20 mars 2014

Triathlon and Russian Roulette



Ignorance has made us play the Russian roulette when training triathlon since the time of Scott Tinley.  
Scott Tinley, a man that started triathlon training and went beyond the limits of training in the 80’s to improve performance, gives a good recounting of what could happen if one does not follow a plan to improve.  This was an interview at the end of his career.  Inside triathlon magazine, volume 15, June: 2000:
“You have alluded that there have been a lot things going wrong with your body in the past four years.  What have they been?
 I think I compromise in number of different systems in my body—my pituitary-adrenal axis and my hormonal system. And my emotional state—because of depleted neurotransmitters. 
What are some of the signs of these depleted states?
When you exercise cortisol increases because is a parasympathetic stimulator –fight or flight.  You want your cortisol to go up…My cortisol level was already elevated.  A normal person is 8 to 9 –mine was 13 at rest…We did tests at the Olympic Training Center and found that my cortisol production dropped during an eight-mile-run (20).  

I use this name Russian roulette because what has happened in Crimea.  Putin is an expert in playing the roulette making the moves he made and the words he uses.  Putin has more information than the majority of us, but still plays the Russian roulette; triathletes do not have information and play a deathly Russian roulette when training as you can see from the interview given by Scott Tinley.  After years of following people like Tinley we have an idea of what could kill us, but we still play Russian roulette.  I remember listening to one of our team members saying that he was going to train long hours at a slow pace because he wanted to be “strong.”  He thought that training slow would make him strong; he became strong as a tractor, but unable to do a triathlon fast enough to be competitive.

Russian roulette is about betting against the odds because of ignorance.  We see the Brownlees training and Gomez training but we do not want to study what they do.  A simple exercise, to be able to run after the bike the way we do without bicycling, needs a good bicycle training; meaning more than 400 kilometers weekly training with 30% above 40k/hr. over a flat surface or the equivalent (30% above 430 watts) for a male.  To run 10k below 30 minutes needs long hours running (100K/WEEKLY) at a high cadence, 210 steps per minutes or above.  Our running is not like the regular runners running because of the weight we have as triathletes; the more weight, the less flying we can do.  That is why high cadence is important to be able to run a 10k fast for a triathlete.  Training is not about accumulating miles, but accumulating miles at a good cadence with the best efficiency possible.  This is what we call a Neurological Workout.  Neurons shape the muscles at the end and not the opposite.

29 mars 2012
Neurons are like “plugs” that fire according to our training.  We never speak of training our neurological system but it is necessary to train our neurons as well as our muscles.  Neurons do not use fatty acids as fuel, depend entirely on glucose.  The end result of our hormones is to produce homeostasis in our body and glucose places a major role in our homeostasis.  That is why we need to have a cybernetic model to understand our body.  There is not research about it but neurons model our muscle fibers.

Rate coding of muscle force
The force produced by a single motor unit is determined in part by the number of muscle fibers in the unit. Another important determinant of force is the frequency with which the muscle fibers are stimulated by their innervating axon. The rate at which the nerve impulses arrive is known as the motor unit firing rate and may vary from frequencies low enough to produce a series of single twitch contractions to frequencies high enough to produce a fused tetanic contraction. Generally, this allows a 2 to 4-fold change in force. In general, the motor unit firing rate of each individual motor unit increases with increasing muscular effort until a maximum rate is reached. This smooths out the incremental force changes which would otherwise occur as each additional unit was recruited.[9]

Proportional control of muscle force
The distribution of motor unit size is such that there is an inverse relationship between the number of motor units and the force they generate (i.e., the number of muscle fibers per motor unit). Thus, there are many small motor units and progressively fewer larger motor units. This means that at low levels of recruitment, the force increment due to recruitment is small, whereas in forceful contractions, the force increment becomes much larger. Thus the ratio between the force increment produced by adding an additional motor unit and the force threshold at which that unit is recruited remains relatively constant.[3]

The same we can say about swimming.  Practicing good technique is the only way to go fast in the water.  Most of the good swimmers learn to “feel” the water when toddlers; we need to teach our athletes to feel the water when they are adults and that is sometimes a heroic maneuver.  It is done with a good student willing to learn to “feel.”  “Feeling” is something that needs to be taught at any age to continue improving.  It is not only feeling the water and feeling falling when running; but "feeling" situations and people around us which make the difference in our training.  Athletes need to know “WHO IS WHO” to reach goals and full potential.  FEELING WITH THE HEAD.



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