In this session, we explored a wide range of topics related to athlete performance, metabolic profiling, and training strategies. Key discussion points included
optimizing VO2max and VLamax for different sports disciplines, practical approaches to lowering lactate production, and strategies to balance endurance and explosive power.
Participants also had the opportunity to ask practical questions related to their training challenges, covering topics such as strength-endurance training, pacing strategies for ultra-endurance events, and how INSCYD can support individualized training programs.
Transcript
Good morning, Nicola.
Hope you guys can hear me well.
Perfect. That looks good.
So we wait for a few more people coming in.
I also like to see. Okay. So as always, we wait for more people coming in, but welcome everyone to this afternoon ask me anything session.
What I would like to ask you guys is to already send in any questions here while we are waiting for more people to drop in.
Okay? That would be, that would be great. I have a few questions that some of you guys sent in before, so I will stop with that. But because I don't know if the guys who asked the question are here today, I would rather prefer to start with your questions. Okay?
And so I give it two more minutes, and then we one more minute, then we start. Okay?
Okay. Ah, there's one manual. Excellent.
Okay. Let me look at that, as as first one here.
So let me already start. Okay? I can pull up the other ones here, but Manuel has obviously a pretty good, mountain bike professional.
I don't know if you're talking about yourself, Manuel, here. So, Vio2 max north of eighty, above of eighty, and Vio2max of around zero point six.
And his question is, what you what I consider would be the most important training sessions to improve his physiology, in which direction would you guide him?
Keeping in mind that the race duration is approximately eighty minutes with a variable terrain, obviously.
There's some intense effort on short climbs and short recoveries on on on, on the, yeah, short short short recoveries on the on the downhill sections.
So from just looking at those two numbers that you provided here okay. We of course, we could talk about body fat and stuff like that. But just from both those two numbers, I would like to think that for, professional mountain biking, a VLMAX of zero point six is maybe a, you know, a slight bit too high, so to speak. So would offer some roof for improvement here, by lowering that a little bit. So this would be one thing I would be doing.
I would focus on, you know, training to reduce VLMX, a little bit, monitor it it it closely.
And, then I would monitor the the sprint power of the athletes. So have him or him doing some, yeah, some sprints and make sure that the acceleration is not going down.
That is what I would primarily do. Why? Because especially with the recovery and this, average, power output dropping VLX a little bit would help. Of course, there's a question because we just know so far it's above eighty. If you can further increase VO two max, at least over the long term, so to speak, I would say that this is, that this is something, you know, another feasible thing to look at.
And then, another thing that, well, you will be able to test in the software. I'm very hopeful next year. But in general, it would be a little bit of shot in the dark. I would look into buffering capacity.
So you could, you know, try to lower VLMX to increase endurance performance while training and, diet doing train specific training and dietary supplements for improving buffering capacity, which could, so to speak, offset any possible, decrease in short term duration power.
And, and, yeah. But then you have best of both worlds. Right? So you have a little bit more explosive power, for, like, two, three, four minute durations because of better buffering capacity, while you have better endurance capacity because of the slightly lower VLMAX. But this is where I would go in this moment. Question would be, again, is there other things to improve, like like, like, body composition.
And, of course, VO two max above eighty sounds a lot. It is a lot. But if you look at professional road cycling, these days, yeah, you need you can easily, like, make the statement that the best of the best are eighty five and above. So that would be that would be another goal here. Okay?
So that would be my first answer to this one. Feel free to, ask more detailed questions, you know, as we still have some some time for today here, obviously.
With that, I would pivot to the question of Lorenzo who's asking in combination, work out to lower the VLMAX on a Friday night, doing some repeats in viohtamaxone, and Saturday morning, like, low carbohydrate breakfast and three out three thousand Fed Max. After Friday night's work, it's better to have the carbide in check or eliminate them altogether.
So the question is, so to speak, I think that goes back to one of our previous webinars where you have combined sessions. You do some so everybody was not in there to bring you on the same page.
The idea is to have a priming session where you which you use to, for example, accommodate your VO2max intervals or some kind of intervals you wanna do, and then you use that to lower the glycogen, content.
And then the next day, in this example, it would be Saturday, you do the more, low intensity endurance kind of work, and then have the benefit to do that with a lower glycogen. And Lorenzo's question is, should I not have any carbohydrates, or should I just reduce them, for example, in the Friday night dinner? And the answer is you there's no answer to that be like like this straightforward because to in in order to be able to answer that, you would need to know exactly how much carbon you burned during this training, what your glycogen storage is on the Friday evening, and therefore, do you want to eat a little bit of carbohydrates or how much, so to speak? So that's not possible to tell because there's no way to monitor it.
And, therefore, you can just make two strategies.
You can either try to avoid, like, a little bit binary speaking, avoid carbide altogether, and take the risk that on Saturday, the training is not very good. And therefore, the next week, you need to have a little bit of carbohydrates. So what I'm saying is you can either start on the low end on the low end and then increase, you know, the amount of carbohydrates you you have, from every Friday to another week.
Or you can do the opposite. You start with some carbohydrates, okay, and look how the Saturday is going and then basically reduce a little bit. Right?
That would be would be the possibility. However, the underlying reading in between the lines, the underlying question or assumption is that lower is better. And I would argue that it is not really important neither. It is might maybe not beneficial or let's say it's it's diminishing returns on trying to stay lower and lower and lower with the carbohydrates.
Okay? So I would not worry about this too much. If you go on a Friday with, like, almost no carbohydrates, for sure, I would take, protein drink on the bike on the Saturday workout.
That's that's for sure.
What you can also do if you wanna play around with this, start with a little bit of carbohydrates on the Friday and then make sure you don't have any carbohydrates on the Saturday breakfast that likely is is is more is more efficient. So I hope that was, that was helpful.
Then we have a double question here for Ryan.
Good morning slash afternoon. A question on type two fibers. Is type one fibers fatigue more type two fibers I recruited? Yes.
That fits very well because that's exactly what happens when you have glycogen depleted or partly depleted. But type two fibers require higher excitation than type one. How does the type one fibers get the required excitation in long runs where energy demand is relatively low? So related to that quick fashion, a lesson on the feedback between the mass and c what would be interest in general.
I would, not go back to the CNS here in order to make it not too complicated and, like, you know, not try to add the complexity.
But, that's exactly the point that when type one fibers are glycogen depleted, then you shift as the body shifts to recruiting, if that's your question, I assume. Right? The body shifts to recruiting type two fibers even though the intensity is low.
So you're totally right. Normally, if I understand your question correct, normally, you need higher innovation, a higher intensity, a higher, you know, firing rate from the, from the nervous system.
But you can basically avoid that and stay at the low intensity if you manage to fatigue the type one fibers. And that exactly is this very, very important trick, so to speak, to be able to recruit type two fibers, without going to higher intensity? So let me answer if that answers your question, what all the underlying questions that there was. Okay?
Nicola is asking, is there a limit to work with VLX according to the physiology of the athlete? For example, an athlete with a VLX of point seven can reach a VLX of point four, or could it be detrimental? Well, I understand the first part of the question. I'm not sure what you mean. Is it if it is detrimental, you can maybe, elaborate a little bit on that.
Certainly, there are limits. Now there are limits within a certain amount of time. So what I'm saying is if you have a twenty five year old who is a Trek sprinter and now has a VLF max of one point zero, Yes. He can get to zero point three, but maybe then he's eighty years old. Okay? So that's not necessarily what you're asking.
Can you get somebody with zero point seven to zero point four? Yes. We've seen that multiple times. That's not a problem. Can you get somebody with one point zero to zero point three? Very unlikely because that would mean that you would have to move shift almost all the fast twitch fibers.
And you can shift fast twitch fibers by switching so many, like, consistently, like, chronically.
I would argue that this might be this might be very difficult. So if that answers the question, yes, there are limits to that.
But, zero point seven to zero point four and also vice versa, the other way around is very likely possible.
Manuel again here, maybe get going back to the previous case, when an athlete is in the phase of reducing body fat and implement strength training to preserve muscle mass, how high is the risk of also increasing the VL Max to the strength training? What is the general opinion on strength? So strength training, there's two questions. Right? Strength training and cyclists and runners.
Well, it's it's it's tricky, I would say, because it depends on what kind of athlete you're talking about and what is the training volume. So, for example, if you take a professional or a lead athlete in a cycling scenario, professional or lead cyclist, and you do strength training, the, effect on the VLIMx is depending on how you do the strength training is not existing or very, very small. I would argue it's similar in runners.
So why is that? Because you want to look at what is, so to speak, the ratio between the strength training and the endurance training. So what I'm trying to say is if you have an athlete who does just make this up. Right?
Three times per week half an hour endurance training, and now you put this athlete in the gym for three times per week for an hour, then, you know, obviously, the the ratios, like, the dominance of the strength training is pretty high. And therefore and that's the other part of the question. Depending on how you do the strength training, it could have an effect either increasing or decreasing on the VLAMX. K?
In contrast, if you're taking the lead athlete who's maybe, for example, doing twenty five hours per week on the bike and doing ninety minutes per week in the gym, then, yeah, it's it's the effect will be very, very small. The other question is how what kind of strength training are you doing? Are you doing a strength training, for example, ten, twelve reps at a high speed at a high rate? So let's say ten to twelve reps will take about twenty seconds, and it's full.
Like, it's it's it's maximum. You need whatever five to ten minutes recovery in between the sets as an extreme example. Then you are likely heard that this has a positive effect on, glycogen enzymes is much higher compared to you say, I just do six reps. Right?
And the exercise is done after ten seconds, or I do twenty five to thirty reps. So it depends also there, like, what kind of of training are you doing. In runners, however, there is very good literature and very good proofs that strength training can improve running economy, which is, you know, very important and can have a significant improvement in performance as an effect. So I would argue that for runners, there's also this different angle you wanna look at, which is which is which is improving running economy.
And then for cyclists or your four elite cyclists, for your mountain biker guys, Manul, for example, I would strongly recommend to look specifically, you know, what kind of gym training are you actually doing. Because, again, if you keep it short, if you're able to keep it significant below ten seconds or you keep it relatively easy and longer, then I would not I would not be afraid to increase VLX. This is one professional cyclist I coach. I do normally the the the the middle stuff.
So I do high intensity, fast explosive in the concentric phase and very slow to increase time under tension in the eccentric phase. And I'm happy to do twelve to fifteen reps even though that is, yeah, purely or not purely, but a dominant and and the high stimulus on the glycolytic system because this athlete, that's what I want. Okay? So I can I can use that?
Pivoting from training to testing protocols.
Yuri is asking, is a future upcoming step test, what time duration per step would you consider for sure longer than three minutes, but better longer like five or six minutes? Excellent question, Yuri. So so current so let me first, comment or bring everyone on the same page. We are currently working on the ability to use a conventional incremental or so called step test in contrast or, as an alternative to the current lactate testing protocol.
We do have data from different sports, from, different athlete levels, which we're currently using to validate our algorithms for that. And so far, it looks pretty good. We are not done yet. And as you know, as long as, you know, the validation doesn't look good, we will not put it out there.
However, to answer your question, Yili, it seems like you can actually do three minute steps. So it seems like it doesn't really matter with the new algorithm if if it's three minutes or five minutes or six minutes. The only thing would be if you use a metabolic card, you need to wait until the VO two comes or VO two, and especially if you see o two come to a steady state.
And therefore, you might want or you might need to do five or six minutes if you use metabolic heart. If you just use lactate and power or speed again, don't I I don't want to eat my words here in in in the next, month or something. But, as it looks like, it doesn't really matter if it's three minutes or five minutes.
And, yeah. So let's see. I think I could say more in the next ask me anything session because we are positive that we will finish the validation and the stuff before Christmas.
Christophe, actually coming from bodybuilding. He would like to do the iron man knees in June. The main problem is high lactate levels because, he uses mainly also his a lot of five two type two type two fibers.
What will I suggest to get him, ready in seven months? Well, that's good question. It links back. Let me link something back here from a question we have from Philip, sent in before. So not Philip. I don't know if you are if you're on here or not, which was about the question why I, for example, did sometimes recommend to do VLMX specific training in the wintertime.
So what would I do with the bodybuilding? By Christophe, I don't have so much information, but I assume that, obviously, he's not looking like this. Right? There's some muscle mass involved. So body weight could be, so it could be something.
So what I would do is I would likely focus I don't know. I don't have any data, but, shot in the dark would be I would like the, I would like to focus on on, improvements of VO2max. And assuming that he has a lot of type two fibers because he had a lot of muscle hypertrophy, I would use, threshold intervals. I would start with threshold intervals a little bit above, a little bit below, but somewhere in the ballpark of threshold, maybe a little bit above to reach VO two max. That would be my primary thing. So okay? So I would my my my strategy here would be to try to recruit all his fibers, type one, and a lot of his assuming the type two fibers.
And type two fibers react very, very good to, this, training at threshold or slightly above threshold.
And so, therefore, I would do that. I would make sure that you fuel him with carbohydrates so he can do this as often as he can during the week, so maybe three times. And then, combine that with, some kind of FedMex training, for example, right, to for for, like, the longer endurance stuff. This is how I would start and then, you know, get his numbers after approximately two, three months and see how it develops and then go from there.
Ryan is still hung up with the type two fibers recruitment. I don't understand how a type two fiber fires without the usual nervous system input. What is the signaling? Is it well, sorry. Okay. So the type two fibers the type two fiber is actually, of course, innovated by the nervous system. My point so we are back at this to bring everybody on the same page, we are back at the type one fibers are depleted or slightly deplete of glycogen, therefore are fatigued.
Therefore and that is the mechanism here. Therefore, cannot do the work anymore.
Okay. So what's happening is then, so to speak, very, very, very, broadly speaking, the the firing of the nervous systems, the recruiting of the nervous system goes up because, basically, now, again, assuming the load is the same, it's just losing assuming the power cord is the same. Now type one fibers are fatigued and they're so to speak, again, oversimplified speaking, they're dropping out. Right?
So you have just mix it up. You have a certain number of type two fibers involved doing the work to stay at two hundred, two hundred fifty watts, whatsoever. Now type one fibers are dropping out. They are fatigued.
They cannot hold up anymore. Right? They're glycogen depleted.
The rate of energy production by fat is not fast enough. They are dropping out. Now, actually, the recruitions, the innovation from the from the nervous system increases, and this is why you recruit two fibers now. Okay? So, of course, the innovation sorry if I explained this wrong. The innovation of the of the nervous system goes up, but not because of intensity, but because you have to drive up innovation from the, from the nervous system to the muscles because you have type one fibers dropping out, and therefore, you need to increase the the innovation to tap into the type two fibers.
Let me, let me know, Ryan, if that answers the question.
Tobias is asking what physiological demands do you think Hyrax has? What training goal can you derive from this? How high, low should anaerobic performance be allowed to be?
I don't know if I want to answer that question, Tobias, because I looked at Hyrax briefly. I looked at Hyrax briefly, but not really a lot. I don't know.
If I would know the the the the, the duration of the efforts better, then, you know, I would be able to give you better answers. So maybe if you wanna post the duration of the efforts, then maybe we can go back to that. But, yeah. I mean, for sure, you know, because of the duration of the effort and the recovery in between, a high VO two max is is is needed.
And I think I remember that, you know, a lot of the efforts were in the range of three, four minutes ish, and therefore, VO two max would VO two would be the main energy supply mechanism.
But, again, I I don't know the sport well enough to feel like I can give you a good answer here.
Manuel has another question. This time, we don't go from mountain biking. We go from, to running, and we pivot from, training questions more to the, more to to, testing questions, so to speak. Okay?
So the question here is as an example, of of a case where, somebody got a threshold of, a a pace of five thirteen in the PPD and then, ran a ten k race in four twenty five. Why is there a difference? Well, without looking at the data, I cannot, obviously, not tell you entirely, so to speak.
Beside, there can be an error of measurement or, you know so test data quality, test quality could be one thing. The other thing, is that there is a significant difference, and some at least even more and some at least less between your ten k time and your and your maximum lactate steady state. So maximum lactate steady state obviously means there's no lactate accumulation at all. And, in a ten k raise, which in this in this case here, lasts about, you know, forty five minutes ish, in a in a forty five minutes event, you could have some lactate accumulation.
Right? So, that would be that would be one one thing to to consider. Does this account for the whole difference where you're you're describing here? So does this account for forty five seconds per kilometer?
No. Likely not. This will account for maybe fifteen seconds. So that will only be one source, but it is this is for sure.
Okay? So for sure, the ten k pace is can be a few seconds faster per kilometer than than the threshold pace. And, it's good that you provided the numbers here, because there's somebody with a a a VLA max a little bit higher, for example. The difference can be even bigger.
So I would look at the quality of the test. I would first look at, so to speak, the lactate accumulation, right, to look at some things that leads to a lactate of approximately, you know, twelve minuteimals ish after forty five minutes.
Then you then you are, you know, already, like, in watts, you would be ten, fifteen watts above threshold. So that explains a little bit support. Then I would look at test quality, and then I know it might sound a bit far fetched, but one thing to look forward to control would be was the race really ten k? Because we know, for example, from triathlon races, but also from other races that often, it is not ten k, but it could be, you know, whatever, nine point five or something. So I don't know if you check for that, but these are the three things I would definitely look at. And then, of course, the last thing would be, changes in performance from test to event. Now in your case, that is about a week, and you would not assume, significant changes in adaptation, changes in physiology within a week, except for, you know, the the athlete was super fatigued before the test, but I assume that was not the case.
But that would be in general another one, but I don't think it plays in here in in this case.
Okay. Give me one second.
Nicola is asking when does the course about adaptations of the glycolytic system is ready in the college? That's a great question, Nicola.
And, unfortunately, I think I have to give you an answer which is, which you might not like, which is I don't know, but I don't think it will be soon. And the reason for that is is is very honestly that so far, unfortunately, we didn't see a lot of people who are really interested in that.
And this said, I would be super happy. I'm going to ask you something else, by the way, for some help here. But I would be super interested why that is.
Why do I say that? Because if you look through these questions here in this session or you look into these questions in other sessions, I would argue that, I don't know, forty, fifty percent is around VLMX and type in, like, you know, these kind of changes in the anaerobic performance and how much you need. And this would all be covered in this course. So I'm wondering why there are not more people interested.
So maybe, you know, anybody here, I would be super happy if you just write a quick comment here and say, yeah, because I don't know about the course, because I don't like elearning, or, Sebastian, your perception that is of interest is totally wrong. I don't know. But matter of fact is that, the finishing of production finishing the production of this course, Nicola, is on hold because we don't see a lot of interest from our users, which is kind of surprising. But, therefore, please give me feedback here, guys, if you say, hey.
What course is Nicola even talking about? I haven't seen that. Of course, I would like to do to to use to have this or say, no. I'm not interested.
Anyway, that would be would be some great feedback.
Lorenzo, how many carbohydrates can be stored in the muscles during carbo loading?
Is a two gram grams per kilogram right for everyone?
So per kilogram muscle mass, you, would go approximately in the ballpark of twenty to thirty in extreme cases above thirty per kilogram working muscle. Okay? So for example, if you assume a seventy kilogram athlete has twenty kilograms working muscles multiplied by twenty grams, that will be four hundred grams of available glycogen as we call it. Right?
So higher, higher, carbohydrate content, like, carbo loading, higher, endurance performance, that all drives up the the the content. Okay?
So that hopefully answers the second part of the question, available glycogen. Available glycogen is exactly that. Available glycogen is looking at how based on the body composition of the athlete, how much glycogen is approximately stored in the working muscles, so in the muscles that is involved in the exercise. For example, if you would do a test with the optic and cycling and running, you will see slightly higher numbers than running because running uses more, uses more muscle mass.
Right? And, therefore, you have more storage tissue involved. Then it goes up again this endurance performance, and you can bring it up this this nutrition, this diet. And the number that you see is assuming in a a normal average, so to speak, high carbohydrate diet.
So not only carbohydrates and not like a keto, just like a normal, let's say, sports diet with a carbohydrate of content of, fifty to sixty so sorry. Sixty sixty to sixty five percent of carbohydrates. Okay? The liver is excluded here.
Why is the liver excluded?
Because, yeah, you for sure you have glycogen in the liver as the same as you have glycogen in the in the other, muscles, but glycogen cannot travel outside the cell. We have a course for that. It's actually one of the free courses. I highly recommend looking at that.
Glycogen is a pretty big molecule. It has a center protein and then the the sugar change, so to speak, attached to it. And it's so big, it cannot it cannot pass, the cell membrane. So, therefore, the liver glycogen, you cannot or whatever upper body during cycling, you cannot just transport that into the working tissue.
You have to break it down into glucose, into blood glucose, and then transport it in. And this is a bottleneck that limits the rate of energy you can get from it, and there's, significant less, energy or ATP yield per grams of carbohydrates if it comes from blood glucose. So, therefore, so to speak, the glycogen you have you have in the liver in terms of performance, in terms of how much you can get into the muscle and how much energy you get from that is as good or as bad, is as efficient or non efficient as carbohydrates coming from fueling, eating bars, jails, drinks, and so on and so forth.
K?
Ravi is asking, what is the EDO of VLMX for an MTB, athlete?
It's a classic one.
One part of the answer, hey. We're working on tool to help you find out. Why? Because one part of the story is what you ask in your question.
Mountain bike cost country race gives us an idea on the low profile, how long is the race, and so on and so forth. The other thing is, how high is the VO two max. Right? If you go back to the question for Manuel, the first question today, he provided the VL max numbers. And why is that important?
Because the higher the VL max, the more fun or the more beneficial it is to have a higher VL max. Because you need to go to think it this way. VLAMX is basically meaning the ability of the glycolytic system to produce energy, and it is proportional. ATP production is proportional to glycolysis with lactate production. Right? This is where the term VLMX comes from.
And the lactate can then be used as a fuel, as an energy source in the aerobic metabolism.
And so the higher the aerobic metabolism, the better you can use as lactate. So the question of the optimal VLMX is a question of the, of the VO2max of the Adelaide as well. Okay? It will be somewhere in the ballpark of zero point three to zero point five approximately.
Okay? And the higher the VO two max, the higher the, like, the VO two max should be.
Okay.
Ryan, good to hear that we got the type two, covered. It's really that was part by the way on this of this aerobic adaptation course, which we have surveyed list for, that's there's discussed in details. But understanding how you can use fueling and nutrition and therefore exercise intensity to trigger recruitment of different muscle fibers is a very powerful tool in in, in in doing training programs, actually.
Dave is asking, how long would it take a pro cyclist to get from zero point seven to zero point four VLA max?
In the worst case, three weeks where they ride through France. So you can see these kind of reductions, almost almost these kind of reduction. In the worst case scenario, you can see this, by a grand tour.
The opposite, by the way, also is from zero point four to zero twenty seven.
From both cases in a training scenario, if you really nailed the training and everything, like, works in this direction, then assume a minimum of six better eight weeks a minimum if you have your training dialed in for both directions up and down. So from point seven to point four and vice versa.
Dave is asking, since glycogen provides more ATP sensitivity, the so more ATP than glucose. Yes. That's what I just what I just explained.
What's this alter optimal pacing strategy for either endurance events? I don't know why this was would alter it.
Maybe you can explain that why you think that should alter the pacing for ultra endurance events.
I don't know.
Also, because glycogen is a preferred fuel. So if you are entirely replenished with glycogen, this is chosen, so to speak, over the glucose that comes through the bloodstream.
So Marcus is asking, VO2max versus VL MX in terms of stimulus and adaptation, is there an optimal timing strategy to balance it out in order to avoid an adapt adaption on account of the other I'm not sure if I if I get the question right. So optimal time strategy to balance it out.
So are you asking, Marcus, are you asking basically if there's a, like, order of training methodologies so that, that we try to trigger VLMX, VL2MAX adaptations separately?
I don't know if I understand your question entirely. Could you maybe please, specify while I continue with the other questions?
Is this my understanding glycogen is not spared by fueling, Dave? Yes. Well, so okay. Dave, now we are we are, we are on the same page here. So, glycogen and ultra endurance races, as long as your glycogen is super high, right, totally replenished, your muscle will use minimum of the glucose that you provide.
Now as everything in biology and physiology, it is not binary. It's not black and white. It's not like you use only glycogen until it's entirely depleted, and then you all of a sudden only use the blood glucose. So, basically, it is like your glycogen comes down, let's say, during an ultra endurance event.
And while it comes down, your muscle is taking in more and more and more gradually, more and more also glucose.
So I would argue, if I understand my understanding of pacing, it would not so much change your pacing, but it would change a little bit. And that's the same true for training, by the way, as well. It would change a little bit your timing of the intake of of carbohydrates. So you can argue that, that it does is not so beneficial to take in, you know, carbohydrates. For example, excuse me. To take in carbohydrates, for example, in the first hour of the race because you will rely primarily on on on glycogen only.
However, why practically that maybe doesn't matter is because well, you want to drink anyway in the first hour of the race.
And therefore, you can also drink and consume beverages with some carbohydrates in it because it won't really hurt. I mean, the worst thing that happens is that it's not, you know, used directly in the muscle. But as long as it's not hurting, it might help a little bit. So I would argue that's also why you take a jail just before the start of the race. I would argue that that's, you know, not really affecting it a lot.
It does affect it in terms of knowing about it. So, and therefore, maybe but to eat my own words here and take it back what I just said, maybe maybe it's good to be aware of that to be aware how important the fueling in, you know, later in the race is. Right? So the later you go into the race, the more important it's going to be. K?
So before I continue with hopefully trying to answer Marco's question and going to the question of Emira, I have to ask for you guys. Okay? So everyone who stayed this long, and I'm going to ask you again, if I don't if I don't forget at the end here.
I'm going to ask you to try to spend approximately fifteen to twenty minutes of your time to answer some questions that we have to you. Okay? We would like to have another short conversation with you, about well, broadly speaking, your experience with with Insight.
More particularly speaking, what exactly you're trying to achieve by using Insight. So it's a little bit reading in between the lines of those questionnaires. Okay? So we are going to send you a a, a link. Okay? And I'm going to ask you here it is. I'm going I'm asking you to just try some time to try to find some time, please, to, to answer these questions.
It would help us tremendously to know what we can do better to improve the product.
And it it could be, but not not necessarily is small things like UX experience, but it's more important, like, for example, to understand just painting a bit of black, black and white.
Do you use it primarily to, to just do the performance diagnostics, or do you use it primarily also due to training programs or pacing pacing strategies and this kind of stuff? So that would be a great help if you could spare some time, to book a call with us so we can ask you some questions. And I promise you, we will we'll use that, data and that information you share to, inform what we are going to improve and develop and work on in the product for you. Okay.
With that, you got the link here. Hope you can do that. With that, I'm going to continue this, first question of Marcus here, who specified his questions. Okay?
So, basically, it's around, as I understand correctly in my words, Marcus, it's around the question pivots around how do I balance focusing training on improving VLA max and VO two max at the same time or separately, and what is the interactions of those two.
I would one thing I would recommend, the last webinar and our our elearning courses in general, because there's a lot about in there, in general, you can improve the v o two max without changing the v l max either up or down. But it's a little bit complex to answer this question straightforward. Why? Because it depends where you come from. Let me give you some examples.
You take a Sprinter. There's a low v o so there's a low v o two max. And then I'm making extreme example, making edge cases to to hopefully drive drive the point home here. Okay?
So let's say you take a sprinter who naturally has a low VO two max, and now he wants to start training. Like, we had this example maybe with this, bodybuilder who wants to do a long distance race. Okay? Now even if you do very, very you do very, very low intensity, lactate one point two, sixty percent of threshold.
I don't know what. So very low low intense based on where you say, okay. I'm not even recruiting. Right?
I'm not touching my my fast twitch fibers. Okay? Now because there was a sprint training before, the athlete started on a very high level like the end of scenario with the VL MX. Even though he's not even training his Feet fibers and is not really using his VLAMX and training, it might come down.
Okay?
Now other scenarios, you take an athlete who is relatively highly trained in terms of endurance performance, let's say, a road cyclist who does some races, some crits, or some mountain bike races, trains, whatever, fifteen hours per week, does some interval training, some sprint. Okay? And you put the same guy on the same low intensity training, right, only base training, so to speak, then what can happen is the VIMX goes up because you took away everything he did in training, high intensity stuff, which recruits Feet fibers. K?
So, therefore, it is difficult to answer that question in general straightforward. You need to take into account where the athlete is coming from. Okay. What is his, predisposition, so to speak.
Right?
If you if you if you increase training volume, okay, then naturally, assuming that the training intensity and average is untouched, your training if you if you increase training volume, you should have it's giving the same, intensities.
You should have a fair chance to increase VO to max and keep or decrease VLAM max. Okay? If you, for example, try to increase VO two max by interval trainings, and you go too high in the in the intensity and you trigger a high glycolic rate during these intervals, then you could see, you have a chance to increase VLX. I know I maybe didn't answer that sufficiently.
I would really recommend I think a good start point might actually be the last webinar where we had two examples, okay, of two guys, with a focus on decreasing VLX and the other guys on increasing VL2 max. And I would recommend this as a start point. I think that might be doing a better job for you than me trying to, you know, explain, all the different scenario in one short answer. Sorry for that, but I hope that helps.
Emra, I've worked with all my athletes via training peaks. Creating zones and writing training programs based on test results takes takes some time. Do you have any advice or work on this subject? I know about Azum, but it's hard to switch for now. Yes. So there's two possibilities, like you say, switch to Azum.
We are also, working with TrainingPeaks to try to connect the our two systems to each other to take away some of the time. So that would be sorry to say, but, again, that would be something that, could be part of this of this interview, which I asked you to take some time, explain what you're trying to achieve so we can, you know, go and work on a solution, possibly for that. So, yes. We are trying to, create a connection with TrainingPeaks, in the next couple of months in order to send data. We don't know yet exactly which data we can exchange, but I'm very confident there will be some useful connection.
Lorenzo, how to include strength endurance exercises three times twenty reps in the winter cycling program before or after training? How does it affect the VLMX?
Strength endurance ah, three times twenty reps, you mean, okay, you mean, you mean in the gym. Okay?
So so first question, before or after, training, you mean, like, the cycling or or endurance, yeah, cycling training because you said winter cycling program. So before, after doesn't really matter that much, but I would argue if your athlete has a decent endurance capacity, so let's say more than fifty VO2 max or somewhere in this ballpark or above, I would recommend to, have at least four better six hours of time difference in between the sessions. Okay?
So for not highly trained athletes, there's a benefit or there's an additional effect also on the endurance capacity from doing strength training, but for higher trained athletes, that's not the case. And there's simplified speaking, the adaptation processes that go on the the the signaling cascades that go on from strength training and from endurance training are a little bit competing. So is it you know? So, therefore, I would I would one thing again, if the athlete is, like, a little bit higher performant, pretty good trained endurance trained, do four to better six hours in between, and then it doesn't really matter which one you do first.
How does it affect VLX? I think we had this question before. It depends a little bit where the athlete is coming from, how many times you do that, and, you know, how what is the weight? Is it a high intensity?
How long is the recovery in between? So very similar one from what you would how you would set up a cycling training. Right?
Longer recovery periods allow for an entire, recovery, therefore, allows the athlete for maximum activation of glycolysis in the next set.
That's only relevant, though, if you have, high enough intensity, high enough weight. So, therefore, it depends on those variables as well.
So as we are running a little bit dry, I'm going to pick up, alright. Before I pick up one of the previous one, can you work to decrease increase VLMAX even with this low volume?
Well, to increase VLMAX, six to eight hours per week is is easy. Right? Just do sprints only. There's enough time in six hours to do enough sprints.
That could work.
To decrease it, similar thing. Depends on where you're coming from, but the six to eight hours, there will be some limits. Right? There will be some limits, to do that. That's that's for sure.
How do you suggest maintaining calorie balance during low carb days? My athletes have some issues with that. Yes.
Well, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious. The only thing you can do is you can have, so to speak, energy dense foods, like, you know, nuts, you know, with, like, low carbohydrates, but high fat and protein content.
That could be part of the story, right, here.
And then you might like, if the so let me put it this way. If the athlete has a problem with maintaining calorie balance, why is that a problem? Is it a problem because the body fat is dropping too low?
If so, I would argue you the performance is so high that you can really feed them, more carbohydrates.
If that's not a problem, then so you you have athletes where you might still want to reduce your reduce body fat, then why is the energy balance a problem, so to speak? Right?
Okay. So high volume pros. Then I would argue maybe try to feed some carbohydrates because in those cases, the carbohydrate burn rate in training is so high that I would I would like, in not in most cases in most cases, it's not a problem if you have, so to speak, a little bit higher carbohydrate Then, you know, as I said initially, like, it's it's diminishing return. It's not that you have to drive it to the extreme. It's more often that when people drive it to the extreme in terms of carbohydrate restriction, especially with pro athletes, that it fires back in in in, you know, in decreasing performance. So, yeah, high high dense energy foods such as nuts and so on, but, maybe also feed a little bit more carbohydrates then.
Peter, Georgie, I understand from your videos and archives articles that there's no real or single power at VO2max. Instead, any effort over MLSS will lead to a VO2max effort if carry on long for long enough.
So why is there a figure for percentage of VO2max on the AT figure in a test? That implies there is, there is an absolute VO2max figure. Great question. So the first part of the question.
Thanks so much for that. I have this discussion maybe of touch on this point maybe two or three times per week currently.
Yes. So more precisely, any intensity intensity above any intensity above maximum metabolic steady state, so you could say critical power to be a little bit more precise, but theoretically also MLS s, will lead to VO2max. That's correct. That's the call so so called slow component.
It's very well described in the literature.
So, yes, that is something, to to to consider here. Okay?
Which means that there is nothing like a VO two max power or there is nothing like a, like a maximum aerobic speed, so to speak. Right?
Now why on the other hand do you find something like percentages of VO two max in, in in the results? As a test data table, you also find something in training zones. Well, that is because, the VO two max still represents a certain energy flux. So it it it it it represents, obviously, a certain you could argue ATP flux or power output or whatever unit you want to use. Okay? So let's, for example, assume your VO two max. So just the energy, just the ATP, just the power that comes from aerobic system equals five hundred watts.
So what I'm saying is your VO two max or via the aerobic system, the app can produce a maximum of five hundred watts. That does not mean that at five hundred watts, he is reaching or he is at VO2 max. Because, obviously, at five hundred watts, not all the five hundred watts will be covered by any other intensity, any threshold, any fat max, or whatsoever. I can express that as a percentage of this five hundred watts.
Right? So that is the difference. Basically saying the power output equaling VO two max, right, or the power output at which you reach VO two max is exactly two different things. So I hope that helped. And then as a training zone builder, you get a percentage of VO two max, and this is the VO two that you reach at the end of the effort or during the effort if it's a steady state. Right?
What training session would you suggest to help transition for performance in four to six hours gravel races to short to high intensity races of around two hours?
And under that, it's very similar. Right? Because it's both so four to six hours event and two hours event are are, both, both, not you cannot not cover them entirely with carbohydrates. You need fat combustion that's below maximum lactate steady state.
You could argue that you might wanna use a little bit higher anaerobic capacity for the, two hour stuff, but that depends, so to speak, more on the pacing in that race. Right? So that that could be, that could be the argument. So it's a little bit similar to transitioning from long distance tryout long back to Olympic distance. It's it's not so much a total duration of the event. It's more like the high speeds that you need in the last five hundred meters or one thousand meters or so run, for example. So, therefore, in general, becomes more important, a little bit higher VLAMX and, depending on the on the load profile of the race, buffering capacity as well.
Okay?
Thanks, Paul, for the feedback on the college. I encourage you guys to send, send stuff as well.
Because we are reaching the end of the session in three minutes, I'm just going to take the last question here from from Ravi again. How accurate is Insight calculating, VO2max with just power and lactate data? That's a great question. So with power and lactate, you will see, an accuracy or an average error, so to speak, in VO2 max calculation of approximately three percent.
That is also something you can find on our website, from the literature, from peer reviewed literature. That is also, by the way, approximately the reliability of a metabolic heart that sits approximately in the range of of c percent, something you can also find on our website in the publication where you can see the test retest reliability between view two VO2 max test is bigger than the, difference, so to speak, between the VO2 max calculated with power and lactate.
Yeah. And then last one really, really quick from Dave. What is the relationship between VO2max and Fedmax, and can it be calculated in the tool?
The problem, so to speak, with relationship with Fatmax and VO2max is that it's not a fixed so Fatmax is not happening at a fixed percentage of VO2max.
That's actually part of the problem, so to speak. What is your metabolic profile? So it can be at forty percent or fifty percent or sixty percent.
Yeah.
Okay. So with that, Peter, we do have, a webinar to answer your question to send to set intensities to stimulate VO2max.
I would point you to the last webinar where we had this case. In general, in general, it is, you know, any any interval can do.
What what I would like to argue here is that your question reads a little bit like you have to do intervals to do, to do, to do to to to effectively raise, raise VO2max.
And VO two max can also increase just by base training or by Fed max training. K?
Okay. Very last one. I see there's one more. How does VO two max calculate it visit?
So so how fair, like, WKO compared to insight? Well, first, of course, you would need to ask, you know, which kind of procedure and Insight do you use? You can upload metabolic heart data. You can upload lactate data, power data, so on and so forth.
The the difference or the fundamental difference in WKO is WKO is the same as with gold and cheetah and stuff. They are using a, formula that comes from the American College of Sports Medicine, which draws a linear relationship between your four minute power output and your VO2 max.
And the issue with that is that, scientifically, it's it's it basically, obviously, this relationship validates that a four minute effort, surprise, surprise, relies heavily on your aerobic capacity. Therefore, there's a high correlation between your four minute power output and VO2 max.
But, of course, and that is the irony here a little bit, because those software packages, like or power duration curves in general try to decipher some kind of anaerobic energy. Okay?
W prime, AWC, or, I don't know, PWC or whatever it's called.
So because this anaerobic energy is different from one athlete to the other, the four minute power output is not accurately relying on or just accurate just based on or powered by the VO2max.
But, obviously, there are anaerobic metabolism at play, buffering capacity, anaerobic energy supply, lactate accumulation, all these kind of things. So that makes it less accurate, so to speak, because the linear equation is not accounting for that. Basically, the irony is that the linear equation assumes, the same anaerobic capacity for all athletes, which obviously, the software is displaying you individually. Right?
So this is a little bit easier and easier. So that is the biggest difference, so to speak, that no matter what you're doing inside, either it's a PPD or the lactate or lactate visco two or whatsoever, it always takes into account these other factors, and not, you know, a general, you know, statistically formula, so to speak. So I'm not saying it's it's totally off. I'm just saying that because of this irony that, the the anaerobic energy contribution is obviously not the same for every athlete, which is what you see in these software packages, the accuracy is much, much less.
Right?
Yeah. Because, and, of course, if you have extreme examples like which is not included in this ACSM data, if you have IRMNTRA athletes or track sprinters, so both sides of the spectrum of lower high aerobic anaerobic capacity, the error becomes pretty big. So with that, thanks a lot for joining the session.
Hope you enjoyed it. Looking forward to, more questions in the next session. I think we will try to have one more, before Christmas.
And, again, I would be really, really pleased if you could make some time to book a short meeting with us to tell us how here's the link again, to tell us how you intend or how you use Insight, how you intended it to use, what changed from how you wanted to use it initially when you signed up to how you do it now, so we can use this information to improve the product for you. Thanks a lot, and have a great afternoon and evening. Bye bye.