you might see some weird results in the first steps. But then I would just continue. George is asking, how often does an athlete have to test VLMX? Does it vary a lot in a six week block,

55:46  let's say? A great question. That is not so straightforward to answer, because it is a little bit depending on what adaptation in VLMX you provoke. So if you have what I call, it's not scientifically correct, so take this a grain of salt, what I call a functional adaptation, where you just reduce glycolytic activity, glycolytic enzymes activity, this can sometimes be achieved by calorie restriction, or by also carbohydrate restriction. And that is something that can change glycolytic activity within two weeks, but then it also flips back once you bring the nutrition

56:28  side, the diet side back to normal. A more structural adaptation in terms of changing muscle fiber types, or changing enzymes. Because of training adaptation, you can see first adaptations within four weeks easily, and then more stable ones, let's say after eight weeks. If you really have a training that does a great impact. Okay. Often the impact in training, if you don't change training radically, it's the differences are smaller, and then therefore you might want to wait longer. So to give you, try to give you one answer that works,

57:11  if you have drastic changes in training, you should test VLMX after about four weeks to see if you're going in the the right direction, and then full adaptation after two to three months. And if you have smaller changes, then looking after four weeks is likely not going to do it, then you likely want to test first time after six to eight weeks. Rajatmi is asking how do we measure VLMX? Well, that's a whole different topic. Those of you here who know me will know that I developed the first 15 seconds protocol for that more than 20

57:49  something, 24 years ago. And that was the first version, and it's not super accurate and not super reliable. We do this with either lactate test or sprint test to really get a more accurate VLMX here. Mark, good to hear from you again. How would you treat a scenario VLMX 50, VLMX 0.45? I guess you're asking for a friend, but want to decrease VLMX to 0.3. So I would deal with something that I'm showing you here. I would set up a training zone that is surely below 10%, maybe go to 8%, and then increase

58:31  duration of the intervals longer so that you can climb up to a higher VO2max. And so seal the intensity at 8% VLMX if you just want to be on the safe side, so to speak. And then increase the training stimulus on the aerobic system by longer intervals and by more intervals. Kai, yes, see you in Tempe, looking forward to it. Tempe, we have our next coach camp, which is much more in depth compared to this one here. Christopher, who could be able to get one of 50% FTP for four minutes? Would you start with one

59:11  minute of us? Yeah, great question. So I'm not saying that everybody's able to do that, but I mean, you're referring, let me change the screen here real quick. You're referring to this guy here, right? So you can see the lactate concentration after that, and that will be close to max. So this one here, six minutes, likely not possible. The number is high and it's likely in almost an all-out effort. So of course, you can jump to this one. You will still have 83% VO2max, so it's maybe more advisable to go

59:42  this one here. One thing to keep in mind here, this guy, this profile, will likely have no problem to reach 15 millimoles of lactate. So on the first glance, it could feel super high, right? I guess this is what I'm reading in between the lines. But for this athlete profile, it's likely doable. However, if I would be to design a training program, looking at this, I would also likely go more towards a two-minute interval and therefore do more repetitions.

1:00:18  Mathieu,

1:00:23  not quite sure if I understand your question. You work in a hospital with a CPAP. Can we use this system? How its valuation between the two? 90% population. Ah, yes. So you can use it, of course, with non-athletic population. Not a problem at all. You will have like the same accuracy. Just of course, the numbers will be lower. But in general, not a problem at all. We do have hospitals who work with our systems and sports physicians. So not a problem at all. Yes. And you can put in your CPAP data as well. So you can put in your measured CO2 and

1:01:11  measured CO2 and so on into the system as well. And then it can use that to also get running economy if you're interested for the athletic population and so on and so forth. Absolutely. Jonathan, what is a good RER range to look for? And what happens if RER is 1.5? What's that indicate an error of a trained athlete? So the first part of your question, good RER range, not possible to answer. It depends on what you look for. An RER range of 1.5 during exercise can happen, but very likely

1:01:47  an error of measurement after exercise depends on the exercise. Yeah, yeah, could be. A good range, again, depends on what you want. One thing to note is that what is often overlooked, maybe going back on my newest question with the CPAP here, is that RER is, in contrast to lactate, much, much, much more affected by actual nutrition. Like you can change your RER from, you know, you can jump on a bike on a treadmill exercise before breakfast in the morning and you have an RER of whatever, let's say 0.8.

1:02:26  Then you get off, eat a banana and drink a Coke or orange juice or whatever. So put in some carbohydrates, go back at the same intensity and your RER will be close to one. So just be aware of that, Jonathan, that the actual nutrition, unfortunately, has a huge impact on RER, which means if you're interested in measuring effects on acute nutrition, RER is great. If you want to understand in general, how good is the fat and carbohydrate metabolism of your athlete, RER is very difficult because of

1:02:58  that sensitivity to nutrition. George, does VLIMx need to be tested for every sport, independent running cycling or can we deduct from one sport? Well, it depends on what accuracy you want. So if you have an athlete who, let's say, has a running of VLIMx of 0.5, the athlete is not having, not going to have a VLIMx of 0.9 in cycling likely, that would be very uncommon, but they're also not exactly the same. So if you want to have an accurate, yes, you would have to do it in all sports

1:03:31  you're interested in. If you just want to have a ballpark number, then one would be good enough. John, nice to hear from you. Just to clarify, the varied intervals are better at increasing time at VLIMx, but have to the challenge of stimulating the VLIMx too much and setting back a low VLIMx athlete. I hopefully, yes, you are wording that better than I do. Yes, so the VLIMx intervals, if set, basically, this is a takeaway. If VLIMx are set, VLIMx intervals are set based on threshold, because the threshold sits at different percentage of VLIMx for different athletes,

1:04:13  you will not hit it safely correct. So you will not hit the correct percentage VLIMx for all your athletes, because they all have a different percentage at which the MLSS sits in terms of VLIMx. So that's the first problem. And then the second problem where it gets complicated is because the VLIMx is also different, you will see different VLIMx stimulus. And the fix for that is set up the intensity based on VLIMx, depending on what you do. So you go into the training zone builder, and you do,

1:04:45  let's say, 10% or 8% if you want to be safe. Set this in for the people who want to lower their VLIMx, and for people who want to increase it, set it to 20%, you get the intensity. And then you do what I did here, you look at different durations, and then you pick the one which you can use to prescribe the training. Artem, could you make a set of relevant articles concerning this tablet bar? Artem, I hope I had two articles, two blog posts, if that counts as an article. I had two blog posts lately, part one and part two, and I hope it's relevant for this one. If you haven't

1:05:25  you'll see it, please check it out. Jonathan, RER question is a reference to a VLIMx test. Okay, yeah, then VLIMx test 1.5 is pretty high. I go here with Rourke, who was already jumping on that saying 1.15 to 1.2. Yes, this is what you would see after. That's why I asked, I don't know if you know what you mean for during or after the test. During the test, 1.15, 1.2 is what you would see in the Everest population. I have data on Vingate tests, where we do like 30 seconds all out or 90 seconds all out, where it can jump for high anorexic athletes, it can jump to above 2, but only post-exercise, post-test.

1:06:14  Frank, is the four-day camp in Switzerland and or in Milano? Oh, four-day camps are, I would say everywhere, but that's not true. So we do have, we don't have a four-day camp in Switzerland. We do have a four-day camp in Milano, which is later this year. And then we do have upcoming four-day camp in Tempe, Arizona, which I have to admit is maybe one of my favorite ones, because we do it in collaboration with USA Triathlon. So we also test elite athletes and we do have like Ask Me Anything session with the head coach of the 2028 Olympic program.

1:06:51  So it's a little bit extra, so to speak, when it comes to the Tempe one. The other ones, we also had guest speakers. For example, last year, the one in Manchester, we had a guest speaker from Bora. And in Belgium, we had a guest speaker from the university there. So we do have these mixes. And the camps are in Leuven, Belgium in May, in Vienna, in Austria in May, in Milano later in the year, and in Manchester in the UK. So, Tobias, is Tempe's feed spot intervals a good region to decrease VLA max?

1:07:31  Great question. In general, it should be. It's highly dependent Tobias on the nutrition. So nutrition part pays a big, big party, a big overlook part. We will have a lot about this and those camps. So nutrition is one, as we just talked about, that's one major thing, how nutrition can amplify or change the training effect of depending on what you do. In general, it should be. Yes. But it is not that simple. It's too long to answer here. It also depends on the total training volume, what is the nutrition and how you combine this with the interval trainings.

1:08:16  So putting the pulse in here and then we are now taking, I'm waiting for, let's say, if there's any other question. I see some people, which is also obviously totally fine, already opted out, which is cool. So, any more questions, let me know. Otherwise, I hope you liked it. Again, recording available. Any questions, please reach out. And my view is coming back on the RR. So, Sebastian, I can put in RER values and receive a prescription analyzer. Do you need two more parameters starting from CPAT? Okay. Yes. So you can put RER values. No, no. You can put in VO2 and VCO2.

1:09:03  We always require lactate, my view. If that is a deal breaker, then I'm sorry for that. But you would have to do it with lactate. If I do recommend doing it sober, no. Sober and also alcohol, of course. Nutrition, no. I recommend normal nutrition. That's what we normally do. It depends a little bit on the setting. I would argue that our users from sports, physician, clinics, hospitals, they tend to have like a more standardized nutrition protocol because, as you mentioned, it's mainly patients. And then in terms of coaching, what often happens is that coaches are actually trying to more and more.

1:09:53  That's an interesting trend, which we also seem to see from virtual cycling. They try to embed the testing more into the normal training regime. Because if they feel like it gets them a better representation of what they see in real training. And this is what they want. So they want not an artificial testing scenario for threshold or fat and carb combustion or something, but they want something that's relevant to the day in day out training. And therefore, most people have it more like spreading it or including it into the normal training.

1:10:38  Okay. A few more. Great. Stick with me. Some interesting questions coming up. Hit training, high BLMX athletes. How can I calculate the correct duration of the series at 10% BLMX, for example? Is not linear increase of the BLMX? Yeah. So as I said, you need to go into the training zone builder and there you can set the duration of the effort. And the good thing was there to be precise. It also takes into account then that the BLMX would decrease because of the high allactic concentration and stuff.

1:11:10  So you need the BLMX and then you need to understand what is the, you know, glycolytic activation during an effort and how much it will go down, so to speak. I think Michael's question here is a little bit similar. I'm going to read it in English. So he's asking how to understand the 10% utilization, so to speak. If I have a sprint test and he has a lactate of 30 millimoles, then 10% BLMX is not 1.3. No. Okay. No. So let's say your VLA max is just to make a number 0.5, like we had in the examples here.

1:11:47  0.5 millimoles per liter per second. So your BLMX. And then during any effort, during any intensity, I can show it to you here if you're still with me. During any intensity, you do have a certain lactate production, right? So this is this red curve here, which I showed before when I showed this threshold. Okay. So let's imagine, just to give you an idea, your VLA max is 0.5 per second, which means multiplied by 60. It is 30 millimoles per minute. So then here you can maybe see below the graph for this athlete at 300 watts.

1:12:30  You can read from below the lactate production is 3. And this is 10% of the VLA max. And in this athlete, you can see that the threshold is here at around 230. And this is a high VLA max athlete. So for this athlete, in order to go to 10%, he has to go from 230 watts is threshold to 300 watts, a little bit more, to get this 10%. So it is not based on the lactate concentration. It is the question, similar to the VO2, right? VO2 goes up as a function of intensity. VLA, glycolytic energy production, also goes up as a function of intensity.

1:13:11  And this is what you want to understand. Exactly the same as with the VO2 max.

1:13:20  Thanks, William, for the feedback. Much appreciated. Scott is asking if the content in the 4-Day Camp is similar to last year. Yes, Scott. It is because it was such a great success last year. We got so many good feedback. We had chems overbooked. We couldn't take people in anymore. And so we decided to do mostly the same. Of course, I'm trying to make it better. I would have a few new slides. You make a bigger emphasis on nutrition, nutrition to increase specific training effects. But the majority, Scott, yes, it's going to be the same because, again, such a great success for actually coaches from all different.

1:14:03  Right. So we had German professional soccer. We had tissue engineering scientists, NFL nutritionists, physicians, coaches all in there. And the feedback has been super. And the, you know, connection and sharing information experience is great. So we kept it kind of the same thing. Christopher, does it make more sense to first raise VO2 max and afterwards lower the VO2 max or lower the VO2 max? I would, I would not go down this road. Sorry, Christopher. I think, and that is also what the people I work with do is to look what is the most limiting factor?

1:14:51  Like where can you improve, where you get the biggest improvements of the athlete in terms of performance and work on that. And the question if you should do more of your first VO2 max or first VO2 max is basically a question. What has the biggest impact? Maybe it's a question of time. How much time do you have? But I would look for what offers the biggest room for improvement and then go for that. Is the approach, Paul is asking, is the approach the same for different levels of VO2 max?

1:15:21  All the runners see their VO2 max go down? Yes, it's a very similar approach. I would argue that interval training, this older people to improve VO2 max will even be more important because the effect over like steady endurance training will be even bigger. Likely because you've seen it here and there's a lot of data around that. It should have the better effect on stroke volume and stroke volume and cardiac output is going down with age as well. So that is one reason why I think the effect with old people should be better.

1:15:59  Another reason is you have higher force because you have higher power, especially in cycling, but have higher force. So you also have a better strength effect from that. So there's a lot of reasons why, especially with older people, it will be the same. The issue is, I don't want to sound like a broken record, that with older people, the VL max is also a tendency to go down. And then what I showed here today is getting even a bigger problem because their percentage utilization of VO2 max at threshold can be significant.

1:16:36  And average is significant different to what it is in younger athletes on a younger population. So therefore prescribing generic default intervals based on threshold can in average, you know, fool you or like create even more problematic, more inaccurate training zones as I've shown here. Last question to the test and raise nutrition. This caffeine in bicarb, a great question. Again, the general answer to that, Matthieu, is you want to test in the conditions in which you want to use the data. So similar to the question about altitude, if you want to use the data in altitude, test in altitude.

1:17:21  If you always train on caffeine and bicarb, do it with that. If you don't, don't. If you always have caffeine and no bicarb, do it like this. That would be the recommendation. Same goes for, you know, testing on a trainer or testing outdoors, so on and so forth. Thomas. Hello, Vester. Thanks for the interesting presentation. I saw the camp in Hamburg is only in German language. My question is if you know if there would be another certificate to other camps because it's only in German and not an international language like English.

1:17:52  Ah, yes. So I will be there in all the camps. To your second question. It's unique, by the way. Normally, all the camps last year Frankfurt in Germany was also in English, but we had a lot of people requesting to do it in German. And because I'm German native, we say, OK, let's do Hamburg in German. Sorry for guys from Scandinavia. All the other camps are in English. And I'm the main teacher. As I said, sometimes you have my guest speakers, but all the other ones are in English and the certificates are for all the same.

1:18:23  Talking about certificates. We have a lot of people asking from, you know, certificates for different federations for different institutes, institutions. And it's normally like we haven't had one that was rejected, neither for some sports physicians or triathlon federations or cycling federations or physiotherapists. Normally, when you give a certificate, it has been accepted everywhere thus far. So, OK, running out of question, running out of voice. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Again, any questions, if you want to learn more, reach out, please. OK. And then I hope I see you again in the next webinar or maybe one of the camps.

1:19:09  Again, if you want to check out the camps, do so. Maybe one word about the camps. One word about the camps, maybe, is that the emphasis, so to speak, on the camp is, OK, yes, you are coming back. I see that. Yeah. Camp is fantastic. Thank you. So, on the camp is really that you walk away from those camps. And what we want to make sure is from a coaching perspective, you walk away and you are able to look at the metabolic data, look at the phenotype of the athlete, who you have in front of you, and hold that next to what the athlete is trying to achieve in terms of, you know, what they want to do, a sporting goal, run a marathon, whatever.

1:20:03  And immediately know which kind of training to prescribe and why. So, if you want to understand why should I prescribe more long, slow distance, high carbohydrate, no carbohydrate nutrition, yada, yada, yada, this kind of stuff. And this is exactly what is, I would argue, one of the main outcomes of the camp. If you expect the camp to be more like, oh, there's a philosophy to do what's it called, polarized training or speed sport training, or if you expect it to be more like, you know, I'm going to share the experience of what I did with my own athlete, then don't come.

1:20:43  That is a side note that can happen. But it's primarily really about evidence based training and ensuring that you leave the camp. And again, you're able to look at data of an athlete and say, immediately, this is what I want to do. This is what I need to do with the athlete in order to improve performance. So, thanks again, everyone. Any other things, reach out. I'm going to stop here for now and wish you a good evening, a good rest of the day. Any questions about what we did here with intervals and stuff, reach out.

1:21:22  Check out the camps and check out for upcoming other webinars and articles. Thanks a lot. Cheers. Thanks a lot. Cheers.