Slyvain Garde's LBP test 30-09-08

[Will]

Sylv - You should calm down and ride in the 15s for the rest of the year

[Robh]

As quoted by Juerg :- One of the most impressive people , where the slower works better showed an incredible change was Mark Allen (Ironman champion). This for me is a typical example of our FaCT IRIS situation . He just trained too fast and too hard and one of the delivery systems ( The FFA oxygen dependent delivery group ) was not good trained, and he never had the ability at the end to keep up with D. Scott. Once they included this system into the workout he was able to give the other system Glucose oxygen dependent delivery a less heavy workload and they had some efficiency left at the end of the race.

[Robh]

Mark Allen on Heart Rate Training
from Mark Allen
Website: http://www.markallenonline.com/Default.asp?partner=dua on January 7, 2002
View comments about this article!


Working Your Heart
The secret of training smart

How hard do I have to workout? How far do I have to go? I workout 2 hours every other day of the week and I still can't lose those last 10 pounds. Why do I keep getting injured when I try to run? These are all questions and comments people make about their training that seems to have no simple solution.

I want to give you that solution. It's called a heart rate monitor. Whether your goal is to win a race or just live a long healthy life, using a heart rate monitor is the single most valuable tool you can have in your training arsenal of equipment. And using one in the way I am going to describe will not only help you shed those last few pounds, but will enable you to do it without either killing yourself in training or starving yourself at the dinner table.

I came from a swimming background, which in the 70's and 80's when I competed was a sport that lived by the No Pain, No Gain motto. My coach would give us workouts that were designed to push us to our limit every single day. I would go home dead, sleep as much as I could, then come back the next day for another round of punishing interval sets.

It was all I knew. So when I entered the sport of triathlons in the early 1980's, my mentality was to go as hard as I could at some point in every single workout. And to gauge how fast that might have to be, I looked at how fast the best triathletes were running at the end of the short distance races. Guys like Dave Scott, Scott Tinley and Scott Molina were able to hold close to 5 minute miles for their 10ks after swimming and biking!

So that's what I did. Every run, even the slow ones, for at least one mile, I would try to get close to 5 minute pace. And it worked...sort of. I had some good races the first year or two, but I also suffered from minor injuries and was always feeling one run away from being too burned out to want to continue with my training.

Then came the heart rate monitor. A man named Phil Maffetone, who had done a lot of research with the monitors, contacted me. Phil said that I was doing too much anaerobic training, too much speed work, too many high end/high heart rate sessions. I was forcing my body into a chemistry that only burns carbohydrates for fuel by elevating my heart rate so high each time I went out and ran.

So he told me to go to the track, strap on the heart rate monitor, and keep my heart rate below 155 beats per minute. Maffetone told me below this number that my body would be able to take in enough oxygen to burn fat as the main source of fuel for my muscle to move. I was going to develop my aerobic/fat burning system. What I discovered was a shock.

To keep my heart rate below 155 beats/minute, I had to slow my pace down to an 8:15 mile. That's three minutes/mile SLOWER than I had been trying to hit in every single workout I did! My body just couldn't utilize fat for fuel.

So for the next four months I did exclusively aerobic training keeping my heart rate at or below my maximum aerobic heart rate, using the monitor every single workout. And at the end of that period, my pace at the same heart rate of 155 beats/minute had improved by over a minute. And after nearly a year of doing mostly aerobic training, which by the way was much more comfortable and less taxing than the anaerobic style that I was used to, my pace at 155 beats/minute had improved to a blistering 5:20 mile.

That means that I was now able to burn fat for fuel efficiently enough to hold a pace that a year before was redlining my effort at a maximum heart rate of about 190. I had become an aerobic machine! On top of the speed benefit at lower heart rates, I was no longer feeling like I was ready for an injury the next run I went on, and I was feeling fresh after my workouts instead of being totally exhausted from them.

So let's figure out what heart rate will give you this kind of benefit and improvement. There is a formula that will determine your Maximum Aerobic Heart Rate, which is the maximum heart rate you can go and still burn fat as the main source of energy in your muscles. It is the heart rate that will enable you to recover day to day from your training. It's the maximum heart rate that will help you burn those last few pounds of fat. It is the heart that will build the size of your internal engine so that you have more power to give when you do want to maximize your heart rate in a race situation.

Here is the formula:

Take 180
Subtract your age
Now we need to adjust this number based on your current level of fitness. Make the following correction as it applies to you:
# If you do no working out subtract another 10 beats
# If you workout 1-2 times a week subtract 5 beats
# If you workout 3-4 times a week leave the number as it is.
# If you workout 5 or more times as week and have done so for a year or more, then add an additional 5 beats to that number.

If you are about 60 years old or older OR if you are about 20 years old or younger, add an additional 5 beats to the corrected number you now have.

You now have your maximum aerobic heart rate, which again is the maximum heart rate that you can workout at and still burn mostly fat for fuel. Now go out and do ALL of your cardiovascular training at or below this heart rate and see how your pace improves. After just a few weeks you should start to see a dramatic improvement in the speed you can go at these lower heart rates.

Over time, however, you will get the maximum benefit possible from doing just aerobic training. At that point, after several months of seeing you pace get faster at your maximum aerobic heart rate, you will begin to slow down. This is the sign that if you want to continue to improve on your speed, it is time to go back to the high end interval anaerobic training one or two days/week. So you will have to go back to the NO Pain, NO Gain credo once again. But this time, your body will be able to handle it. Keep at the intervals and you will see your pace improve once again for a period. But just like the aerobic training, there is a limit to the benefit you will receive from anaerobic/carbohydrate training. At that point, you will see your speed start to slow down again. And that is the signal that it is time to switch back to a strict diet of aerobic/fat burning training.

Keep your interval sessions to around15-30 minutes of hard high heart rate effort total. This means that if you are going to the track to do intervals do about 5k worth of speed during the entire workout. Less than that and the physiological effect is not as great. More than that and you just can't maintain a high enough effort during the workout to maximize our benefit. You want to push your interval making each one a higher level of intensity and effort than the previous one. If you reach a point where you cannot maintain your form any longer, back off the effort or even call it a day. That is all your body has to give.

This is what I did to keep improving for nearly 15 years as a triathlete. It is also the training the Lance Armstrong's coach put him on to recover from his cancer treatment when they saw that he could not handle the high end training anymore. And although it was contrary to what most cyclists do to prepare for the grueling Tour de France, it was what enabled him to capture the title there for the first time in 1999.

Best of luck!

Mark Allen
6 Time Ironman World Champion
Mark Allen coaching services are available at http://www.markallenonline.com

[MattI]

Those are pretty impressive claims, Rob.
Flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which I like

I started reading some of your posts last night and got totally lost with most of the terminology.
However, Mark Allen's explanation has clarified the general ethos of this type of training and given me a good general idea of the approach.

[Paul H]

We will probably have to agree to disagree.

HR guides for AT and VO2max are only an estimate and I would encourage serious cylists to get tested by people like yourself to find out what they are.

I must admit I skipped through your mates posts but it seems to me that he is talking about marathon runners which is a significantly different sport to road racing and you do not require any FT fibres. He is also talking about elite athletes with massive physiologies who have more capacity for improvement and would require a different training programs.

You can always quote names of successful athletes who use a certain training program like maybe Adam C and Mark Allen but so can I like Seb Coe (GBs greatest runner) who was well known for his low mileage high intensity traning and George who is the strongest rider in the club.

As you say, there is no long term study to prove the theory one way or the other.

I can only quote from my own personal experience who once followed a aerobic training program for a number of years and did not make any significant improvements after the first year and gradualy lost my sprinting ability probably because all my FT fibres converted to ST. I also saw a successful GB lightweight rowing squad taken over by a rowing coach who changed the training program to mainly aerobic work and we didnt win a medal and untill he left and was replaced by an "intensity" coach. The squad went from coming last in Athens to winnning in Bejing.

I wouldnt disagree with Mark Allen's Training Program. He is was doing his aerobic training at 80% max Hr and 2 interval sessions a week which seems fine for a Ironman Triathlete who does 9 hour races.

[Robh]

Paul don't tell me go and ask Juerg yourself...Your the one questioning his ideas and views. But you most probably won't as like you said you skipped his previous post.

Actually I'll do it for you...

Physiology isn't straight forward and you wont always get a simple answer....

Cheers Rob

[Dominic]

What's wrong with doing both?

I came across the Mark Allen stuff ages ago. Last winter I spent most of my rides doing it. However, when it came to upping the intensity, I was sorely lacking initially, as witnessed by Paul H and others on the chaingang.

My intention this year is to do the majority of my riding at low intensity, I am lucky as I commute and this is quite doable for 1.5 hours daily. However my intention is to start one intense a week from November, probably the club run, with a view to increasing it to 2 after the New Year.

[Robh]

[quote="Dominic"]What's wrong with doing both?

I came across the Mark Allen stuff ages ago. Last winter I spent most of my rides doing it. However, when it came to upping the intensity, I was sorely lacking initially, as witnessed by Paul H and others on the chaingang.

My intention this year is to do the majority of my riding at low intensity, I am lucky as I commute and this is quite doable for 1.5 hours daily. However my intention is to start one intense a week from November, probably the club run, with a view to increasing it to 2 after the New Year.

[Robh]

Andrew Sellars sums up Paul's & Tok's concerns very nicely...

It is great to know the same conversation are happening in Englad that occurred here about 10 years ago...and still taking place today.

Your friend should review the results of the British rowers in Athens...
Gold-coxless men's fours
Silver - coxless women's pairs
Silver - coxless women's fours
Bronze-doubles womens sculls

And I might suggest that the structure they developed through their endurance training in preparation for Athens allowed them to perform better in Beijing...they just fired the coach four years too early.

Juerg will never brag about the athletes he has "helped" over the years, and one can always make comments about specific trainin programs based on anecdotal evidence. But let your friends be reminded that the two athletes that Juerg has guided for the past ten years are two f the best mountain bike riders in the world...Geoff Kabush (Canadian Olympian, and NORBA champion for the past three years running) and Ryder Hesjedal (Second Place World MTB Champs, winner was later disqualified for drug doping) who now rides for Garmin Cipotle, and was 12th in the final ITT at the Tour de France.

One should not paint the brush that the FaCT philosophy is that long slow training is the only way to develop great cyclists. The philosophy remains...
1) understand phsyiology
2) use proven testing to help identify weaknesses
3) develop training that specifically addresses the weakness
4) retest to measure progress and effectiveness of the program
5) share the ideas with others

I will try to post our recent tests from our High Performance riders, to show how 18 months has made an incredible difference in their power at all intensities. Do we ride ALL of our workouts below LBP...no. About 85-90% below LBP, with the rest very specific to our limitations. The results speak for themselves.

You will never convince anyone of this, but they should read the study that Juerg quotes often, which is the only long term study of elite athletes, done over a 3 year time period with each group training for similar durations, at different intensities. The high intensity group made the biggest changes, over the first 3 months, but then stopped improving, and eventually dropped from the study, with no athletes completing the three year program. The lowest intensity group showed no improvement over the first 3 months, but then showed steady improvement over the entire study period, with every athlete completing the study and continuing to race at an International level.

As I said before, the only athletes that will buy into your "crazy" ideas, are the ones with nothing to lose. The ones that have been so burnt out from what they have been doing, that they are willing to try anything. Or, the ones that are willing to open their minds to new ideas, and do a bit of honest research, rather than making assumptions about a program that looks form the outside like "LSD" training, but is really much more complicated than that.

Continued good luck form Vernon and FaCT-Education.

[MattI]

If you can't take a FaCT test, how can you approximate your LBP?
Is there any way to do that?

[Robh]

[quote="Ramanujan"]If you can't take a FaCT test, how can you approximate your LBP?
Is there any way to do that?

[quote]Paul don't tell me go and ask Juerg yourself...Your the one questioning his ideas and views. But you most probably won't as like you said you skipped his previous post.

[quote="Paul H"][quote]Paul don't tell me go and ask Juerg yourself...Your the one questioning his ideas and views. But you most probably won't as like you said you skipped his previous post.

[quote="Robh"][quote="Ramanujan"]If you can't take a FaCT test, how can you approximate your LBP?
Is there any way to do that?

[quote="Ramanujan"][quote="Robh"][quote="Ramanujan"]If you can't take a FaCT test, how can you approximate your LBP?
Is there any way to do that?