I’m confused about the whole “lactic acid makes you slower and messes up your heart muscles”.
i think i rember Chalie mentioning that LA irreversibly affects the ehart muscles (but i dont know thespecifics, if someone could elaborate i’d appreciate it).
Now despite those claims, you see MANY atheletes(including many on this fourm) that do LA work and still get faster.stronger better shape etc. This jsut confuses me. Can someone clear this up
Rather than thinking about the physiology just imagine a quality vs quantity debate. You need enough quality in a year to learn the motor patterns associated with running at maximal velocity. If you do TOO MUCH work at a slow pace (e.g. 80-95%) you never learn this. Sure you develop a good fuel supply system but you loose the muscle stiffness and co-ordination patterns needed for EXCELLENT speed endurance. It’s a fine line. You can obviously improve through improving fuel supply lines (lactic buffering) but ultimately it doesn’t matter how big your petrol tank is if it leaks all the time (as in the movement patters are inefficient).
i have seen this someplace writtin by CF.
i think it was more bassed at endurance runners?
if your into say 5k or such, and start doing too many La workouts, the Heart gets affected or such!??
I heard this, and couldnt refind where he said about it.
You are confusing two different conversations.
First: Top speed is best advanced in alactic conditions.
Second: Intensive tempo for distance runners may prematurely thicken the heart wall limiting the ultimate stroke volume necessary for success in the longer term. This was an observation made by the Omega Wave people.
There is no reason to be concerned about LA from extensive tempo or Special Endurance (you’ll get plenty!).
Keep your eye on the Speed and S.E. performances and don’t worry about the rest.
I’ve been reading this forum and reviewing past posts for quite some time. I have also spent hours pouring over the Lactate Threshold thread. What still confuses me is why, even if you’re doing MaxV twice a week, Intensive Tempo will disrupt things such as muscle stiffness and neuromuscular coordination patterns, but Extensive Tempo won’t. While I’m no fan of Intensive Tempo unless its done as a split run (6 x 200m at come home pace is one of my favorites…my daughter hates it:) ), it seems that for most 400m sprinters, at least a bit of training is done in the 85% - 90% intensity range, that is when you use MaxV as the base of calculating intensity. While on the border of Intensive Tempo, these split runs are actually conducted at race pace…at the least as fast as the come home pace of the 400m.
I hear/read KitKat, MJ (in an article) and some other top 400m sprinters suggesting that as much as possible of a 400m sprinter’s training should be conducted at race pace or faster, for the reasons TopCat suggests above, as well as other reasons. This seems logical to me.
So…if there are three to four sessions of race pace or better work (MaxV, Speed End, Spec End I or II), I still don’t fully understand the need for a 400m specialist to do several thousand meters of Extensive Tempo each week, except for the specific purpose of recovery. If training times are holding up or even improving, is a prescriction of Ext. Tempo still suggested once or twice per week?
It also seems difficult to fit in one or two MaxV/Speed End sessions, at least one or two Special End I and/or II sessions, and still do the all the Extensive Tempo work that is suggested.
I’ve been anxiously waiting for the CF 400m training. Is there any chance of a CF/KitKat collaboration on such an effort?
The 400 is much more aerobic than some people previously believed. C. Hart is a big backer of this theory. Therefore more aerobic work needs to be implemented in a 400 runners yearly program. Extensive tempo is one way(but not the only way ) in which this can be achieved.
MaxV, speed endurance, and special endurance along with int tempo all play a role in most 400 programs.
Every coach has his own ideas on how to set up a program. People emphasize different things at different times. There is no one perfect program.
One thing that may help is not trying to implement everything into a 7 day cycle. Don’t be a prisoner of the calender.
Forget the LA for a minute. Let’s go back to my original arguement, which is tangeable. Intensive tempo is too slow to advance speed qualities but too fast to recover from totally between speed sessions. Extensive tempo aids with recovery qualities, capacity to maintain the warm-up for long breaks between very high intensity reps, and doesn’t bother you for the next speed session.
what about the large amounts of lactic acid in running sports (soccer, hockey)… is it enough to cause the aforementioned affects?
Also what about HIIT on ellipticals, stationary bikes?
To your first question, I’d say no because such sports tend to move from low speeds (ext tempo) to very high for very short bursts.
Don’t get your second question. Describe the work.
You can do whatever work you want and many people have gotten results doing many different things. The important question is WHAT IS THE OPTIMAL BALANCE. You want to do things that support each other and are synergistic. You also want to do things that improve the essential qualities for your event - speed and speed endurance. For me extensive tempo is both synergistic and preparatory for speed and speed end. Intensity tempo is preparatory for speed and speed endurance but not synergistic with it. Doing both at the same time for any length of time doesn’t work so if you want to use it you have going to have to make some choices between one or the other.
Any maths stars out there? What is 23sec for 200m expressed as a percentage of a 20.00sec PB for 1 rep?
The familiar 6x200 in about 23 may well be described as extensive tempo (rather than intensive tempo) if the performer can run 20-flat or faster.
I’ve always just considered that type of work as a base to develop a higher order of aerobic tolerance.
20/23=.87 Can’t be intensive tempo:D. Just say it’s one big split run. How does a 2x600m split run sound?
Hence, my confusion, as in the Lactate thread I remember you doing this throughout the year, along with Special Endurance sessions and speed work. Didn’t see much Ext. Tempo in your workouts.
hmmm,
I did a few yrs of Middle distance work 7-10yrs ago involving a lot of intensive tempo runs. By yr 3, thinking about it now, my endurance over 5k was worse than when i started.
Followed by 5yrs of Cf sprint training (just for fun, no competing) and coaching of it.
Now im trying to get into Triathlons - and full on, i can feel the Heart muscle not liking it. It does feel like the Heart Volume is not enough, it feels strong but at lacks Volume (i can feel crazy things like this). - and i have been complaining in my training journal as a result. (for those that have been reading it)
Perhaps i just need to work like 80% of my time in re-enlarging my heart - via aerobic runs. Distance wise im talking like 10k runs in the Triathlon
No, probably no “extensive tempo” although I’ve never been sure what a lot of such terms mean, except for the definititions I’ve occasionally picked up from CF on this board.
I really just put together a program I thought might satisfy elements required in the 400m and when the athletes improved a lot (the girl went from 51.5-52sec to low 50 in one season, and the guy went from 47 shape (although he had previously run 44-high) to 44-low in one season, I just stuck with what worked. I was never making a claim that I was some kind of supercoach or had any kind of formal scientific background. I let others of higher education delve into the program if they wanted to (some did) to try to figure out why the athletes managed to do well on it.
As I’ve posted somewhere, maybe a made a big mistake not staying with 70% and under for the volume. But when I was actively coaching, I had not really heard of the idea of tempo and couldn’t really grasp its relevance to 400m.
There just seemed to be so many factors that people were telling me were crucial elements in putting together a great 400m race, I didn’t know how I could also incorporate tempo in the classic sense. It seemed to me then to be a bit of a waste of time. I’m sure now that is wrong if you follow the sort of 400 S2L program I know CF has had success with, but I still was making OK progress without extensive tempo. So, as they say, go figure.
Thats because there is no one right way to go about coaching the 400.
I know, I’m just feining false modesty:p
Seriously, it is true. For every good 400 runner there are common elements in their training but there will often be disaparate elements and they all seem to go pretty quick:eek:
typical high intensity interval traiingf (hiit) that bodybuilders use for cardio and to burn fat. Would doing such activity on a bike or stationary bike yeild the negative effects, or does it only only apply when running?
I must say, I still get confused with some terminology although I stick to what I know now.
But the whole Lactic issues confuses me as well.
Kitkat what would you do differently?
I’ve always coached short sprinters or throwers and haven’t done alot of lactic plus work.
Very true. Over the years I think the biggest bone of contention seems to be the amount of intensive tempo and volume some programs use vs the max speed development and lower volume others use. Of course there are also so many programs that try and combine elements of both.
I think to many people get caught up in all the terminology and science. So many elements tend to bleed togeather to the point where the differences become negligible.