Creating individual physiology based Winter Training: From Data to Tailored Programs

0:00  And the second thing is that maybe somebody else reads it and has, you know, maybe a similar question or another question which builds on your question. And this way we will have a better interaction here and hopefully a deeper discussion, so to speak. Okay. So with that, again, thanks everyone for joining and welcoming in. I think kind of reaching a saturation of people joining this webinar. So therefore I would like to start this, the presentation part about creating individual training programs, winter training programs, which are based on the physiology of athletes.

0:49  Okay. I hope you can hear me good and see everything good. If not, again, please go into the chat here. Okay. So with that, what do we mean by this or where do we come from when we want to set up winter training programs? It's obviously or actually not so much different than it is to training programs in spring or summertime. However, for most people, especially living in the northern hemisphere, it is crucial or maybe more crucial than the summer training because often people can even invest less time into their training.

1:35  So therefore the training. So therefore the training that we need to do is, well, needs to be more efficient, you could argue. And the other difference in winter training is that you can have the time, assuming that they are, you know, we are talking about summer athletes like triathlon, cycling, running, and so on and so forth. So winter time is a time to really work on, you know, deficits or really work on improving something. What I mean with that is that in summer training time, you might want to do trainings, for example, training the gut or race simulations or something like that, right?

2:13  Which are maybe trainings which are not directly related to the physiology of the athlete, but more related to the race demands. Or you may have training which are more, you do more for psychological reasons, whatever, let's say 30 kilometer run efforts as a preparation for a marathon. You could argue that this is, besides trying the nutrition and stuff, it's one big reason why you might want to do this is for psychological effect and getting used to the distance and really that you need it to increase a physiological metric like Viotamax or something.

2:53  So that is different as winter training, right? We need to be more efficient and we need to be, or we can and should be only focusing on, you know, weak spots that we want to work on for the next season. And or another aspect could be to just maintain as much as possible the performance of the athlete during the winter, right? Because again, often the training volume is lower, okay? I'm not going to talk about technique training, even though it would have a place here when it comes to swimming technique or running technique, okay?

3:31  I'm going to focus only, as the name says, on the physiology of physiological adaptations. Okay, so when we plan a winter training, what we want to do is we want to start, as always, at the end. So we want to think about and look at what do we actually, you know, want to achieve? What is our goal, which we are trying to achieve with said training, okay? And then this will inform everything else. And again, because it's winter training and we don't have any races, likely again, assuming we are talking about summer sports here,

4:12  which most of you will be working in or practicing. There are supposed to be no races and therefore we can really focus on physiological adaptations. So how are we going to do that when we say start to the end? How does the process look like? So first, we need to identify what are our training goals. Basically, so to speak, what is our targets? Where do we want to end up? Where do we try to go, so to speak? What do we try to achieve? And then in order to map that out, you need to look at, okay, where are we currently?

4:53  What is the current state of my athlete? And then the art or the more difficult part, you could argue, is the connection piece in between those two.

5:09  How do we connect those two dots? How do we connect where we are currently with the athletic performance to where we want to go? And I'm going to use use cases today. I have prepared two example use cases where we are going to get into very specific training programs, exercises for some athletes. Normally, we don't do that, right? Normally, we keep things more broad and more in general. But for this webinar today, we really have, we really, really dive into specific use cases, into specific athletes. Hopefully, it allows you also to take something away from the less general approach, so to speak.

5:57  So when we talk about performance, then many coaches and athletes look at something like we see here, some kind of power duration curve. It could be a speed duration curve. So what this tells you, just to bring everybody on the same page, is what is the maximum power output or could be running speed, okay, on the left, on the y-axis as a function of the duration of the exercise. So obviously, shorter durations here on the left means higher speed, higher power output. And then longer duration on the right means obviously less power output.

6:37  And you could argue what you want to see is you want to see a change from this red curve, okay, to the black one, which basically means for any duration of exercise. So for sprinting on the left to durations of a few minutes here or here up to, you know, threshold values up here, there's an improvement performance, okay? This is what the difference of red and black show you. Now, that is really a great tool and an easy-to-use analyzer to understand how athletic performance changed, for example, right, power output or running speed over a certain time you might be interested in.

7:18  However, it is not telling us why that changed, okay? Because what I'm trying to say is that the metabolic changes, the physiological differences that increase the power for five seconds, for example, over here, which creates this difference. The physiological traits that create this gap are more or less entirely different, completely different to the metabolic traits that create the gap over here. So what are we looking at here? At the very short term, one second, two seconds, beside the methodology on how to measure that, you could argue that you're looking primarily at neuromuscular performance.

8:06  When it comes to a few seconds, from five seconds approximately up to 20 seconds or also a little bit longer, but in this domain, the biggest portion of the power comes from the glycolytic system. So from breaking down glucose, glycogen in this case, and to lactate, and therefore producing energy or ATP, if you want to take it this way. Then when it gets a little bit longer, you have two systems. You have the buffering system. So buffering means like the ability of the muscles of the body to deal with a drop in pH and accumulation of hydrogen ions, basically to deal with acidosis, which is occurring in parallel to lactate accumulation here from the glycolysis.

8:56  And already there, when you are close to a minute, so I could actually shift that red box a little bit to the left, already there, it starts with a high dominance of the aerobic system. And then going longer, the power output or running speed, again, I'm leaving out something like running or swimming economy here, is mostly determined by the difference of the glycolytic and the aerobic system, the difference of the relationship of VL-MX and VL-2-MX. And for example, for longer durations, on the ability of your athlete to use fat as a fuel, because as you will be aware, carbohydrates are very limited.

9:43  So why am I showing this is because depending on what you want to improve during your winter training, right? Do you want to improve the fat combustion and carbohydrates sparing of your athlete? Then obviously, you need to look at more at these systems. If you are trying to improve the sprint power of your athlete, you wouldn't look more at these systems and so on and so forth. So what I'm trying to go here is that it's great to look at the power output of speed, but what you're actually trying to change in training is some kind of these biological systems or physiological traits of your athlete that actually enables this power.

10:29  And this is why I brought this graph to understand a little bit, depending on what duration of effort I'm trying to improve on, I'm tackling or targeting entirely different energetic systems. And so the improve, the increase of speed is not something magically happening. It's not that you would just, for example, go and say, ah, I want to improve my 10 second power or 10 minute power or 10 hour power output in case of an Ironman, for example. I want to improve that. And so you would just say, ah, I want to improve your fat-burning zone.

11:38  And so you would just say, ah, I want to improve your fat-burning zone. And what is the best mechanism to achieve that? What is the best training to achieve that? And so you could say you have to sink around two corners here, right? There is no shortcut in saying, ah, I want to increase fat-burning zone. Therefore, I always have to increase fat-burning zone. In fact, you can look into the literature and you will find that, for example, high-intense interval training, a training where you actually never stay at your fat-burning zone.

12:06  So that's a huge impact in terms of improvement on your fat-max abilities. Okay? So it's, again, sinking around two corners, understanding the mechanism. And that is what we are going to do in the next 20 to 30 minutes here. Okay? Likely 30, looking at the speed here. Okay? So bear with me. So this is why, what we've prepared here for the examples. Okay? Now, to understand which training you want, you need to do, which training is most efficient, you need to understand the physiology of your athlete.

12:42  That is nothing new. That is nothing that is new to inside. This is why people, my athletes, go to human performance lab testing traditionally for decades to understand, okay, what is my current status? And, you know, so to speak, where do I start from? What is my starting point for my training? And, therefore, of course, there's a retest scenario and able to understand how I improve, like, or possibly by training. But what I'm going to talk about now is also how we can use this training to understand better what kind of training you should be doing.

13:19  Okay? And because we had many requests, and it's the first time that I'm doing a webinar this way, we had many requests, not doing it in slides, static, but doing the presentation and walking you through the process in the app, actually. That's what I'm going to do. So maybe it's a little bit less smooth because I need to jump in between different tests. Okay? But again, I'm going to use the use cases and going to show that in the app. Okay? For everybody who's not familiar with that, I will start showing how you get to Z-Stator.

13:59  How do you get to a metabolic profile? How do you get to VO2max, VLMX, threshold, fat combustion of your athlete? Okay? For those of you who know that, sorry, bear with me. You will see something which you likely already know. Maybe you'll see something new. Okay? So there's two ways you can do this. You can either do some kind of lactate-based testing, either in a lab or in a field, and a field means on a running track or on the road, on your bike or whatever, or obviously in a lab on a treadmill or stationary bike.

14:33  And I put it in parenthesis on side because you need someone with you to take the lactate samples. I mean, sorry, let me take this back partially. You can also do it yourself, right? You do have also, for example, I have one athlete who does take his own lactate samples, but normally it would be by someone else sampling lactate in the earlobe, hopefully. Okay? The other way to do it, which I'm going to show you briefly, is doing it by yourself, so to speak, remotely. You have the athlete doing it remotely by him or herself.

15:06  And then the assessment is not needing, it doesn't need the lactate values. It just needs the speed in terms of running, in case of running, or the power values in case of cycling. The test looks a little bit different, but I will show you briefly. Okay? So, with that, I'm going to jump into the app here, okay? And first, show you the power testing piece. Okay? And I'm not going to walk you through uploading the data. I thought about doing that, but I refuse to do so because that's maybe not so interesting.

15:48  I think we can use this table here for, again, everybody who knows about this, bear with me, to understand, you know, how a testing protocol looks like. So, this is a running test, and the athlete performed three all-out efforts, maximum efforts. One was 22 seconds long in this case. So, there's one sprint, okay, which is between 15 and 25 seconds. Perfectly, you should aim for around 20. Then there's an all-out effort in the range of approximately three minutes. And there's an all-out effort of approximately 12 minutes or longer.

16:28  Okay? And so, this is all that's needed. Just those three efforts, either on the bike or on the run. And all of those have to be maximum, and the sprint especially has to be from a rested state. And now, what happens when you upload that? So, you upload that, you have it in a fit file, like from your Garmin or Wahoo or something. You put it in the software. You mark the effort. So, you know, visually mark the sprint and so on and so forth. And then the system can take this data along this gender and some other metrics and calculate not only a threshold value, but also calculate the VO2 max and VLA max.

17:18  And very high level. Again, ask questions, please. Very high level. Let me explain how this works. So, as you might have guessed, a 22 second sprint, but also in combination a little bit with some information that comes from the three minute. Okay. The 20 or the short sprint tells us something about the glycolytic capacity of the athlete, tells us something about the glycolytic power, be more precise. Or, if you want to use a fancy term, tells us something about the VLA max of the athlete. Okay. Now, the three minute one is the three minute effort is an effort which can elicit, which can trigger VO2 max.

18:00  However, not all the power or speed in your three minute effort is from the aerobic energy system, right? I mean, it's obviously some anaerobic energy supply, but knowing already your glycolytic power, knowing your VLA max from the sprint enables us to understand how much of the three minute power or speed actually comes from the aerobic system, how much comes from the glycolytic system, and therefore be able to get a much, much more precise VO2 max than you can just get from whatever, a four minute all out effort or something.

18:36  Okay. It's pretty close by one milliliter ish to a VO2 max you would get in the lab, obviously giving that the raw data is good. And then the long effort in combination is used with the other efforts together to get a threshold value. And there's a built in self auditing system, which is used what you see here. I don't want to go too much into detail because that's not the topic of the webinar, but basically the system, the algorithm checks the data for consistency. Okay. So this is one way in a nutshell, how you can get your metabolic profile again remotely using power or speed only in this case, I've chosen a running test.

19:18  Okay. So this is a, the other way, which is very popular is a lactate test. A lactate test currently consists about of four efforts. And the main difference is, yeah, it's four efforts. It's one effort more than it is, uh, this, the remote power speed based testing. But as you be able to see here from the lactate values, um, those efforts don't have to be all out. We appreciate one all out effort. Okay. But you basically have three sub maximum efforts. So that is a little bit easier on the athlete, a little bit easier to integrate maybe into a training program.

19:56  So the other thing here is that there is a, a great flexibility. So now you see a pretty standard protocol. So we have standard protocols, which we recommend like six minutes, three times, six minutes and one time, three to five minutes all out. But the nice thing is that doesn't have to be exactly six minutes here, right? One effort could be 525 and another effort could be 621 or whatsoever. It doesn't really matter. Okay. Now what happens is here, the algorithm calculates lactate curve, so to speak for each effort, which you see on the left hand side.

20:34  And then it tries to recalculate to match your measured lactate concentrations. Okay. Which is what you see on the right hand side. You can see the curves actually shifted a bit. Okay. The, the, the, the, the, um, the steepness or the slope of the curve is a little bit different. The position of the curve is a little bit different. Right. And you can see that the fitting on the right hand side is, is a, is a little bit better. So what happens here is simplified speaking is the algorithm.

21:03  Now adjust or calibrates to your measured lactate concentration. And by doing so, we are able to decipher and disclose or find out and calculate what is the underlying. Aerobic power of you to max. And what is the underlying glycolytic power via max. In short, again, I don't want to spend too much time on that because we want to talk about training, but it's important to understand where the data is coming from. I think, um, in short, why is it is because the lactate concentrations that you measure is actually the result of lactate combustion.

21:38  Right. Because you have obviously aerobic oxygen, aerobic metabolism going on during this effort. And the more aerobic metabolism have, the more lactate can be combusted. And obviously it comes from a lactate production. And the result of those two, then it creates a concentration. And what we're able to do is we are able to decipher from the concentration, from different concentration at different intensity, actually, to be able to decipher what was the, what was the production behind it and what was the combustion behind it. And then this tells us something about the VLM hex and VO2 mix.

22:10  Okay. So that is the two gate that these were the two gatekeepers, so to speak, how to get to the profiles. Okay. And now what I prepared in these two tests, what is different. Okay. If you now look to the, um, to the metabolic profile of the athlete, again, I have a cyclist here and a runner as an example. Okay. Okay. Now our cyclist or triathlete with a cycling test has a, I would argue, pretty decent VO2 max. Okay. Uh, but for triathlete, maybe a little bit too high VLA max.

22:50  And I will come to that. And that results in a, you know, okay, uh, like maximum lactate steady state or anaerobic threshold. Uh, when I say, okay, is a power output is good, but you can see the athlete is using only, um, 74% of his aerobic capacity. You can say, so what would happen if the athlete would be able to drop the VLM X and everything else stays the same. This percentage utilization would go up. Okay. So this is a, one of our use cases I'm going to look at to, to, to use you today.

23:22  And the other one here is our, uh, running, uh, test. Oh, uh, sorry, my bad. I should have chosen a different athlete here, but uploaded another, the same name. Bear with me. Uh, so different is lower VO2 max, but also, uh, lower VLM X. So this is the two cases, so to speak, I brought for today. One athlete with a higher, uh, VLM X and one athlete with a lower VLM X. We want to look at how the training for those two would look different. Okay. So what we want to do here, because it's winter training, we want to try to keep the VO2 max at as high as possible.

24:09  Why do I say that? Because VLM X is relatively easy to get higher, to increase your VLM X by just training more, by just more training volume. Now that is exactly for most people in the Northern hemisphere, for most non-professional athletes in the Northern hemisphere and endurance sports to be more precise. Is what is very difficult, right? Because of daylight and work and it's getting cold and rainy and so on and so forth. Keeping training volume up is an issue. Okay. Um, so you could argue in the case of the athlete, uh, with the 61 VO2 max, you will be happy if you can just keep it there, so to speak.

24:50  Right. So if you want to decrease the VO2 max, for this athlete, you would hope to maybe increase the VO2 max, but you don't want to do this by the cost of increasing VO2 max. Okay. Why is that so important? Because you could just come in and say, hey, easy. So you could actually take this runner, which we're looking at here right now and do high intense interval training with it, right? Because you can see in the literature, high intense interval training has a very good likelihood to increase the aerobic capacity to increase the VO2 max of the athlete.

25:24  But it comes with a risk that you now increase the VLM X and increasing VLM X will result in a lower threshold, lower threshold and lower fat max and therefore more carbohydrate combustion. Okay. And I've prepared that here to show you in case of the running test of the cycling test. Sorry. So what you see here is I took the cycling test. So the guy was a 61 VO2 max and 0.64 VLM X and I created a virtual test. So what you can do is you can actually, uh, yeah, create a virtual profile based on a real one.

26:04  And I just took half of his VLM X. So this is a scenario where I say, ah, let's project a scenario in which everything of the athlete stays the same. We just, we just managed to decrease his VLM X. How would that look like? And this is the dashed line down here. So what you can see, for example, let me point to two things here. This one here is a light blue is the oxygen uptake. So if the athlete would have, again, dashed line is lower VLM X.

26:36  If the athlete has a lower VLM X, which means he has less glycolytic power. That means for the same given power output, let's say he has 300 Watts, for example, the athlete needs to have a higher oxygen uptake because less energy is provided by the glycolytic system because it's weaker, so to speak. Right. That might not be an issue, but what is interesting or helpful or desired by most people, look at what happens to the fat combustion rate in green here. Right. Or to the carbohydrate combustion in red.

27:16  So now because the athlete has a lower VLM X, it means that he produces less lactate, right? This is why oxygen uptake has to go up because there comes less energy from the glycolytic system. Now, if he produces less lactate, the only source of lactate are carbohydrates, glycogen or external glucose. Because of that, now what happened is that obviously there is less carbohydrate combustion. This is why the red curve shifted to the right. And if the athlete combusts less carbohydrates, then he needs to combust more fat.

27:53  And you can see the difference is tremendous, right? We are talking about here a fat max of 220 Watts with about 550 kilocalories. You can read from below the graph. And before it was 50 Watts less and only 380 kilocalories. So again, just if you're not familiar with that, showing you as a magnitude of change or the importance for, for example, in decreasing VLM X for endurance capacity. Assuming that most of you will be familiar with that, yeah, it's very obvious that I want to increase my, my VO2 max.

28:32  Okay. Okay. So this is the background, why we do vary, why we do care about what happens to the VLM X of an athlete. So again, going back to our runner, where we want to improve, increase our VO2 max. So we cannot just go and hammer him this high intense interval trainings because it's a high intensity. There's a fair chance that that's a VLM X would be, would be going up. And as we've seen, that's not what we want. Okay. So give me one second. Excuse me.

29:12  So what do we do now? That's the question here, right? Ah, Jiri has a question here. Let me come, let me come, let me come back to that. Great for, thanks for sending the, sending in the question. Okay. So what do we do now here? There's one thing I want to deliver, which you cannot read directly from the software, at least as not as for now, but what is an important background information. Okay. For, for training. So I already dropped one thing that is that high intense interval training, you know, increases VO2 max in many, many athletes.

29:53  Okay. And what is shown is that the time you, the time the athlete spends at high VO2 max is, is crucial. So for example, ballpark, but you'll find a literature staying at 90% of your VO2 max. Okay. That's one thing. The other thing we need to talk about, as I also indicated, it should be quite obvious that the idea of training is I use a system. I put stress on the system and therefore the depth, just as I mentioned, this likes a percentage of VO2 max, right?

30:26  If you go to high intense interval training, you'll go to a high percentage of VO2 max or even hit VO2 max and therefore the system adapts. The same is true for the VLMX. If you trigger high lactate production rates, if you use your VLMX a lot in training, it will adapt positively. So it will increase. Okay. So that's the general principle of training you need to remember. Now, what is also important to know is that there's different athlete phenotypes or especially different athlete types in terms of muscle fiber composition.

31:06  Okay. So athletes with a high VLMX have a higher percentage of fast-fetch fibers and vice versa. Athletes with a lower VLMX have a lower percentage of fast-fetch fibers. And fast-fetch fibers react pretty good in terms of aerobic adaptation. So aerobic adaptation, more mitochondria, more oxygen uptake. Fast-fetch fibers react pretty good to intense training above threshold. Slow-twitch fibers, in contrast, don't benefit a big deal from intervals at a high intensity. So let me, with these three statements, let me try to start painting a picture and then we look in the software and we look into the training plan software of Azum to show what we do with that background here now.

32:04  Okay. So first things first, we have an athlete with a relatively low VLMX. We want to increase, hopefully, his VO2 max. What I just said is, likely this guy is not a great sprinter, right? You can look at the sprint speed from the 20 seconds. It was not that fast. VLMX is relatively low. So you don't, you're not looking at the guy who is a great sprinter. So you could argue, well, very unlikely that this guy has a lot of fast-fetch fibers. So very unlikely that this guy, you know, benefits a lot from super high intense interval training.

32:41  Again, up to threshold likely is okay. And I will show you on the software why and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and confirm that. In the contrary, in the contrary here, this guy, this, the higher VLMX, okay. Will have a bit more of some kind of fast-fetch fibers because those are responsible for this higher, for this higher lactate production. Okay. So therefore, in order to keep the VO2 max of this guy, it actually could be beneficial to go to the high intensities because this will enable him to, you know, see adaptations in the, in this, you know, more fast-fetch fibers that he's likely going to have here.

33:27  Okay. Okay. So how would the trainings and for these guys look like for that? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, some of you will be familiar with the training zone builder, which allows you to set up training zones specific, for example, to achieve a certain percentage in VO2 max as the aerobic trigger. But it also allows you to look at, for example, lactate concentrations after specific intervals, or what we're going to look at today, the utilization of VLMX. Okay. So, here's four, or here's a few training zones.

34:18  This is specific duration. So, staying at this zone for eight minutes, just walking you through the table, staying at this zone for four minutes, staying at this zone of three minutes, so on and so forth. I did put the intensity to something that most people are familiar with, which is a percentage of anaerobic threshold. You could argue, oversimplified speaking, a percentage of FTP. Okay. So, now what you get, you get the power output. We've seen already before, eight anaerobic threshold in this athlete was 270 watts. You might remember that.

34:51  So, staying for eight minutes at 270 watts, so at 100% of threshold, LS sits an average 68% of VO2 max. Remember, before we said threshold sits at about 74%, but because it takes time for VO2 to go up, the average is just 68%. So, not super high, right? So, you could say, I just want a very, very high utilization of my VO2 max. So, let me jump to 90 seconds, 150% here. Let me jump to the highest power output in this case. So, it would be intervals of 400 watts, 400 to 410 watts for approximately 90 seconds.

35:35  You do get a higher VO2 max percentage, but what you get also is a higher trigger, a higher utilization of VO2 max. And this is critical in this case because we've seen it before, right? We looked at it together, what power in terms of what effect size there is of decreasing VO2 max. So, using a training method, using this kind of interval training for this athlete doesn't seem to be beneficial because you trigger a VO2 max by a 15%. If you just jump down to a little bit less VO2 max utilization of 80%, the utilization of VO2 max is only half approximately, okay?

36:24  Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number.

36:38  Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Let me give you a ballpark number. Stay below 10% utilization and it's not increasing or likely decreasing. So with this athlete, this metabolic profile, you could say, oh, I do my interval trainings in the winter training. I'm doing at, you know, three minutes here, for example, at 125% anaerobic threshold.

37:05  This is a power output. Boom. Training interval training done. Now you could go further and you can use the lactate production and combustion curve just to show you real quick. Originally, I didn't want to show that. We are also running a little bit late on time already, but you can use this curve here, which is the lactate recovery and the accumulation to then understand how much lactate is accumulated and use the gray curve here to understand how the recovery should look like. So, but the main takeaway is this athlete would, you know, benefit from staying at approximately up to 125% anaerobic threshold.

37:52  It fits to everything we said before. It is significantly above threshold. Okay. It will drive you to towards VO2 max because it's above threshold, but it will keep his VLA max utilization in check. Okay. Now let's look at, have a look at the runner. For the running guy with the low VLA max, we created the same training zones in running. Again, same thing here. We want to increase VO2 max, right? Because with the other one, we wanted to just keep it here. We want to increase it.

38:24  Okay. Now look at this. At the same intensity is three minutes at 125% anaerobic threshold. Okay. You get the speed or pace that looks like a lot of numbers, just, just because we can plot speed and meters per second and pace. But let's concentrate on what happens physiologically with this athlete. At 125% anaerobic threshold for three minutes, he utilizes more of his VO2 max. That's great. That's great. That's great. You have a higher probability that he will increase his VO2 max, which is what you want. So coming with a low VLA max and utilizing it by 14% gives you a very, very high chance, a very fair chance that at the end of the winter his VLA max is driven up.

39:15  And then what you achieved is an increase of VO2 max, but also an increase of VLA max. And if your goal is endurance performance, then the one offsets the other, right? So you can combust more lactate. You could combust more fat. But on the other side, he's using more carbohydrates to produce more lactate. So the effect might be net zero approximately. By the way, if you look at the lactate concentrations, there's no way you will be able to see these issues or the differences in the lactate concentrations, because there's very similar for both athletes.

39:47  If you, if you might have seen this before. So for training with this guy, you would be better off going lower, maximum 110% of anaerobic threshold. Then you stay here and check. You stay with this 80% VO2 max utilization, but you stay almost half. You go to almost half of the VLA max utilization. You can even go to threshold, right? You, you, you miss 5% in the VO2 max, but you can easily stay there for a longer time. So somewhere between 100 and 110% of anaerobic threshold would be actually a very good intensity.

40:26  Keeps your VLA max in check. Very low probability to drive that up. And remember what I said before, people with a low VLA max, low sprint power, as we have seen here, low sprint performance, therefore likely not many fast twitch fibers. So a lot of slow twitch fibers and those guys react better in terms of aerobic adaptation to the lower intensity training up to approximately threshold. So killing two birds with one stone here, you could argue, and you can use these training zones to really find out, you know, what's intensity should be.

41:03  And we come to putting that together in a training program now. Okay. So what we've just learned, let me, let me summarize very quick. Okay. What we've just learned is that similar goals in terms of keeping or increasing VO2 max, and decreasing or keeping VLMX. So the end goal is the same, keeping VO2 max high, getting VLMX low because our use cases and endurance athletes. Okay. The training zone here set up by percentage of anaerobic threshold can go entirely wrong with those two athletes. Right. So if you just use generic 120 to 130%, which in our case, 125 is right in the middle.

41:53  Well, you would drive up the VLMX of the low V, of the, of the low glycolytic guy, and you would keep like these high VLMX of the other guy. And therefore, you know, didn't really gain a lot. So now we have a lot of questions already coming in, how much you should do with that. Let me come to that when we now put it together in a training. I'm going to answer one question real quick from Tobias. Tobias, the time here relates to one single effort. So this, what you see here, for example, the lactate concentration, likely what you're asking would be if this athlete does one time, eight minute or four minute, whatever you see here.

42:31  Okay. So this is for one single effort, what you display here. Okay. So how do we put this together and maybe even take it a step further into, into a training program? Okay. With that, I'm switching to the Azum platform. Okay. There I started the dashboard and I already created some examples here in the agenda. Okay. And with that, I'm going to come to Ragnar's and Ted's question, how much time you should spend. Okay. This will be the end result. Bear with me. I ask you to be a little bit patient here.

43:10  We will come to that. Okay. So I put in two sessions here. This first here would be for the high glycolytic guy. And this one here would be for the low glycolytic guy. Okay. You can see that by the symbols there. This one here is, is, is a running symbol. So these two other sessions, the example sessions I put up for, for the, for the, for the low VLMX guy. And these here for the cycling for the high VLMX guy. And the beauty of Azum is that you can link it to your inside zones.

43:51  So you could have just these very same training zones, which I showed you transferred via an API automatically to Azum. So it can directly take everything, um, smooth, uh, from your metabolic profile and incorporate into the trainings. So the trainings that I would recommend or the example trainings here are, as you can see, is two training sessions combined. And that is on purpose. Okay. So, so one session here, okay. Is our super threshold. This is our 125% anaerobic threshold, which keeps the VLMX, which keeps the VLMX in check because it keeps it below 10%.

44:31  And the use case I'm trying to make here is that, um, you know, it's winter training, right? And so we, I, the example I'm trying to make here, I plant it on a Friday evening. I plant it on a Friday evening and I recommend, and you can have it in Azum as well, where it's calculating the amount of carbohydrates utilized based on the inside profile. I'm recommending to have low to not many carbohydrates after the training. So the assumption here is the athlete has to work during the week, uh, therefore didn't train a lot.

45:09  Therefore, when he, when he or she starts this training on Friday afternoon, they likely have pretty good replenished glycogen stores. That's great because he or she needs that for doing this kind of training, right? Because it's a high intense training. But then what we want to do is we don't want to replenish, um, that, right? Because the next day we are planning. I only plan two hours. You can also plan longer. I only plan two hours in fat max and have a low carbohydrate breakfast. So example, instead of muesli have some eggs or yogurt or, you know, something, something that's not high in carbohydrates.

45:49  And I would come to that why you should do that. I took two hours only. I would appreciate more, but I took two hours only because it should fit to the use case that you maybe have to ride indoors because of weather and you maybe do it on, on Zwift or, uh, my Vooge or something else. Okay. And in order to protect against bonking and in order to protect, protect against, um, you know, a loss in performance, what would make sense, for example, would take, would be to take a protein drink on the bike.

46:19  Okay. What is the reason behind what I just did here? So the reason is on Friday, we get in our, uh, Viotomax interval, so to speak. I don't like this term, but in our case, we explained, uh, you know, that we want to use it to try to drive up, uh, Viotomax. Okay. Um, we get these in on Friday, assuming at least is glycogen replenished. So he can really do the intensity, no problem. Um, and then we want to keep the glycogen stores low. We don't want to replenish.

46:54  Okay. Because two things will happen now on the Saturday ride. Right. We don't replenish carbohydrates. If you've seen by the nutrition recommendations, two things will happen on the Saturday. First, we send the athlete into fat max. So we send the athlete into the intensity, which burns the most amount of fat. And therefore also because fat needs additional oxygen, uh, but have a slightly increased oxygen uptake relatively compared to the other, uh, intensities. Okay. Now starting with lower glycogen, glycogen is a preferred fuel. Starting with lower glycogen will enable the athlete to tap earlier into higher fat combustion rate, even though the training is only two hours.

47:36  So two hours here is in this example, a necessary evil because we assume he's riding it indoors and maybe doesn't want to ride five hours indoors. Okay. This is also why I choose fat max. Otherwise I would have chosen intensity a little bit lower. Okay. So this is how these two sessions belong together. Okay. Uh, you could argue that one is a priming session for the other one. And therefore you could even happen on the same day. You could also do the one in the morning and then the one on an outdoor ride, for example.

48:10  Now. Coming now, finally, to the question of Rachna and Ted, how many of you do of this do you do? Well, if you, for me, training is like, um, you know, prescription of a medication or some exercises I need to do, uh, which I forget to prescribe from my physiotherapist or something. Once you identify the best training sessions, there's much fancy things to do is just pressing repeat. Right. So what I would do here, I would, so to speak, have those two, um, um, these, these two sessions here, um, together.

48:50  And, um, wait a second. So these two together and make a template out of it and say, okay, this is my block whatsoever, some kind of combinations. Okay. And then if I have this, uh, it's called a block. Hi. I, BLMX, uh, guy. Okay. Now when I have said, I can now, um, I can actually now take it and, and drop it, um, drop it in here. Okay. Um, sorry. So here I can just, uh, what did I say? I told you to set a block here.

49:25  Here's it is. So I can just drag and drop it here. And this is what I would do. If you have these kinds of things, if I, somebody, athlete tells you, I can also, um, I can also, um, you know, do, um, I can also do the same on, on Tuesday and Wednesdays, for example. Okay. Then you drop this several times per week. How often do you do that? You do that as much as it's possible in terms of the fueling. It's also fueling. So you put in your, you put in your, uh, your metabolic profile from inside and you can see how much carbohydrates are combusted during this training.

50:03  There's a breakdown. And the honest answer is as much as you can do without bonking. So I don't see if you have enough carbohydrate replenishment, there's enough possibilities to, um, to do this two to three times per week. How many of those do you do? Well, easily, you would easily stay half an hour as a ballpark at the high intensity. So, right. So if you do whatever, uh, four minutes, uh, each time, then you can do seven of those as long as you replenish carbohydrates, uh, well enough.

50:42  Okay. So that's our high intensity guy. Our runner, remember, don't go beyond 110% threshold or maybe 100% only, but you can still do a very similar thing. Um, so you can plan the threshold intervals and then the, uh, fat running or fat makes running on the next day. Same thing, same methodology. You can combine it. However, here, the combination is not as important, right? Because this athlete has already a low VLMX and you just not benefiting that much in terms of keeping his VLMX and check. Okay.

51:23  Um, doesn't benefit as much from this priming and the special nutrition. So you can see, I didn't put the special nutrition in here, right? Um, it is more about the, the training itself. Um, it is more about the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the

52:05  is not, is not bonking. Okay. Um, and has, and has enough carbohydrates. That is, that is basically the most important, important thing to remember here. So with that, sorry for that, I hope I was able to paint you a picture of how you, in these two use cases, how you would go from a metabolic profile or from the test to a metabolic profile to decide what kind of training to do and how to put it together. Okay. Um, I will now soon come to the questions and comments and so on and so forth.

52:47  Okay. Uh, I would want to highlight again a little bit, something that we normally do a little bit different, which is it's very rare that we give such specific sport and athlete types examples. Okay. If you say like, oh, wait, wait a second. This is just like, you know, the idea of this guy or the opinion and what is the physiological rationale behind it. Or for example, what we didn't talk about, uh, is the resting periods, especially for the 125% intervals. How long should the rest be?

53:21  Should it be longer? Should it be shorter? So, uh, what I would recommend to you is we do have three courses in the inside college, which I would recommend, uh, for that. So, uh, there's one about, uh, VL-AMX. It's a focus course. It's like 40 minutes ish. And it explains the general principles, uh, about the mechanisms of decreasing or increasing. Something we didn't talk here about today of increasing, uh, VL-AMX or decreasing VL-AMX. Okay. So hopefully this in combination with the use case today will be, will be very helpful.

54:01  Um, because again, it's very important to us to deliver how things work in general. And what are the mechanisms that say, Hey, this is, you know, our experiences do that or do this. You will find, um, the reasoning behind staying below 10% and other stuff in this course. The other course or the other piece I recommend would be the one about, um, uh, energy metabolism, specifically the one about glycolytic system. Um, and here I picked the one, uh, or here I'm showing you what most interesting here for this training example, which we had today was a part where we talk about or where it's explained how the production of lactate is connected to acidosis and the, uh, the drop in pH levels.

54:50  Um, because, and we don't have the time to dive into that today, but we actually, actually we do have a whole webinar in the college about this. I think, um, is to, is to make sure that you, that you understand well, how the recovery in between the intervals enables you to either, um, trigger your VL-AMX more or triggered even less. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

55:43  So, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so, um, so

56:13  first question was from Jiri about the, um, um, about the speeds. Um, so, the question he has is a very, is a very, is a very common one that in many athletes, the fat max zone is at a very, very low running speed or to bring it even a step further is the base training zone is at a very low running speed. will be, like, in many cases, not even running speed. And that is because the zones, the standard zones are defined by general textbooks reference systems, right?

56:58  So, for example, 1.5 millimoles of lactate, just to say something for base training or 70% of threshold for base training. And at a non-well-trained runner, this intensity is a speed which you can almost not call running. So, what I'm trying to say is that in running, athletes need to carry their own body weight and the minimum lowest intensity, right, is just much, much higher than it is on the bike. And, and therefore, if athletes are not trained very well, very high aerobically trained, then it's almost impossible to stay at, let's say, the lower zone of fat max or at the base zone and still be running, so to speak, okay?

57:47  But because the training volume is not that much, it's not really a huge problem, right? It's, it's just that they stay a little bit higher intensity, they burn a little bit more carbohydrates, they burn maybe percentage-wise a little bit less fat. But, you know, average oxygen uptake will be higher, so therefore, aerobic stimulus will be higher. So, I would not worry too much about it, but you maybe want to create or use, we have some simplified or like, yeah, simpler running training zones. We just have like three zone model.

58:21  I would maybe recommend doing this here, okay? Okay, so the other ones, I think I answered how much time spent in the zone. It is dictated by the amount of carbohydrates burned, so as long as you can fuel, you can easily do, let's say, as a ballpark number, two, if you fuel good enough, three times per week of these sessions. Okay.

58:47  Let me read more. Ragnar is asking, what are the training time recommendations and the correct intensities? So, I think that's about the same, right? When I said, like, try to, try to base it on the, on the carbohydrate combustion. If not, Ragnar, please ask again if I misunderstood. But I think we answered that. Jorah is asking, if I want the athlete to maintain the VLMX more or less throughout the winter, would it be wise to use a combo of HIIT training? That is, you say, stimulates VLMX at around 10% and above and then cancel the positive.

59:24  Yes, likely. So, you are basically asking if you should have a balance of higher and lower intensities. That could be one approach. Other approaches, I would recommend checking out this VLMX course, which I just mentioned, because the principles are explained there, I think, pretty good. So, Juan is asking, how much of the glycogen indicated in the app athletes are able to use? Ah, so the glycogen, this is why we call it the available glycogen. The glycogen that you see in the app is really only the available glycogen, so only related to the working muscle.

1:00:08  So, depending on the fueling, depending on how much carbohydrate content there is in the nutrition as a diet, it can be a little bit higher, a little bit lower. But the athlete will be able to use approximately all of it because it's not taking into account non-working muscle. It's not taking into account the glycogen stored in the liver. This is why we call it available glycogen. So, Jack is asking, you have used examples of low VLMX, low VLMX, and high VLMX. Great, great question. Jack, yeah, of course, you cannot bring all the examples.

1:00:50  It will be relatively similar to our relatively high VLMX, high VLMX guy. Why is that? Because the VLMX, when the VLMX is lower than the 61 we had in our example here, then what is actually happening, it's much easier to tap into that. It's much easier to tap into high VLMX without tapping into a very high VLMX. So, very similar, very similar approach. The only thing that would change is that likely this athlete can go to a little bit higher intensity even, right? So, it would be the same kind of training intensity kind of thing, just maybe a little bit amplified.

1:01:36  Juan is asking, what effect would isometric strength training do to the VLMX? Oh, that's a great question. The answer is not as straightforward. It depends on what other trainings are there and how high the VLMX is. So, for example, if you have a guy with a relatively low VLMX and you put them to a strength training, it could potentially improve VLMX. If you have a pure sprinter, then it might maintain or decrease VLMX a little bit. Greg, rest based on total volume of lactate dilution. I'm not sure if I understand.

1:02:20  Lactate dilution for me sounds like body composition. Maybe you can specify, Greg. Maybe you mean that the resting period is related to the total amount of lactate that is combusted, right? If so, the answer would be yes. Yes. Then it would be correct. Peter is asking that the separate program, the agenda. Peter, yes. So, this was the ASUM training platform, Peter, which I showed, which I used to plan trainings. And I use that because, as mentioned, you can push training zones and metabolic profiles. So, carbohydrate combustion rate straight to it automatically.

1:03:02  There's a connection there. And therefore, it's easy to plan the trainings and check approximately carbohydrate combustion rate.

1:03:14  Let me read to one from Paul here.

1:03:19  Can you give an example of what training strategy you might use to develop buffering for the cyclists? And I said, when you showed us. Ah, that's a little bit getting ahead of ourselves here. We are preparing college courses for buffering capacity. I'm not 100% confident, Paul, in doing so. I dived into the literature, but I would just give you a rough ballpark idea. And that seems to be staying for long. So, the duration the athlete stays at an elevated lactate concentration, and therefore, a decreased pH seems to be one thing we want to look at in order to understand if buffering capacity is going up.

1:04:10  So, yes. That is, so to speak, so far the only answer I would like to give you because I haven't educated myself well enough, I feel, to give you a more detailed answer. But it seems like from the literature I've read and from the experience that we had in training and coaching that the time spent at a high lactate concentration is maybe the most important metric. How high and for how long? And is it more important to stay longer or stay higher? I don't know. Originally, I thought higher would be more important, but it seems that the duration staying at an elevated lactate concentration is actually pretty important as well.

1:04:56  Daniel, what do you think about decreasing intensity intervals for the runner? We've taken some model and then going into starting at 100% AT and then going into 100% and 95%. Ah, yes. So, you're basically starting high and decreasing. Yes, that's a great approach, starting high and decreasing. However, in your example here where you start with 105% threshold and decrease to 95% or 100%, I would argue that this is maybe relatively mild in terms of, you know, the decrease. So, I'm not sure if that's a big, big difference here.

1:05:34  Okay.

1:05:38  Okay. Do you have, Emra is asking, last question here. Do you have a new approach to the order of duration, intensity of intervals for winter training to improve U2MX, like duration first, then intensity?

1:05:53  Well, yes. Based on what I've shown, right? Based on what I've shown, I would argue that, you know, you want to, you want to, as far as we presented here, think about the intensity or the high intense session, so the interval training session, as key training sessions, again, coming under the assumptions that weekly training volume or weekly training time availability is even decreased for an amateur athlete compared to summertime. Right? So, interval training sessions become more important and become the cornerstone of the training program. And then, what I try to deliver here is the idea to use those as a priming session, in some cases, together with some, you know, tweaks in the diet,

1:06:52  and for the priming session to the so-called more endurance kind of sessions. That is what I was trying to tell. So, therefore, you could argue that the intensity is first, and then the longer endurance kind of thing is complementary to that, but basically building on that. So, it's actually a connection of those two, I would say. So, with that, no more questions coming in. I hope this was helpful. Seems most of you guys stayed for the whole time. Much appreciated this. Again, as you can see here, and as you already put in the chat, if you are not a user of Insight yet, and you want to have an example on just running a standard lactate profile test,

1:07:42  the standard incremental test, here's a link where you can do this and get an example. Okay? And just as I wanted to say goodbye, there are two more questions, so let me look at those really quick.

1:07:55  Paul is asking if in the PPD example, if I would have been happy with the fitting. Yes, Paul, I would have been able with the fitting. What I may be not so happy with is that it's not so clear if you should be happy with it or not, but that's something we are working on. We will have feedback on the quality of the test data for the lactate testing soon, soon, I think by the end of this year. And the PPD will follow, so you will see some kind of better information system, and you see the data, which tells you what the quality of the results and the quality of the data is.

1:08:38  But I would be happy with that. Yes. To check that, Paul, real quick, you can zoom in, and you can see the differences in power output. For example, for VO2max and VLAmax, right? The differences in power, think about it this way. A metabolic card measures VO2max easily has a difference of 3%, 4%, day-to-day variation or machine-to-machine variation. So if the difference in the power output and the dots there is around that area or around this ballpark, then it should be pretty fine.

1:09:14  There's one more. Does increasing intensity of the intervals have a different effect than constant intervals? Are going from 120 to 140? Ah, yes, great. So the question is, if I go within the interval, instead of keeping steady, let's say 130 or whatever, trying to go from 120 to 140, what is the effect? Well, there are some different kinetics at play, obviously, because you've already started this interval. You already have lactate accumulation at a drop in pH and stuff. What is a little bit better approach is to do the opposite way.

1:09:57  So start harder and then decrease brings you higher average VO2 utilization. Recording is going to be – recording is available. Yes, Duncan, not today, maybe not tomorrow, but early next week, I would assume. Thanks for the great feedback that this was helpful. So it seems like we want to do more like this. Leandro is asking, REM protocol coming out yet? We have a REM protocol in the PPD that's already available.

1:10:31  And REM protocol, no, we are going to have incremental tests, is that what you mean? So REM for me, Leandro, means like step durations of like 30 seconds to 60 seconds. Does lactate? No. Using this as a PPD? Yes. If you mean with REM three, four-minute steps duration, yes, that is likely coming out by the end of the year. And we're already running a beta, which you can access here during this link, which you currently see on the screen.

1:11:01  Tobias, college? Yes, college is live. You can use that. So that should be answered. Again, thanks for the feedback. Okay.

1:11:13  So only seeing thank yous. Thank you for joining. Thanks for bearing with me a little bit over time. Great feedback. Thanks a lot. If you have more feedback, especially also non-positive feedback, then please bring it up and we can react to that. With that, have a great evening. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you. And