Swimming performance: test protocols & most valued results

0:00  Okay, so welcome again everybody to this webinar about swim performance, testing protocols, and the data that you get from it. And not only the data, because data is one thing, but the information, the results, and the value that you can get from this data. That's today's topic. Okay. So, let me start with looking at a little bit closer, a little more detail what the agenda is going to be. So as we said, first we are looking at which kind of metrics are we actually interested in. Okay, what are maybe the most interesting, most important, most compelling metrics in

0:42  swimming in terms of physiological testing. Then we will dive a little bit into the testing protocols, not so much into like specific protocols of high levels, what the protocol needs to look like, and in detail what you need to take care about. Okay. Then I will give you a little bit of let's say some kind of power user hack, so to speak, how to test smarter in terms of follow up tests. And then we are looking at some examples of the interpretation of the results, how to use

1:16  the results and how to apply those in training, in general, and then ending at how we do it. And then we will do this in the training zone later afterwards. Okay. So that is, again, that is the topics. Number one, physiological testing swimming. What are we most interested in? I picked six for today. I picked the two main or one of the two main ones, the two energy supply mechanisms, aerobic system, aerobic power, how much energy can your athlete maximum produce using the aerobic system. And then the anaerobic brother, so to speak.

1:53  So it's a glycolytic system. So anaerobic power, glycolytic power. I only use the word capacity here because it's connected better to what people know, however, it's not actually capacity. It's a flux phase. So it's a power. So VO2 max and VLA max. Then it's important, especially in testing and swimming, that we talk about energy costs of locomotion, energy costs versus speed, also known as economy. Then we look at maximum lactate steady state a little bit because, but even though I think it's maybe not the most important one in swimming, it is a classic one.

2:28  So I wanted to have it in there. And then we briefly look at aerobic energy contribution, which is something very popular that we have high interest in swimming sports. And we look at lactate kinetics a little bit and how to use that. Okay. And with that, let me start with VO2 max. So how can one measure VO2 max in swimming? The most popular old school, longest time known historical version, so to speak, would be to use a VO2 monitor like shown here in the image. There's a snorkel, for example, during an all out effort.

3:06  However, it's gotten more popular to do the VO2 measurement after the effort. Okay. That is also how most of inside users are doing it, which is basically a method becoming popular in the literature, scientific world already for many years. And which is the method which is used and embraced by many swimming federations. We basically put the VO2 machine on after the effort and use a method which is called backwards extrapolations. You basically look at the offset kinetics of the VO2, how it comes down. And this can this data can then be used to understand what was the VO2 during the effort.

3:51  I'm not going to dive into that here because there's a whole webinar recorded already about this topic. Okay. How to do the data, what's the pros and cons and all the details. So I'm not going to do that right here right now. But it's a good webinar, I guess, I hope, which I would recommend to you if you're interested in this method on how to capture raw data. It's VO2 data and swimming. Another way to do it, which has gotten very popular in swimming actually, is just not measuring

4:24  it in terms of VO2 monitor, but calculate it. And I'm not so, well, I think these terms are very, a bit unlucky because also your VO2 machine does a lot of calculation actually, just maybe not aware of that. And we're going to look at it in a second. And then maybe the third option for me is actually what I feel is the best combination. If you do a combination of measuring VO2, but understanding that there is an error of measurement in, of course, in the method, in the device, because of the practical application at the

5:00  pool and therefore combine it with some smarter calculations. So actually combining measured VO2 and maximum and sub-maximum of efforts, and then combine it with the calculated method, so to speak, basically feeding VO2 and lactate data together into the system. And therefore don't take the VO2 that you measure for granted, let's say you measure 70 in an all-out effort. But be aware that it could be actually obviously 72 or 78 and get basically with a certain combination you would be able to get to a higher precision. Okay.

5:35  On a high level, how is that calculation even possible? Like for some people watching the webinar, maybe being in touch with it since I first time, they might say, well, wait a second, how can you calculate VO2? The only way how you get to VO2 max is by putting on a mask and measuring it. So on a high level, let me explain what's going on here. When you do an all-out effort in swimming, which is represented here as this red bar. So the red bar, the width, so to speak, would be the acceleration and the height would be

6:02  the intensity. And if you would measure VO2 throughout the effort, obviously you know that VO2 increases, this is more or less like mono exponential shape and reaches its maximum and kind of levels off, represented by this gray line here. Okay. And then basically what you would do, you would look at the plateau, the maximum and say, okay, this is my VO2 max. Which means that the area under this curve is so to speak the aerobic energy area, right? The surface of this, you know, red bar here is actually the aerobic energy.

6:45  And the one above here is the anaerobic energy. And what you're doing when you measure VO2 and measure VO2 max, this is a very classic approach. You kind of neglect the anaerobic part and just look at the VO2 peak here, VO2 max, like the plateau value and look for that. And then the other way around, basically looking at the other side of the very same coin is, instead of measuring the aerobic part, measuring the part below this curve, using an active measurement, for example, to measure the anaerobic part,

7:18  and then basically deduct the anaerobic energy from the total energy. And then what's left over obviously is the aerobic energy. On a high level, this is how you could view the methodology or the concept, how you can get to very accurate actually VO2 max values without the hassle needing a VO2 analyzer. Next one, maximum glycolytic performance. VLMX, maximum rate of lactate pressure, you want to call that. Glycolytic power. Why is that important? Well, obviously in swimming, but in all disciplines, but in many disciplines, the duration of the effort is so short that the intensity can be so high

8:03  that a really significant portion of the energy comes from anaerobic sources, specifically from glycolytic sources. You'll be able to see relatively high lactate measurements. Okay. And so the question arose, how can we quantify that? How is it possible to quantify the glycolytic power, the energy over time that is released in the glycolytic system? And the good thing is that in glycolysis, seen here on this graph on the right, there's ATP produced. The production of ATP, so production of energy in the glycolysis, is proportional to the lactate production.

8:44  So actually you can use lactate as a marker for glycolytic energy releases. Just the very same way as you can use oxygen as a marker for ATP release or ATP production by the mitochondria in the aerobic metabolism. So that's kind of the concept. Okay. How to determine that? The most robust and most accurate way to do that is using a variety of different efforts, this lactate measurement. Okay. So you take the lactate measurement, you take the variety of efforts, low intensity, high intensity. It all has to be a significant intensity, let's say above your intensity domain of, let's say,

9:24  I'll call it anaerobic threshold. You need to take into account the total energy demand, talking about this when we talk about economy, and you need to take into account the body composition. Especially in swimming, I would be super careful trying to use single sprint test. Now it is something that is kind of popular in cycling. I know because I developed the 15-second sprint test myself, 2002, so what is that, 20 years ago already? Ouch. So yeah, so 20 years ago I developed this 15-second sprint test on a bike ergometer

9:57  with some very specific settings, which, yeah, allow for a very accurate measurement if you do it the right way, if you know how to set up the ergometer and stuff. You get a very precise measurement of VLMX. However, it is for various reasons, and we don't go into the details here, I guess we might have a webinar about VLMX actually. It doesn't work that well in swimming. So I don't know really of anybody having any luck with trying to do maximum sprints and getting a good VLMX there for methodology reasons in the water,

10:31  and that's a different topic. But that's not the best way to do it actually, especially in swimming. How that works, if you come up and say, okay, how do you do that? Again, a high level. How do you come from sub-maximal efforts to the maximum glycolytic power or glycolytic power of VLMX? It's important to understand that the lactate production in a sub-maximal effort is linked to the maximum lactate production or the VLMX. So in other words, very simple to understand. If you have, let's say, one athlete who is high glycolytic, high anaerobic guy, many FT fibers, fast-twitch fibers, this kind of guy.

11:18  So he has a very high capacity to produce lactate and therefore produce power and energy, the anaerobic, with the glycolytic pathway to be more precise. Then when this guy swims slow, you just cannot get rid of it, right? Just because he's swimming slow, he doesn't have a different metabolic profile. It's not a different phenotype. So when this guy swims slow, he will have a high lactate production. So the lactate production in sub-maximal effort is linked to the VLMX. And this is basically why it's possible to use non-spread efforts to get a very precise, even more precise VLMX.

11:58  The next one here is energy cost versus speed. It's another metric we are highly interested in in swimming. Because the problem of the water having a significant, approximately, depending on air pressure and temperature and so on, approximately 900 times higher density than air. So when you move through water, the energy demand is tremendously higher, which means that any wrong movement, so to speak, will cause a tremendous amount of energy, right? Any little change in your hydrodynamic drag makes a tremendous difference. position in the water and how you move in the water.

12:52  If anybody here is listening, coming from a triathlon background, to put this in perspective, and you are a triad lead or cyclist, and you put on an aerodynamic helmet at, let's say, 45 kilometers an hour, that might save you approximately 10 watts. And this is something where people like to, you know, spend time and money on to investigate it and buy this product. If you would do that at the same speed underwater, the difference would be 9000 watts, just to get an idea on the significance of energy costs.

13:27  So it is very important, but there is a methodology importance or something you need to think about and take into account. Especially in swimming, we are, as I just already mentioned, we are looking at durations which are relatively short, which therefore incorporate a significant amount of anaerobic energy supply. Okay, and what many people do is they misunderstand, mistake energy costs versus speed as VO2 or oxygen costs versus speed. And that's not the same thing. Think about a 50 meter sprint, for example, or even shorter, 25 meter sprint.

14:10  So VO2 that you measure after that is not very high, not because the energy demand is not very high, but because there's a lot of anaerobic energy going on. And of course, the longer the duration in general, the less anaerobic energy contribution will be there. So the more, the better the representation of just measuring VO2 is for the energy demand. But in general, especially in swimming, measuring VO2 alone is not a good representative, not a good marker for the energy demand. Because again, especially at the high speeds, the race speeds, what you might be interested in, a significant portion comes from anaerobic energy supply.

14:47  Okay, so how you do that in terms of testing, but if you want to test for energy costs, you look at, you need to look at different speeds. So you want to look at energy costs at low speeds, at high speeds. You want to take care about the technique, freestyle, breast or butterfly, whatsoever. And as I just mentioned, you want to look at the sum of the total energy. So energy coming from aerobic and anaerobic sources. Okay. And you also want to look at intensities at or close to race speed, because basically you don't want to extrapolate, right?

15:31  The relationship between energy demand and speed looks like this graph is showing you where speed is on the x axis and energy demand is on the y axis. And it has this curve linear shape. It has this curve linear shape basically because the energy, because of the hydrodynamic drag, the energy requirement is a cubic function of the speed. So you have this curve linear shape here for sure. And it's not really nice to extrapolate there. So you need to have all variety of speeds basically to remember, test in all variety of speeds that you're interested in.

16:04  If you're not interested in high speeds because you're testing a triathlete, Ironman triathlete, then you don't need to test at that intensity. But if you're an athlete, there's a 200 meter freestyler, then you better test at high speeds. Okay. And then what is nice doing that, you can directly compare the energy demand. You can see here on the top left is a view to a top. So you can compare the energy demand of your athlete. We're going to come back to that and we talk about how to look at the data and look at the results and get valuable information out of that.

16:38  You can look at the energy demand of your athlete in each effort, we call it runs. So in each effort of a testing and compare it if he or she is above average, above default, above whatever comparison group you have, so to speak. Right. And if percentage of energy is a little bit conceptual for you, you can also express that as a gain or loss in speed. Okay. Let me go back here real quick. So that's coming from this blue graph. So the blue graph again, I show you view to demand better speed.

17:15  And that's, as we're going to see is different and between athletes and training level and, you know, doing technique training and whatsoever. And so you can express the differences when somebody, for example, did a special technique training or improved his or her economy, his or her technique position in the water. You can see that actually, which you can also see in this other webinar about how to measure that. You can even see differences in different suits you put on, right? Different equipments that you're using, different vetsuits for triathletes.

17:51  You can see a significant difference in the energy amount that you can express that as a function of energy or how much speed somebody gained or lost because of a better or worse economy, quote unquote technique or position in the water. So that's very compelling. I've seen many coaches, federations teams embracing that to make a better decision if somebody, if an, sorry, I'm already drifting towards the application, but let me finish on this one. Because it allows you to understand if an athlete should focus more on technique training to improve performance.

18:28  Because maybe he or she already has a high VLMX, high VLMX, whatsoever, but the economy is not very good. Or if he or she is better off focusing on, you know, increasing the size of the engine, so to speak, like increasing VLMX, for example, because the economy is already good and it's already better than comparison group or default. So that's very, very important application and very, very important data. Next one, really quick. It's an easy to think now because we said the energy demand, easy to imagine how this works because we said the energy demand is actually aerobic and anaerobic.

19:07  And then obviously it's not rocket science to come up with a percentage and how an extent at a function of speed is what you see here, right? Again, speed on the excess, how much of the energy is actually coming from aerobic versus from anaerobic sources. And this changes obviously from one athlete to another training regime and all this kind of stuff effects the energy contribution. And that again is something that is of high interest for many swim coaches ever since. Like you can see that in textbooks.

19:41  And it's also important because it allows you to understand which energy system you may want to emphasize in training. If you have an effort which is 90% aerobic, then obviously not so many gains possible focusing on anaerobic performance improvements because the anaerobic system is not really relevant, right? In this effort. But if it's the opposite, if your anaerobic system is accountable for 40%, then of course it makes sense to focus on this in training. So again, highly important in application what you should actually train on or train for.

20:17  Then the next one I wanted to tackle really quick is anaerobic threshold or maximum lactate state and just give you a quick update on what this means. First of all, you see that this line here is this vertical line representing the endo recession is a little bit thicker line. It's not a very thin line. It's actually more like a broad area. I could say on the left hand side, you more have the maximum lactate steady state. On the right hand side, you have more like the VO2 steady state.

20:44  Anyway, around this threshold, when you go below that, it's characterized by blood lactate levels stabilize. That is the idea that MLSS, maximum lactate steady state is the highest intensity at which you can maintain lactate concentration because there's an equilibrium between production and combustion. We're going to look at it. Okay. So below threshold, you get a stable pH, you get stable oxygen update, you get stable creating phosphate, and you can use fatty acids. Above that, you will have more or less time linear increase of lactate levels. Sooner or later, you will have a decrease of pH levels with that.

21:25  So you run into acidosis, so to speak, simplified speaking. Because of that, the oxygen uptake will increase because it's a slow component. And then you have a decrease of creatine phosphate level going parallel to that, and you will see less and less fatty acids being substrate of your energy source. So that's in general definition of maximum lactate steady state and what it does, how the metabolism looks below on the box that domain, let's call it. And you can obviously find that relatively easy in the results, in the testing, not as a fixed lactate concentration.

22:09  Right? So everybody coming back from the lactate testing step test protocol, you will be familiar with the problems that whatever methodology you use to determine a threshold, 4 minimal, 3 minimal, D max, whatsoever, highly, highly depends on the testing protocol. Not here, because it's simply defined as this equilibrium between lactate production and lactate combustion. So what you can see in the graph, we touched on this briefly, and we looked at the VLMX. What you can see is the lactate production has this exponential increase, this curve linear increase.

22:44  So lactate production has this increasing speed on the exact lactate production really, really accelerates, so to speak. And the aerobic lactate combustion is not linear, as some people might want to tell you. It is almost linear, right? But you can see it's leveling off a little bit. That's the blue one. That's the ability to combust lactate. Okay? And therefore, at this point, where I put the same vertical line where the lactate production matches lactate combustion. This is per definition, just logical, your anaerobic threshold. Okay? And that is, you might see, some people come and say, oh, this is conceptual, and how you prove that, and I'm not really, doesn't really resonate with me that the lactate combustion raises the

23:34  amount of lactate, and I'm not really sure how much you can do it. But it's actually pretty well known science. I just quote one here. The Godfather, a guru of lactate testing, or lactate, not testing, but lactate in general, let's say, George Brooks. For example, here you have some results where experimentally shown that lactate oxidation is or was a linear function, more or less, of VO2. It's linear up to approximately 75% of VO2max. Various for untrained or normally trained people, where approximately, where the VO2max lies. And if you look at this graph, you can see that it is linear until approximately, yeah, the threshold of 75%.

24:12  Just to show you another example, this one is also very nice, very similar. So here you see, in this case, lactate, but pyruvate as a product or one substrate that comes out of glycolysis. You can see the pyruvate oxidation and your pyruvate formation. So basically oxidation and production. And by looking at that, it might not be so clear what I'm trying to tell you here. Let me go back real quick. And remember the size and the shape of those curves for a second. Okay. And now if you look at, again, what comes from experimental results from what's going on in the muscle, right?

24:52  That's what I'm talking about. This is the data here is in the muscle. And you can see I've just connected here the pyruvate oxidation. I always connected the top right end of the bar. And you can see that the blue line, right? Connecting pyruvate oxidation blue line is, it's, it's, it's nicely, sorry. Yeah. It's nicely linear, so to speak. And connecting the top right of the pyruvate production, you can see, well, just what you've seen before from your swimming test result. It is curve linear. It's exponential.

25:25  So what you see here in this threshold graph, basically, is, well, even though for some people, it's relatively new, to look at this way as a threshold instead of four millimoles or whatsoever. It is actually what is represented in fundamental science about muscle physiology and how it's regulated. So that's about the threshold. And then the last one is about lactate kinetics. And this one is actually one that is of highly practical application and highly, yeah, high value in practical application. So what you see here is the ability to combust lactate, the gray curve, as a function of speed.

26:05  And then you see the lactate accumulation above anaerobic threshold as a purple curve. And if you're already familiar with that, wait a second, you will learn something new about it. Maybe you are hopefully that you may maybe not have thought about so much. And I'm going to emphasize that. So where does this curve come from? If you go back to the previous one, at intensities below threshold, the lactate, the ability to combust lactate, the blue line, is higher than the production. You could say the gross combustion is higher than the gross production.

26:41  So the delta, the gap between those two is basically what is represented by the gray line. Right. So that is basically this gray area is, so to speak, the additional amount of lactate. Imagine after some kind of lactate accumulation because of a hard effort. The gray area is the additional amount of lactate you could push into the matter. It goes to zero, obviously, at maximum lactate steady state, because per definition at maximum lactate steady state. This is where the metabolism is saturated with lactate and pyruvate. And then the purple area is again the gap, but now on the other side.

27:19  Right. It's the it's the it's the other part of the gap, so to speak, that where lactate production exceeds combustion, this is represented by the purple one. OK, so what does this do for you? It allows you to understand during any kind of effort on the purple line, what would be my lactate? What would be the lactate accumulation of the athlete? Because what you maybe have looked at is that on the y axis, this is minimum per minute. OK, so you can actually read from this graph, let's say here in this example at one point four meters per second, the lactate accumulation is zero point five per minute.

27:58  So after two minutes, it's one minimum above baseline. After after four minutes, it's two and so on and so forth. Right. So you can calculate for so to speak how long it takes to reach a certain lactate level. And this graph then shows you again per minute what would be the recovery. And what I want you to make make you aware of this is all in steady state conditions. And in the real application in a swimming scenario, obviously, you don't really have perfect steady state conditions because an interval is maybe not steady state, but it is maybe 200 meters or 400 meters.

28:37  OK, so hear me out on this one. There is. Some. Yeah. Details on that. OK, what you see here is the actual decrease. At blood lactate concentration rate over time. So what I'm saying here is you pick any intensity on the gray curve, right? You had a lactate accumulation. You pick an intensity on the gray curve and it tells you that this X amount of lactate per minute. And that is true until you add it reaches approximately three to four minimums and then it gets slower. Basically saying easy to remember, I hope that if the lactate concentration is already relatively low, three to four minimums, then the speed at which you clear it is less than what this graph is telling you.

29:31  This is what you see here. You can see it's relatively linear. Take the red one, for example, coming from 12 to 10 to eight to six. The amount of time you need is relatively stable. And then approximately here for three minimums, you can see it's not that stable. It's not that linear, but it kind of levels off. Right. So it takes more time. In other words, it takes more time to go from four minimums to two minimums, delta of two, than it is to go from 12 to 10.

29:59  Okay. So that's something I wanted to mention and take into account. And because of that, because the accumulation and recovery kinetics of lactate are a little bit different, maybe than, but not maybe, but are in the actual scenario can differ a little bit from this graph or will differ a little bit from this graph. You actually, for example, just produced a beta feature or a feature business and beta test, which allows you to precisely calculate exactly, basically enter a time, enter an intensity, and then see exactly at which lactate value the athlete would arrive.

30:45  And then in this graph here, where you have the time on this axis, so the time of the recovery and the speed of the recovery understand exactly. Which duration of recovery and which intensity of recovery results in a certain final lactate concentration. So long story short, in a nutshell, being able to identify roughly with the line graph or precisely for a specific effort. What are the lactate kinetics in terms of accumulation, which lactate value will arrive and how long and which intensity, how much of this lactate will I get written off.

31:29  So that's one another possibility here. Okay, that was the longest part maybe, introducing the metrics. Now I want to come back to the testing protocols in more detail. Okay, so testing protocol, how to measure these metrics. Well, it's relatively straightforward. In general, what is necessary is to get a nice variety of different intensities. Represented here, here you have five dots. Two dots is a lactate concentration. So two efforts of 200 meters, two efforts of 400 meters, an additional, even one, the orange one of 600 meters. So in general, for the protocol, all you need to do is to get different intensities as the most important one and different durations is also in favor.

32:23  Okay, so in general, the variety of different intensity is good. Okay, minimum three efforts. Everybody, if you're already using this protocol, say, hey, why is it not saying four? Because it's minimum three and we are working on an update, which is close to release actually, and this will be enough as this one is enough to do three efforts. So lactate concentration in those efforts should always be about three millimoles. Currently, maybe change this a little bit, maybe be able to get a little bit lower, but currently it's three millimoles.

32:58  And the reason for that, look closely at this curve. The reason for that is if you are lower than three millimoles, you can see that the lactate curves are not very steep. Which basically means that if you have an error in measurement in your lactate of 0.2, 0.5 millimoles, which you easily can get with these handheld devices, for example. Right, the difference it makes on the x axis. So if you move half a millimole in the vertical direction, the difference it makes in the x direction horizontal direction is pretty huge.

33:28  Right, so therefore the impact, so to speak, of an error of measurement in these low intensities is relatively big. And therefore, we don't really appreciate low lactate concentrations. For the same reason, because as you can see, the 600 meters, the orange lactate curve, so this is the lactate curve for 600 meters, but the orange one is steeper, for example, than the one of 200 meters. Because it's steeper, the same principle applies. If you make an error of measurement in the lactate concentration, it's not giving you a big impact on the x on the horizontal direction.

34:04  And therefore, longer durations at 600 meters are also beneficial to get more stable data. But it is not over unnecessary. Right, you can even could even do 300 and 200 or 300 and 100. Depends on the time, think more about the time you come to that. Okay, speeds should be steady. Right, so your athlete should have a steady speed throughout the effort. Come back to that in a second. And it would be really good if there's minimum one all out effort, which is two and a half minutes or longer.

34:39  The idea is that this effort, it should be possible for the athlete to be long enough to achieve VO2 max and hard enough, which is ensured by being an all out effort. In detail, some details for swimming, which are important. Start in the water. Okay, don't have people jump a couple of meters and then coming to point number two, and therefore diving, avoid diving, gliding under the water 1050 meters in a 50 meter or 100 meter effort, or even 200 meter effort. That means that a significant portion, you know, whatever 10% or 5% of the effort is not actually swimming but diving and gliding.

35:24  So avoid that. The default in the software, when you look at the energy demand or the default energy demand, is for a 50 meter pool. When you test in a different scenario, 25 meters, you test an endless pool slash flume or open water, you need to adapt the energy demand default values in case you don't measure it. Of course, if you measure it, then it's a different story. And because the pace needs to be, the speed should be steady pace your athletes, give some feedback for every flip turns.

35:57  I come back also what has proven very nicely walk next to them so that you can, that they can see you, right? Depending on the athlete, high level athlete, the leads athletes will have no problem pacing themselves. Amateur athletes, young athletes might have difficulty and therefore it's better if you, if you make sure you pace them nicely. And with that, you give, before the test, you give a goal time, you give it and therefore is goal speed, the target speed, what you want the athlete to arrive at.

36:28  But if they're a little bit faster or slower, it doesn't matter, right? So better be a little bit off the targeted speed, that doesn't matter for the protocol, but therefore swim steady instead of half way through to speed, you know, recognizing you are too slow or too fast and then trying to speed up or slow down. That's not good. Just really steady is more important. Testing protocol for the economy. So let's imagine you want to test the economy. Don't use the default values, but use economy, measured economy.

37:02  Okay. In this case, you need a minimum of three efforts. Because again, as I said already, it's a curve linear relationship and you cannot work it out based on two data points. You need to have minimum three, the more the better. Go from low speeds to high speeds. Okay. And this is because you want to avoid extrapolation, right? If you are interested in 1.5 meters per second, then you need to test up to 1.5 meters per second. Yeah, at least close to it, 1.45 or whatsoever. Right. And if you are interested in the lower speeds because you test Ironman triathletes or whatever, then you need to test it.

37:38  Okay. Try to not extrapolate a lot. Okay. And most preferred method, easiest to do and most accessible for everybody is the VO2 sampling. So after the effort again, there's a whole webinar about it. So I'm not going to dive too deep into that. Okay. And the last one to think about, we mentioned that briefly when to look at VLA-max, is to have a relatively good idea about body composition. Many people use these Tanita scales, 5.4, 5.5, N or something it is. I would not say that it's basically reliable, so to speak, right?

38:15  The data is pretty good reproducible. So make sure that you keep this in mind when testing. Okay. Now, next topic, number three, how to test smart. I promise a little power user hack, so to speak, which can be very useful, especially in swimming. It's not maybe so much in cycling, but in swimming it is. And let me tell you why, because of the logistics. In cycling, for example, most coaches or triathlon, there's a problem that they don't have much face time with athletes because the athletes are somewhere else.

38:52  In swimming, obviously, there's a need for a pool, for training. So in many more occasions, in most cases, it is easily possible to be at the same place with the athlete and therefore possibly follow up. Basically do more tests, right? Test more often. But then there comes with burden of the logistical effort to test in the pool. And now there is a smart way to do that. Hear me out on this one. So I'm talking about longitudinal. You want to monitor the athlete, right? You want to monitor the athlete over the course of a year or season or whatsoever.

39:29  Okay. So step number one. Just you come from your normal assessment. And this is the data of the very test I've shown you before, two times 200, two times 400 and extra 600, which would not really be necessary, but it is what it is in this case. Okay. So that's your normal assessment. With VO2 measurement or without whatsoever, you have your baseline full assessment. Okay. That's step number one. And you retrieve the full metabolic profile, VO2 max, VO2 max, all of these values. Okay. So that's your result.

40:02  Now, step three is important one. A few weeks, for example, later, a few weeks later, you maybe ask yourself, okay, well, did something already change? Had the training that I prescribed had an impact on the performance? If so, what should I retest again? Relatively easy, maybe because you see your athlete every day at the pool or every week, but relatively difficult because of the overhead setting up the testing procedure. Now, the smart way to do it instead of doing a full assessment, just do one single effort, one single effort.

40:38  What I mean is whatever, 200 meters, 300 meters, 500 meters can be any odd number, takes a lactate before and after. That's what you want. The distance, speed, and lactate exactly doesn't matter, right? Of course, it needs to be within those lines. So don't have a lactate of 1.0, right? Because I said we appreciate values three or higher. But what I'm trying to say here is you don't need to try to replicate any of the testing efforts. And this is a big advantage. So if you're testing, for example, let's say it was 200 meters and 400 meters, but the athlete is more like long distance and his training is more 600 and 800, doesn't matter.

41:21  Or the opposite, right? You test the 200 meters and 400 meters, while the athlete is a sprint athlete and he appreciates more tank and lactate sample after 100 meters. Okay? Then do that. Okay? And then the trick comes by fixing the algorithm to the old result. So you take your data set of the old slash full assessment, you add this one single data point to it, but you fix the algorithm to the old results. So in terms of measured data, this is how it would look like.

41:53  In the previous and the full assessment, you have those five efforts in this case. And then in this case, I just added one. I just added 100 meters here as an extra one. And when I fix the algorithm to the old results and I upload it, then I get something like this. So what happens here is it triggers the software to create another lactate curve for this additional duration, the distance in our case, 100 meters. And the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the curve, the

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44:23  So I use this as part of the new assessment because I have the feeling something is going on. Again, something that's very nicely to do in a team club kind of environment. I was at, come to the last part. Sorry, it's already late. I hope you don't mind. Turning data into information. I'm going to give you a few examples on how to use this data in a practical application because so far we just have data. We don't have information. That's the difference. Some basic knowledge about VO2max and VLMx before we dive deeper.

45:00  VO2max, so the aerobic metabolism, on a muscular level, it kicks in relatively quickly. Depending on the oxygen kinetics, it is an important energy mechanism for events approximately 30 seconds and longer. If your event is 60 seconds, 75 seconds, depending on how quickly the oxygen kinetics work, how quickly the system comes up to speed, it's becoming a major energy source. If your duration of the effort is 2 minutes, then you need a high VO2max. I will have another example for that. Another thing to be aware of, swimming is a full body exercise.

45:46  Be ready to see high VO2max values. High compared, for example, to cycling where you see a little bit lower one or maybe lower because it's only lower length. VLMx, because for some of you it might be kind of a new metric, so give you some ideas. We talk about high VLMx when you go close to approximately one millimole per liters per second. We talk about a low one when you are in the range of more like 0.2, 0.3. So there is a threefold difference, at least three to fourfold difference between the high and the low VO2max.

46:25  Which is, by the way, a much, much bigger difference than what you would see in VO2max values. VO2max you can see at least whatever going from 60 to 80 or 70 to 90 or whatever in one group. So we are talking about a difference of 40% or something. Now VLMx is talking about differences up to 300%. So you can see yourself high VLMx is really needed for a good sprint performance. And on the other hand, if your VLMx is low, there is a very low chance that you are sprinting very fast.

46:59  What does that mean in terms of an interplay? And this is one of the most asked questions. So here is one example. How to understand a little bit better what VO2max and VLMx you need or what impact there is. This is a 200 meter freestyle effort. Just an example, right? It is an example app. It can differ, obviously, if you have better buffering, different body composition, economy. But to understand in general better, you see the VO2max on the left y-axis. The VO2max on the right y-axis. And you have the time, the finish time, the time to swim 200 meter freestyle on the x-axis.

47:42  Okay. So you can see, let me start with the blue line. That, by the way, 102 seconds is world record, right? So in this athlete, this given economy, a VO2max of what is that 85 or 88 or 86 I've chosen. Here's the upper lower end of the blue one. So the VO2max, right? Together with this VO2max brings you to 144 in a 200 meter freestyle. Again, with this given economy and, right? It's just an example. And when you drop, for example, your VO2max by, let's say, from here to here by 10 milliliters.

48:20  So from whatever that is, 86, 88 to 76, 78, then you're losing or this athlete would lose approximately six seconds, right? You can see the x-axis value goes from 104 to 110, right? Okay. To achieve the same loss or the same improvement, the same difference by changing your VLMx because it's a 200 meter effort. Again, it's a big portion of the energy coming from the aerobic system. If you want to see that same drop of six seconds, you would need to go from 0.8 VLMx, upper left hand of the red curve, to approximately 0.3 or 0.35, lower end, right end of the red one.

49:07  Okay. So the effect, the effect of the VLMx on this event is smaller than the effect, obviously, of the VO2max because it is an aerobic event. But what you can also say is that you need a certain VLMx, and I'm going to come to that, you need a certain VLMx to be able to swim that no matter what your VO2max is. I'll come back to that in a second. That's the economy, swimming economy. That is real data from three different swimmers. The oxygen demand, just as we've seen before on the y-axis and the swimming speed on the x-axis.

49:45  All freestyle swimming, it's all 50 meters pool. You can see the purple swimmer, the yellow and the blue one. And the dashed line is the default values. The dashed line is the default values which we're using in the software, which is like everything else from the software. It's coming from the literature. Okay, so you can see that in case of swimmer number three, the yellow swimmer, his economy matches very nicely what you see in the literature. While the purple one, who was actually a not a real swimmer, but I think a triad lead or pentad lead or something.

50:17  The purple swimmer for the same oxygen uptake indicated by those red lines for the same oxygen uptake has a much lower swimming speed. So what this means is that there's two implications here. One is understanding that the purple swimmer would maybe benefit from technique training. The other implication is from a testing methodology kind of perspective. If you run both athletes in the software with default view to max values, the black dashed line, default view to max, the default economy values represented by the black line. And you both test them both at 1.2 meters.

51:03  It will be pretty precise or actually very precise in terms of yellow swimmer because he's an elite swimmer. It's a default energy demand in the software is for elite swimmers. But for the purple swimmer, it's way off. Right. It's underestimating the energy demand by 10 milliliters because the purple one is at 50 and the black one tells you it's whatever. 42 or something. So it's approximately 10 milliliters different. So what this means is that you need to either measure the economy or adjust the settings of the software from elite swimmer to non elite swimmer.

51:39  Very important. OK. And there's something else to use this for. This is to understand the efforts. This graph here is from the software shows the energy demand versus oxygen uptake. So how much energy is needed? Dark blue one versus how much of this energy can be covered by aerobic metabolism. So this is an example here. 1.67 meters per second. It's 200 meter freestyle, I think, in, I don't know, two minutes approximately. I forgot the mass here. Sorry for that. And you can read the oxygen demand is approximately 87 milliliters.

52:17  To swim at that speed. This athlete in this particular case had a VO2 max of only 66. So this is already approximately 120, 125% of VO2 max. And in this effort, you can actually utilize approximately 62 milliliters to cover the energy demand. That's what you can read from the graph. So there's a gap. There's a gap of 25 milliliters. It has to come from somewhere, right? Represented by the blue area. And this somewhere is the anaerobic metabolism. So in this case, what I'm trying to tell you here is that you can work it backwards.

52:57  You can look at what is the energy demand. And then make a decision or find out how much of that is covered by aerobic metabolism. In our case, 62 milliliters. To understand that the gap here needs to be covered by anaerobic or more precisely glycolidic metabolism. And for that, there's another graph. There's a lactate production graph. So you can look at that and understand what is the lactate production here. And then you can understand basically what kind of VLA max the athlete needs to do that. Right?

53:37  Is this in line with the VLA max of the athlete to be able to do that? Let me show you keeping up with this example. Okay. And this is then applying this to training. I stick with the 200 meter freestyle here. Okay. As an example. And where we need this information about understanding the lactate production, how this relates to your VLA max. Okay. So hear me out on this one. That's the last, that's the last, the last case here. So let's say you have two athletes. In this case, you name them A and B.

54:12  Okay. And the first thing to see here is that their anaerobic threshold in terms of swimming speed at four millimoles is similar. Almost the same. Right? So when you test those guys in a traditional way in a lactate profile test, four times, five times, 400 meters or whatsoever, you will get the same threshold value. But because it's just the threshold, the makeup of that is vastly different. Athlete number A has a VO2 max of 74 and the VLA max of 0.7. And athlete number B is lower VO2 max and lower VLA max.

55:02  So what you see here is the effect of athlete A, higher aerobic capacity, quote unquote higher aerobic power. So higher ability to combust lactate, but higher lactate production resulting as at the same anaerobic threshold value as athlete B, who produces less lactate, but is also able to combust less because the VO2 max is lower. Okay. So those two athletes, again, vastly different. Depending on the, well, basically you can see that athlete B has a big room for improvement, so to speak, and the VO2 max and athlete B has a big room for improvement.

55:39  To improve is VLA max or athlete A, depending on what his training for decreases VLA max. Okay. And when they swim, let's say the same training, my pick an example of 10 times 200 meters at 110% of threshold. Okay. 110% of threshold in this case is 102 for 100 meters. Again, go back to the threshold was 110, right, for 400 and 108 for 200. Okay. So now we swim six seconds faster. Okay. So what happens? There's a difference. Let's say they have the same economy, right? So dark blue line, navy blue line, same oxygen demand because the economy is the same.

56:27  Now, because of the different metabolic profile, because of the different metabolic maker, how much of this oxygen is actually covered by aerobic metabolism versus anaerobic metabolism changes. So dashed line is athlete number A and the solid line is athlete number B. Okay. So what changes is aerobic versus anaerobic energy maker. And because athlete B had a significant lower VLA max, his utilization of VLA max is much higher. He swims at, let's say 92% of VLA max. And athlete number A only swims at 85% of VLA max.

57:06  So training stimulus, if you think, for example, about the studies from Rundestad, where he looks at improvements for VLA max based on time spent above 90% of VLA max. Very popular. How much time do I spend above 90% VLA max correlates or gives me some indication on how good my improvement of VLA max is going to be. And these two athletes, again, same threshold, same, same threshold values. And these two athletes, because they have a different metabolic profile, athlete number A is significant below that 90% range.

57:43  And athlete number B has this stimulus that that you are aiming for maybe. Okay. And the same is then true for the glycolytic system. The stimulus, the training stimulus on the glycolytic system on athlete A is less than half of the one of athlete B. So what would happen here, if you go back, athlete number A is a training stimulus on the aerobic system is lower and the training stimulus on the anaerobic system is lower. And for athlete B is the opposite. So what you could well see is a decrease in performance in both systems.

58:20  But primarily VLA max, the glycolytic of athlete A and an increase of performance in athlete B because he stays in the right zone for both VLA max and VO2 max trigger or training intensity. Okay. And for that reason, and I want to show it again, how to use it in a very, very short way. Just hear me out. It's almost done. So what I'm going to do is how to use it in training zones. So it's a very simple example. I think it's very nicely to understand this use case here.

58:55  Okay. So training zone, but what it allows you to do just a quick recap, you choose a training intensity based on whatever anaerobic threshold, VO2 max, whatever. You choose how to calculate it as a fixed value, fixed lactate value or percentage of something. You can even pick a distance because we had swimming and even pick a distance of what kind of training length, what kind of intervals you want to use it for. And then it allows you to look at the physiological effect of that. Let me show an example.

59:27  Okay. Just two zones just to keep it simple. So now we make two zones. So number one is four millimoles of lactate after 200 meters. Fixed lactate concentration. Very popular in swimming. Not saying that it's wrong. Don't do me wrong. I'm just trying to start with something that is common sense. Zone number two is lactate concentration of only three, but not after 200 meters, but after 400 meters. Okay. So this could be your classic training zones, how you set it up. Okay. And now what allows you to do is, for example, look at aerobic and anaerobic energy makeup and look on the stimulus.

1:00:07  How much of your VO2 max, how much of your VL max are you utilizing? That's here. So you get the pace, right? 4 millimoles, 200 meters, 110 in this case. And 3 millimoles for 400 meters distance, 113. That's your pace. And you can see that in this athlete, this is, let's stick to zone number one. For example, that's 78% utilization of VO2 max, 7% of VL max and 82 to 80% aerobic versus anaerobic energy contribution. Now we apply the very same training zone to an athlete with a different metabolic makeup.

1:00:48  Again, trying to bring it full circle. We tested the athlete, we retrieved those data. And now we apply this information for training. Athlete number two has a different profile, different VO2 max, different VLA max, same threshold. speed here. You can see the physiological conditions are vastly different for the same lactate concentration. Again, if you say same threshold, because assuming you base your threshold or whatever, three millimoles, four millimoles. For the same lactate concentration, for the same training zone, the training effect for athlete two is vastly different.

1:01:37  Because he has a much higher trigger on his VO2 max, 86%. Yeah. For zone number two, it's 10% higher. So he is utilizing his VO2 max 10% more than athlete number one. And the trigger on his VLA max is even doubled. So again, same lactate concentration as the training zone, because of the different metabolic makeup, different stimulus on both aerobic and anaerobic system. And therefore, don't be surprised if you get different training results. If you put both of those athletes in the same training group and let them train on the both fixed lactate concentration.

1:02:22  Don't be surprised if, you know, for example, as we just said, VO2 max and the one goes up. VLA max maybe also goes up and the other athlete both goes down or whatever, right? So with that, I'm almost on time. Thank you very much for attending. Hope you enjoyed it. We now move to Q&A. If you want to learn more, go to our website. Again, there's this webinar about the measuring of swimming economy and also some data about it in terms of the effect of different swimming dresses, swimming suits.

1:03:03  Reach out if you have questions anytime or if you want to learn more about training zone builder, how to apply it, either by email or schedule a demo. And with that, I am going to open for the Q&A basically. So there was one question already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already.

1:03:41  If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already. If you have any questions already.