Can someone please define work capacity?
I understand it this much:
It is the ability to do work and if you increase your work capacity to do high-intensity work you will be able to do more high-intensity work before a dropoff occurs. The same with low-intensity.
But can someone please define it in this context?:
Let’s say I am able to do 1200m of tempo with basically no warmup easily. If I increase this to where I can do a fairly extensive warmup of about 20 min, 1500m of tempo, and hit a matress lightly with a sledgehammer 100 times with the same amount of effort will I:
a.)be able to recovery faster from high-intensity workouts because I will be able to do more low-intensity work to pump blood into my muscle, and also build up greater core strength by doing more work, and in the long run increase capillary growth? I see that all of these would be favorable things that, and although they are low-intensity could contribute to greater sprinting ability.
b.)would I be able to do all the things in a.), while also increasing my ability to do high-intensity work in a workout without a dropoff?
I’m guessing b.) is no, because low-intensity work is specific to low-intensity work. Is this right?
Now, if I was to do X amount of 120’s at 95% Charlie says this would help to build up work capacity. I’m not sure if I understand this definition either. Does it mean:
a.)that I’ll be able to do a greater amount of work at exactly 95% before a dropoff occurs?
b.)that I’ll be able to do a greater amount of work at 95% or greater before a dropoff occurs?
c.)that I’ll be able to do a greater amount of high-intensity and low-intensity work?
I’m guessing b.), but I’m not sure. If it is b.), there is a related question. Let’s say 2 weeks ago I was able to 180m of speed work at 98% without a dropoff, do a day of tempo, and then do another speed day. But now I’ve built up my work capacity to the point where I can do 240m at 98% without a dropoff. What about recovery? Will I be able to recover as fast as I did from the 180m workout? Will it take a proportionately longer time for me to recover from the 240m workout (assuming for now that I’m going at the same speed, because that’s a different issue)? If so, what’s the point of building up work capacity?
