In this session, we covered a wide array of topics related to performance diagnostics, training strategies, and new feature update in the INSCYD platform. Key areas of discussion included strategies for improving anaerobic threshold, best practices for lactate testing, and individualized training prescriptions based on metabolic profiling.
Transcript
Hello.
Good afternoon or good morning, everyone.
Welcome back to the December, ask me anything session. I hope you can hear me good.
Let me send a quick welcome message here.
So it's been the chat. You could give me quick feedback if you can hear me okay, sound quality, so on and so forth. That would be much appreciated.
We wait a little bit longer as always for people dropping in.
So let's see. Bill is saying all good. Thanks for the feedback. That's great.
While we're doing that, I am going to, do some, let's say, housekeeping items here.
So let me see if I can share my screen for you for a second here.
Yeah. So I wanted to use the opportunity to start with this one, while we are waiting for, more people, to join.
Not sure if you have seen that already.
That's an update which we just released today, which is, the my profile page. So it is, that is the, a new page which is, allowing you to administer your account.
You will have another, page for administration, another section, launching, fingers crossed, next weeks.
And before we start with the questions, thanks for sending those in, Mathieu and Bill already. That's great. Before I start with that, I just wanted to make you aware of, that section here, which is, allowing you access to some functionalities which you has which you have been, before, like, for example, to download your invoices or manage devices or so on and so forth.
What is new, what you can see is, account info and personal info. Account info might be interesting for you guys because where you can change address, upload a new logo, and stuff like that. Devices, is somewhat interesting, and it's linked to security.
Some of you complained the, hassle to rename devices and sometimes running into having too many, devices in the system. We have we are working to improve that. And the first improvement is that, all these devices are getting deleted automatically, so you should at least not end up in a screen in the lock in where you would need to, delete, all devices.
And further improvements will come in the future where you will also not have to name a device likely.
So that's in there.
So if you have any question about that, feel free.
We have health health center articles around that. It should be pretty self explanatory anyway.
Yeah. And so this is one piece of the puzzle for launch, and I'm looking forward to another launch with, new features, next week. By the end of next week, as it stands, fingers crossed, working hard on that.
So stay tuned for more, exciting updates, more on the functionality and feature stuff for next week.
So with that, I wanted to now pivot towards answering your question.
And one one housekeeping item before we before we come to questions. There's a question to, from Peter here about the first ask me anything session. There was a cutoff after fifty eight minutes and forty five forty four seconds, which now when you see it as a recording, obviously, you think like, oh, wow. There must be the video breaking off.
Unfortunately, the session actually broke up. So everybody, including myself, got kicked out after fifty eight minutes and forty four seconds. This is why the recording ended, Peter. So my apologies for that.
There is nothing more. You missed nothing in the recording, in the video.
So, yeah, sorry for that. That was a technical setup, a technical problem, and, we've, you know, tackled some of the questions afterwards. With that, I would like to start. So thanks for sending questions already.
Please keep doing so. Send questions here as much as you have. I will now start, from the very top. Mathieu Dilok was the first one who says, with an older cyclist, who are competitive, how to improve the anaerobic threshold, VO2 max VO2 max type or more long slow distance, mentioning here that VLIMx is mostly low through the years of training.
What is the best approach? Yeah. That's a great question. I can just emphasize again that the VLMX helps you to identify if you should go more towards high intensity training or more towards, long slow distance training.
So low VL MX athlete, have, in general, even even though it's difficult to pin an exact number on it, but low VL MX athlete have a lower, percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers and, therefore, most low twitch muscle fibers. And slow twitch muscle fibers react pretty good in terms of aerobic adaptation, so improvements of the auto max, by using training intensities up to approximately threshold.
So slow twitch fibers, the training effect to increase aerobic capacity is dimiss is diminishing, when you go above like, it significant above threshold. Of course, you don't have to argue about, you know, five percent above threshold or something. So with such an athlete, an older athlete, or in general, athletes with a lower VLMX, the tendency would be to go to long slow distance, to go to fat max intensity, so like in the, you know, mid range, so to speak, and to do threshold intervals, which then can be longer threshold intervals.
That is that is, yeah, the best recipe, so to speak.
And then I would argue to use the training zone builder to, create interval sessions which are, yeah, maybe slightly above above threshold, so to speak, and, try to create intervals or or or basically efforts in there which, lead to a to a VO two, of approximately ninety percent to a higher VO two that will be likely than, intervals which are maybe around eight minutes long at one hundred x percent of threshold, so slightly above threshold. But in general, again, low VL MX for the reason which I just gave. These are the mechanics that's important to understand, up to threshold intensity, long slow distance, fat max, and thresholds.
Next one from Bill. What do you recommend for athletes who are afraid of doing an inside test? Yes.
But first, I would argue it's not necessary in inside test. It's often general testing. Okay? So one thing we see with athletes ever since, like, ever since I've worked in university and we tested athletes.
And I just had a conversation with a guy from soccer, a few days ago, on Monday this week saying, also, yeah, we only test when, you know, everything is going great. And what what I'm trying to go here, Seth, is that many athletes are afraid of it, and they feel like testing should be something like, you know, benchmarking. It should be something yeah. I should test when I'm in extraordinary good shape and everything is going well, so I hit the numbers.
And this is great. I mean, it's good motivation, hopefully, if the numbers come come back good. And it's and it's good to monitor, and to actually benchmark this progress and have it in your records and say, oh, yes. This is when I was really fit. My metrics look like x y zed, so to speak. That's great.
So often when people are afraid of testing, it can be partly because, well, they don't wanna endure the pain for the high intensity efforts, for example.
But often it's also psychologically not because of the pain, but psychologically, yeah, you know, I don't want to see confirmations that I do have bad numbers and so on and so forth. So the best way around for that is and I have to admit that we are a little bit guilty in not helping with that, is that to understand that the test is not about telling if you're good or bad. Testing is about what should I do in training? What is my best training intensity?
So if you have the feeling that an athlete is, like, a little bit afraid of testing because for that reason, then I would argue to maybe not show or not emphasize, for example, the the, the benchmark, metrics, right, where you see, like, oh, this is, you know, view to max, VLMAX threshold is high, is lower, is better or worse than it was before. But really to emphasize a part of the testing results we speak about, what to do with the data and training. Because this is in most cases, I assume in your case also, Bill, here, what you what you want to use the data for. And then you don't have to be be then you then actually doesn't have to be afraid. Because if it's not good or bad, it's basically just what do I do with the data, then, then, then, you know, it it should help take away some of the anxiety.
If it's more related to, if you mean by afraid, more like afraid of the of the efforts, then, I mean, with the PPD, we cannot take it away. You could potentially get away with using training data as a substitute for the twelve minute effort. So you can just do the sprint and the three minute and then manually enter an FTP and play around, with that.
And with the lactate testing, it's only one all out effort and, hopefully, in the future, just submaximum efforts as well. But, yeah, if if you want to have more clarification on what people are afraid of, we can come back to this question later today.
Then pivoting to Brian. You mentioned in the previous webinar that high torque low cadence efforts are not the primary mechanism for lowering VLI max. What then is the primary training intervention for lowering VLIMAX sessions, durations, consistent training, intrusion intervention, meter intensity?
Excellent question, Brian.
So one of the main tree so in general, you could differentiate in VLMX to give some framework. You could differentiate between a structural and a functional adaptation. So functional adaptation, is primarily just enzymatic activity. So less less enzymes, less enzymatic activity in in, in the muscle fibers.
And you can achieve this just by calorie restriction, by carbohydrate restriction, fasting, for example. Okay? And this can happen relatively quickly. So let's say you, extreme example, just to make the point, you stop eating carbohydrates and you go hypocaloric, so you eat less calories than you need.
Within ten to fourteen days, you will see a decrease in in glycolytic enzymes.
Now you switch back to your previous diet with, you know, enough calories and, a decent amount of carbohydrate, it will switch back in in, like, in in ten days ish. It's the same amount of time. So that's what I mean with functional.
And the structure is more where you either change your muscle fiber type makeup, so you change fast twitch fiber to slow twitch fibers or you change fast twitch fibers to intermediate fibers. And in order to do that, you would need to recruit the fibers. And the fiber recruitment and, yeah, it's partly in one of the muscle courses in the college, and it is this course about glycolytic adaptation, which is currently not available. We just have a wait list for that to go to to understand how much interest is in there.
But, yeah, in a nutshell, in a to try to make it short, you need to you need to you need to recruit those fast twitch fibers.
And high torque is a way to do that. This is why it you know, why the idea is out there. But then the time you spend at high torque compared to how much time you spend training, obviously, they're not not a lot. Right?
How how much can you spend at high torque? Plus, it only applies to cycling or to running or swimming, other sports. How much time can you spend at high torque? An hour, two hours per week?
That's, yeah, that's not the key of driving VLMAX down. The key will come from recruiting those fast twitch fibers. And the fast twitch fibers, you recruit by either increasing intensity. So you can go to high intensity, usually threshold or above threshold.
And you can also recruit them, which I mentioned previously, by fatiguing your slow twitch fibers. So you could, for example, just, you know, go very, very long. And what helps with fatiguing slow twitch fibers is, draining the glycogen from them. So, for example, what you can do is you can do a long slow distance training, with no or low carbohydrate substitution, replenishment during the training or even have a harder session before, same day before, previous day.
So basically saying deeply glycogen of the slow twitch fibers, then you will also recruit more fast twitch fibers. Obviously, there's a benefit of not, going to the high intensity. Right? So now how can you do this?
Consistent training, longer training? Well, anything could work. Right? So for example, it's not necessary that I have to go six hours to do that.
I can do I can do, two hours every day and then not entirely refuel this this this carbohydrates in between. Or I could put, as I said, like, a primer session, before that long slow distance trainings, evening before, the day before. It all does the same. Right?
So how I would like you to think about is what training can I do that lowers glycogen?
Okay? Either if it's in the training session or if it's a previous training session, how can I combine these training sessions and then basically have lower carbohydrate, lower glycogen during my endurance training, which will then trigger more VLMX?
Okay? So prime example, I always give from cycling, Tour de France, three weeks, the sprinters, and the Tour de France, we measured that several times with a lower VLAM X than they started. And, I mean, obviously, Tour de France, you have, yeah, you have some high torque stuff. Right?
You have some climbs, but you also have a lot of consistency, like five hours ish every day. You will never be glycogen, replenished. Right? And, you will you will therefore always have, you know, some some some level of glycogen depletion.
You will always have some high intensity. You have especially a lot of medial intensity, right, as you mentioned. So you have a lot of intensity, which is somewhere in the middle. Right?
So it it it drains carbohydrates more. It is a little bit higher intensity, which therefore also recruits more more more fast twitch fibers. So anything around that, will help to drive down VLMX.
Hope this helps. Next one is one from Peter about the webinar. We answered that. And Bill wants a recommendation for which courses should one prioritize when looking at inside college. Is the best order, a g, energy metabolism versus muscle physiology?
Great question. I would say, in general, that is the energy metabolism. Like, when you are using Inside, you're using it because yeah, understanding physiology in terms of energy metabolism is important to you. And, therefore, the energy metabolism course, I would highly recommend this as being somewhat of the highest priority.
So muscle physiology course, I would argue that the first two, the first two units of that is a lot of the basics, which which is I feel like you should know, which is why they're in there. And then the other tools, the the second unit the second to last two units about, muscle fiber types and muscle fiber type transformation do a deep dive into what I just explained very briefly on the surface, what kind of efforts, what kind of training you recruit which fiber. And once you understand that, you can really use that for, you know, for designing much, much more efficient training programs. The
energy metabolism one, I would say, is more applied throughout. However, you could argue when you're only training whatever for gravel races or marathon or triathlon or long endurance event, you could argue that you'd you know, that's a course about creating phosphate or something is not so important for you. The good thing about the energy metabolism course, I would argue, is that, there's a lot to learn about the, ambivalent activation, so to speak, of the glycolytic system, how it's activated, how it's then impaired by acidosis, which then relates to designing interval training sessions.
So it helps you understand why, you know, longer recovery or more sufficient recovery is beneficial to drive up VLAMX, why shorter ones could be beneficial to lower it. So, yeah, long story short, I would maybe start with the energy metabolism one, and for the physiology, if you if you want to understand the whole picture, then I would do the all courses. If you try to do a shortcut, then I would recommend the second two units. Hope this hope this helps.
And then, again, I can just emphasize, we do have we do have these two adaptation courses in there. And, honestly, to push these out is a question of, how much time can be invested to develop those, by keeping the quality high and what is the interest in that. And, surprisingly, is the interest in courses to learn about what type of training to design to achieve specific training adaptations, it's not that great. I mean, it's it's no offense, but it's it's it's somewhat surprising that we have all these AMA sessions primarily about training adaptations and a course about training adaptation just has, like, six or eight people interested in it.
So, yeah, I hope this helps. And now let's continue with my two again. Second question. As working in on rehab and hospital, can we use Insight for patients, most specific back or neck patients who do not have high FTP, but just better physical condition to a stationary bike, treadmills, cross trainer, and core muscle training?
Thanks. Yeah. So, I would not see a reason why not, so to speak. And I'm not saying this because I I want to sell it to you.
I'm saying this because we do have data which shows that it's accurate also for population, let's say, with a view to max below forty.
That's one reason. The other reason is that, you know, you should be able to do it relatively easy with a lactate testing protocol. The PPD all out test might not be good. But as you have people on-site, I see no reason why you should not be doing lactate testing in a rehab.
And we are pretty far in developing a submaximum testing protocol with lactate. So a testing protocol where you don't have to go all out. It's pretty far. We are currently, fine tuning the validity of it and the accuracy.
Accuracy, I should say, not validity to be fair.
And then, yeah, with that in mind, I would especially say, yeah, that's a that's a good that's an excellent fit for this for for for these patients. So, yeah. So I would I would, I would say yes, with the Lactate. And then I would also argue, if you have if you want to try that out, feel free to reach out to me or to help desk at insight dot com, because it might be interesting if you want to go into beta phase of the submaximum protocol which you are working on.
You know, that could be something of interest for you maybe. So if you want to try that, reach out, and we can, yeah. We have a few users doing that already.
Nicola, welcome back. Is it a good strategy to work to improve a little bit the VL Max first in order to feed the VL Max in the second train block and then the VL Max interval that you use the minimum amount of VL Max to handle the recovery?
As I'm not sure if I understand. So the idea is to first increase VLMX a little bit in order to have more substrate coming from glycolysis for the VLMX.
And then in VL MX, it said use the mini mode of VL MX.
I'm not sure if I understand, Nicola. I'm sorry.
How to handle the recovery, full recovery, shorter I would I would put this back. If you could if you could rephrase the second part of that question, I would be much appreciate that because I'm not sure I understand. Thanks, Nicola. I'll come back to that then.
Peter, for lactate shuttle sessions, what lactate rate should be targeted once the initiation is ramped up to four millimoles?
It depends on what you want, Peter. So if you really want to see high lactate concentration, I would even go to higher, to higher concentrations than four millimoles. So you can even, like, do the first effort so that it drives the athlete up to six or, you know, something like that, millimoles.
And then, one thing one approach could be that you then design the on phase and the off phase so that, so that the net accumulation stays approximately, unchanged. Right? So for example, you do a first interval which drives an athlete up to four, five, six millimoles whatsoever.
And, and then, yeah, basically go back and forth with lactate accumulation and lactate recovery so that the net stays, stays zero, the net accumulation.
And, therefore, the athlete should stay approximately at whatever you had initially, six six six millimoles or whatsoever. So you can either use the intensities which we have in the, in the, training zones per default, the lactate shuttling, which is basically the on phase, which shows the same accumulation per minute as the off phase.
Or you can, of course, just use the off phase to use the maximum recovery rate and then go go to a higher intensity for the accumulation.
So let's say the accumulation has the double the amount of lactate per minute.
Then in order to compensate for that, you want to double the recovery time. Hope that makes sense. We have a help center article about this as well.
John, can you talk about potential integrations with other platforms in the new profile? But yes. Love to. Because a launch for us is always very exciting. So I I really appreciate that you asked. Yeah. So currently, we do have integration with the Azum, which is a training planning software similar to, TrainingPeaks.
And before, you would need to basically contact customer support and and get your API key and so on and so forth. Now this integration, you can have your API key directly. Everybody now has an API key, so everybody can connect to Azum. What does it do for you with Azum?
It sends over the training zones, and it sends over the lactate and, not not the lactate. Sorry. The carbide and fat combustion curve. So, basically, when you plan a training in Azum, it calculates in real time for you how much, carbohydrates and fats are used.
So that is currently what it is for.
Yeah. We are also working on two other integrations at this moment.
One is, with another bigger the biggest training platform out there, to integrate, and we have verbal commitment that we want to that we want to integrate with them on both sides. However, they are currently very busy because they just opened a new, a new pillar of their business, this this, virtual, training. So I'm not sure, how fast this can move. And then we have an integration with another virtual cycling platform, which we are going to launch, I think, hopefully, January, the next month.
So those are the other integrations which we are currently working on. And then there might be some more, but, or there will be some more also with a lactate device. But, yeah, a training platform and a virtual training platform. And right now, at this moment, it's for Zoom.
Emma, the last part of the lactate test is after three minutes of an all effort.
Which timing should we pay attention to for minimum lactate strip consumption and high measurement accuracy?
Yeah. That's a good question, Emra.
So you are basically asking for, when should you measure and when when when should you, you know, measure after the maximum effort to be sure this is how I understand the question. To be sure that you fetch, the maximum lactate concentration, but don't burn too many strips. This is how I under this is how I understand it.
The question is well, I cannot give you a straight answer. The answer should would be that the higher the lactate concentration, the later you can see it. Okay?
And there is a pretty linear function of between the time it takes to see maximum lactate and the maximum lactate. So the best answer I can give you is if you have an idea approximately what, the maximum lactate might be because you have a high lactate guy or low lactate guy, then you have a better idea when you can start, take in which time frame you should you should approximately test. Let me try. I sent this graph of the scientific study versus this show.
I just sent this internally. So give me one second here. I hope I hope they can have that, one second if I find it. And then I can I can maybe show it to you, if I have it here?
Give me just give me thirty seconds. Okay, guys? And if I find it in thirty seconds, then we can look at it. If not, then, then we maybe I don't know.
Do it the next time.
It was also part of one of my presentations.
Okay.
Give me ten seconds more. I'm just loading some images here.
No.
Sorry.
Yeah. Why don't you to not to not bore everybody here, why don't you reach out to help desk and ever send it to them so they have it? So long story short, again, the higher lactate concentrations, the later you would you would measure, and it can be a few minutes, it can be up to a few minutes afterwards. Okay?
So, no straight answer.
Ask ask in the help in the in the help center, please. Ask the ask the, ask the support guys for this graph. I will I will put it into the into the support team. I will forward it after the session. Okay?
Okay. Brian, for a high VLX cyclist who wants to improve your DMX fitness HIIT training, how do you choose intensity that is high enough to achieve the desired heart rate for VO2 improvement but still manage selected concentration as he knows?
Okay.
So first, I'm interested why you would look at heart rate because most people for VO2 max, think more about achieving VO2 max. So most look at the VO2 itself than looking at the heart rate. However, it's interesting because, part of your two max could be, could be cardiac output, and cardiac output is, is is is somewhat related to to your, you know, not only to the heart rate, but also also to the to the to the stroke volume. And that seems to adapt best by significant immediate changes in cardiac output. So, basically, going from zero to high output as fast as possible. And therefore, I find it interesting to look at to look at heart rate. Okay?
So now the question, Brian, to what what would you do in terms to, to to choose intensity to to to achieve the desired, heart rate or, let's say, the desired intensity for VO2max improvements.
I would use the training zone builder and set up, set up a interval of, let's say, four minutes, for example. Okay? Four minutes because it's long enough to reach VO two max. At least can reach VO two max after after three minutes or something. Okay?
And then I would put a utilization of VLMX of eight percent as the definition of the training zone, which should be low enough, to, to, to not increase VL max if that is what you're trying to avoid.
And then put in the output metrics, the percentage VO2 max. So have the have the algorithm calculate how much how much VO2 max, that's going to be.
And then you can do the same, for example, with twelve or fourteen percent if you want to have higher higher, higher, VLX utilization, if you want to have a glycolytic stimulus.
And you can do this with four minute and six minute, eight minutes, two minutes, whatever you want. Okay? And then you have a selection of intervals for a low VLMX contribution.
And you see for each interval, you know, how much of your VLIMx you will get. You can also, for example, have to have the train zone builder calculate the, lactate concentration so that you know approximately how long to recover using the, using the the detected recovery graph. And then you have a set of intervals, so to speak, which you can choose from. Right? So you would have several intervals of several durations for low VL MX, eight percent utilization.
And for each one, you see how much of VLMX it is, and then you pick the one that you want. You would have next to it the lactate concentration, so you know how you would need to do the recovery. And you can do this, as I said, for eight percent, something low VLMX utilization, and you can do this for twelve, fifteen, twenty percent if you want to have high glycolytic stimulus.
Hope this makes sense.
Okay. Nicola is back with his question. Now let's tackle that. So Nicola wants to know if it's, allow for full recovery of of lactate during intervals at an intensities that targets VO two max at eighty to eighty five percent with seven to nine percent VLI max or use complete recovery that leaves a that leaves a certain incomplete recovery that leaves a certain amount of lactate.
Okay. So situation is you do intervals, eighty, eighty five percent VO2 max, seven to nine percent VL max. Relatively low. Similar scenario, by the way, that we just discussed here for the case Brian made with IT training.
How should the recovery be?
Envision that.
If you have a shorter recovery, so you'll not get rid of the lactate entirely, Okay? Then what happens in the next interval is that because of the higher lactate concentration, you might also have a still lower pH, so you still have a little bit rest of acidosis.
And even if pH is already almost back to normal, because of the higher lactate concentration in the next interval, it will drive faster down. So acidosis will come earlier and more. Now think about it. If you hold that's the assumption. Right? You hold the intensity, you hold the power output constant.
Right?
So that's not changing. The energy demand is not changing because the power output doesn't change.
If less energy comes from glycolysis now because you have impaired it and by the way, going back to the, energy metabolism college course where this is explained and showed with some experimental data. Now you have a higher lactate concentration. PH is lower or drives slower faster.
This means that more energy has to come from the aerobic system, and less energy comes from the glycolytic system. So, basically, what it would do, Nikola, it would increase the percentage of VO2max stimulus, and it would decrease the percentage of VO2max stimulus because of this incomplete recovery.
So if that is what you're aiming for because you want to lower VL max, you want to increase VLM, VL max, great. Then do the incomplete recovery. If you don't want that, right, if you're using nine percent VLX because you want to maintain it, then I would argue to have a more complete recovery, at least going down to four millimoles or below. Okay?
Because there you have almost the same almost like a normal pH level again before you do the next interval. K? If you have an incomplete recovery, the numbers will change. Right?
So VO2max percentage will go up and VO2max percentage will go down a little bit.
Peter, yes. Thanks for the encouragement.
Trying hard to convince them to speed things up.
Bill, thinking about fat carb combustion in workouts. Average power normalized powder calculates how many carbs.
Yeah. I honestly don't think it makes a huge difference, Bill.
Both are not perfect, for stochastic or interval, type of of of sessions.
If you have a relatively, if you have a relatively high, relatively constant power output and not a lot of ups and downs, then, I would I would argue, to use the average that's that's better. The normalized would not reflect, the additional carbohydrate demand that comes from the from the intervals.
So my vote would would go to normalize, but neither is perfect in highly intense and stochastic intervals.
Peter, following on from your answer about the VO2max intensities, can you confirm the VO2max percentage you should aim for? It's around ninety percent.
The popular answer, Peter, is yes. The popular answer is yes. You want ninety percent or more of your you you want to this is where the popular argument comes from. You want to maximize or increase the time you spend at ninety percent of your to max or above. And this comes from a Ronstadt study that shows that the time you spend at above ninety percent VO2max is correlated with the improvements in VO2max, positively correlated. So basically saying, the more time you spend at ninety percent of VO2max, the more improvements in VO2max you will see.
Now that is true, But if you look into the study and you look into the correlation, you basically see a cloud of data points. So a cloud of data points where you see, like, okay, almost no relationship between time spent of ninety percent VO2max and the VO2max improvements. And then there's one or two data points which show more time spent, bigger improvements.
So we basically connect the cloud data, which doesn't show any correlation with one data point up here, and this makes the overall correlation. So statistically speaking, this study is it's not as clear as you would wish for, so to speak. Okay?
So I would say it's scientifically not that robust, but, again, it is what people are aiming for and there's some logic to it. If you see in general the literature using, in percentage of VO2max as the main, not FTP or something. The main, indicator for intensity in terms of training stimulus, of aerobic stimulus is percentage of your o two max. So therefore, yes, it does make sense.
However, I would argue that it's not necessarily ninety it's not it's there's not this this clear threshold, so to speak, at ninety percent. You know what I'm saying? Like, if it's ninety two or eighty eight, it's difficult to measure accurately, and I would argue that the the numbers don't don't indicate that clear threshold that, you know, so to speak, eighty eight percent, no training effect, ninety percent, or a while grade training effect. Obviously, that's not the case. But in general, yes. You try to the general rule could be you try to maximize the time spent at the high at the high percentage of your automates.
Brian, what do you believe is the relationship between l t one and Fatmax? Are we close to the l t one release?
The real so let me ask two questions. The, the first question, the relationship between l t one and Fatmax, is difficult because Fatmax is like VO2max or maximum lactate steady state. It is some performance benchmark which you can measure, and you have different ways to measure it.
And it should always come out the same number. Right? So give me an example. Let me give you an example.
When you measure VO two max, there's a REM test, which has thirty seconds increments, or if you measure it with a REM test which has sixty seconds increments, or you just measure it with a five minute all out effort, you should and you will arrive, even though the five minute all out effort might be a tiny bit higher, by the way, you will arrive at approximately the same number of your two max, right, in terms of within the reliability and accuracy of your measurements. Maximum lactate study states is the same. Right? I do a lactate test with five minutes step duration or eight minutes step duration or whatsoever.
Within the accuracy, I will always get the same m l s s. With l t one, that is unfortunately not the case. Therefore, I struggle to answer the question if it relates. It can relate, but l t one is, you know, the definition of l t one is, so to speak, so the first increase of lactate concentration relates to what? From baseline, from lowest point, from what is an increase? Zero point zero one millimole, one millimole, zero point five millimole? So because that definition is unclear, that it, you know, it burs, so to speak, the the relationship between FedMax and l t one.
In general, l t one could be a little bit higher, but, again, I should eat my own words just in this moment because it it depends on the protocol. Are we close to the release of l t one? Yes. We are very close.
We just talked about this internally today. The aim is by the end of next week. Some of you have noticed that, the application slowed down a little bit. We fixed it this morning, but this was because we are currently currently calculating l t one for all historical data.
So the idea is when we release l t one, hopefully, next week, that you can also see it historically for for your legacy data. In the past, you might remember that some of the stuffs that we released did only apply to, to new tests.
And the idea of this l t one is that we want to make it available for, all all legacies all all legacy data in the database.
And, yeah, currently, as it stands, finger crossed, hopefully, by end of next next week. Jonas is saying that he learned in the inside college that glycogen has a higher output of ATPs and glucose.
How long does it take time that the blood glucose comes to the muscle cell and build in there to glycogen so that I can plan this more ADP and the race on interval training?
Yeah.
Great question. So, yeah, first things first.
Glycogen has a higher ATP yield, a higher energy yield than glucose from the blood.
That is a given fact, and that explains, spoiler alert, going back to the question which college course you should take. This is why you should take the, energy metabolism course.
Because it is really relevant.
And I'm not yeah. But anyway, it's really relevant to to race performance in cycling and other races.
The question now is how long does it take for the blood glucose to arrive in the muscle to build glycogen?
I would like to rephrase this question, Jonas, because I think what you're trying to ask is when you eat something during training or racing, right, because you say in the in the race or in the interval training, what you eat in there is not transformed into glycogen.
So glycogen is only built during recovery.
Basically, if you have high energy output, if you have physical activity, the muscle will not build up, glycogen. This metabolic pathway is in is is is impaired. Is shut down.
So the glucose that you get through the bloodstream during physical activity is used directly as a source. It is not used to first build glycogen and then break down.
So, yeah, therefore, the timing here that is interesting is the timing, how long does it take from swallowing glucose, digesting it, and getting it, you know, getting it into the bloodstream. And therefore, you could say then immediately, so to speak, at a heart rate of one hundred fifty. As soon as it ends the bloodstream, it's more or less immediately it's a muscle. So the question is more the glucose digestion, twenty, thirty minutes, depending on gastric emptying and so on and so forth could be longer.
How long does it take from something that you eat? It arrives. How long does it take until it arrives at the muscle? But, problem is then it is still blood glucose, so it still has a lower ATP yield.
And, yeah, and, therefore, there's no chance really that you build glycogen during exercise and then and then use it with the with the benefit of having a higher ATP yield.
Material.
We know that we can do PPD test with lactate. Yes. Highly recommend if you have the chance. Can we also use breath analyzers so we can use v t one and v two two to put an insight?
No.
Fair enough. Answer, no. V t one and v t two is so inaccurate.
Right? It is there was a study some years ago where they send raw data from a incremental test to, I think, five or six different people to determine v t one, and they get five different results from five different people.
It is it is no. It is just not it would blow things apart. It would just not be accurate enough. The way to go here, as I indicated, is an improved lactate testing protocol, which could even be but which will use lower lactate concentrations, so removes the burden to use high intensities and to some extent will even work with, as it stands for now. I don't wanna promise now, but we are working on something that works in submaximum conditions.
VT one and VT two, I don't see that coming in the near future.
Emra, I will have access to VO2 master device for a limited time. Is it possible to measure VO2 max or economy during the lactate or PPD test? It can be running or cycling. So yes.
In general, if you do running or any if you do any speed based sport, any free motion sport, so not cycling where the foot is locked to the pedal and the pedal is locked to a crank arm. So the the movement, the amplitude is is fixed. If you have a free motion sport like running, free motion in terms of where you can move your limbs three dimensions, as you like, so to speak.
Swimming, especially anything, kayaking, cross country skiing, economies. Adding VO two is great because then you get economy. So there's some limitations with the VO2Master because it's only measuring VO two, and the economy needs to understand the substrate utilization, because, higher fat combustion means higher VO two, which is not used for, which is not used for muscle, contraction. But in general, yes, I would highly encourage you to do that.
You cannot do it directly in the PPD test, but you can do it in the lactate test automatically. You just have to enter at least a minimum of three measured VO two values into the Excel spreadsheet and and load it up. Okay? We had some issues with some VO two master data lately, in the past two to three weeks, this, this, unfortunate but pretty significant to easy to spot, overestimated VO two levels, not only VO two max, but also in submaximum conditions.
So, yeah, just just a heads up. Okay? So do it in a lactate test, and, and then, yeah, if you have any doubts, reach out to the customer support, please, for that problems that we have seen lately with views from us later. Thank you.
Peter, do you see any difference between three sets of thirty seconds compared to eighteen, times thirty thirties? Is this just a mental issue, or why do we see often?
Ah, okay. So I assume you mean high intensity intervals, Peter. Right? Like like, three six times thirty seconds on, thirty seconds off. Why don't we do straight eighteen times?
Great question.
It could be a mental burden for sure. It could also be that the intensity is so high that you can just do it for six minutes. Okay? So that the athlete is just exhausted, not mentally, but physically exhausted, after six six repetitions of thirty thirty.
You would argue think about it this way. What happens during that? If you do six times, thirty seconds on, thirty seconds off, your view two goes up to the thirty seconds on, and it goes down, and it goes up again and it goes down, and it creeps up from one interval to the other. Now six minutes, the thirty seconds off always, is not long to actually reach real VO to max.
Right? You might depending on the intensity, it might be below. Now eighteen minutes or twelve times or eighteen times, whatever, longer time would actually solve this problem that you see higher VO two max or higher utilization of VO two max or higher average VO two. And going back to the idea, spend more time at high VO two, eighteen times would be more beneficial.
But it really comes down to what is the intensity. Can the athlete do that?
Or, can the athlete not do that? Not only mentally, but also yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the feedback on l t one. We will see two other new metrics, when we release that, fingers crossed, next week. Not promising yet.
Nicola's asking if we will see fiber type as a percentage as a measuring insight. Good question.
We thought about this a lot, and I'm tempted to do that.
I am not sure if we should do it for two reason. One thing is, what do you do with this information if you don't have the context now? You know, if it's if it's just fiber type and then you need to connect it again to what kind of training you should be doing, I think it's only telling half of the story, if you know what I mean, Nicola. So I'm a little bit afraid if you put FiberTite out there, that it might be interesting, but the benefit from using it in training might might be limited.
What we are looking at and, like, have been started working at is how to use this information like a fiber type to actually put some may create something inside which helps you designing these training programs which we discussed here.
The other reason why I'm careful about the percentage is we do have the data. Right? So I did myself In my previous life at university, we did muscle biopsies on more than forty five cyclists, and some of them had up to six. So we have a lot of data on muscle biopsy fiber types and VO2max and VO AMax measurements.
So it would not be a problem to even have validated data there. Now there's two problems. One is a biopsy is just, you know, it is just at one point in the muscle in one muscle. So it's not representative for the whole leg, if you know what I mean. There are some nice studies that says you would actually need to do eleven biopsies in one leg to get a representative view on the fiber type distribution.
Okay? So that's one thing. And then so your your gold standard criteria, a muscle biopsy measured fiber type distribution is not accurate. And then you have a correlation with that, which also has some, you know, inaccuracies in it.
So, therefore, I'm afraid or not really a big fan of putting that number. You know? Like, everything we put in inside, we do validate ourselves. We have external validations as peer reviewed publications.
And then you put a percentage number where you know it has maybe an error of plus minus ten percent. And then, of course, all the haters come out and say, yeah. I cannot do that. Blah blah blah. So I don't know.
A function, a feature that uses fiber type to help inform training decisions, but maybe not displays a fiber type, I could see that, actually.
Yeah.
Okay. A few more questions here.
Peter, with all the athletes, I see the oh, sorry. I missed the one from from Brian. Can you explain the difference between lactate combustion, shuttling, and buffering?
Are there specific training regions to improve them separately? Oh, wow. That's a big question.
So lactate combustion.
Okay? Lactate combustion just means the combustion of lactate which, happens in the aerobic metabolism.
Okay? Now lactate production happens primarily. So most of the lactate is produced in more fast twitch fibers, whatever intermediate, just say, fast fast, like, fibers which are more fast switching. And they have lower aerobic capacity. But, again, it's combustant aerobic metabolism. So shuttling means that a monocarboxyl transporter, short MCT, transports the lactate from a more fast twitch kind fiber to a more slow twitch kind fiber, which has higher oxygen uptake rates and, therefore, higher combustion possibilities.
Or it could also push it into the blood where you can measure it and then other tissues take it up and combust it. So that's the difference between combustion and shuttling.
Buffering itself is not directly rated for lactate because essentially you're not buffering the lactate. What you want to buffer is the hydrogen ions. Okay? And this is interesting because the hydrogen ions get shuttle together with the lactate.
I'm not sure if you have learned that in the college already. So, the MCT, I always say, works like an Uber. The old Uber, not the exclusive ones, but you pay less and it basically drives around until it has all the seats and then it full, and then it drives. So the MCT first bonds to, I think, first a hydrogen ion, first a lactate.
It doesn't matter the order. It needs to bond both. Right? So lactate and hydrogen ion, which makes the low pH levels and the acidosis, need to bond to an MCT in order to get transported either into the bloodstream or into an into the slow twitch fiber.
So that is that is the the shuttling. And the buffering again is the buffering is basically, that the hydrogen ions that get produced in the energy metabolism are not, are not lowering the pH values, but are bonded to some substance which can neutralize them. Can you train this specifically? Yes. There are some there are some studies which deal with training of MCTs.
Lactate combustion, it's, you know, it's it's, it's only a function of VO two. So if you have higher VO two, you can combust more. There's not so much to train about it. You could argue I can train to have a higher VO two max.
That means more ductile combustion. But at a given VO two, the ductile combustion is always the same. And buffering, yes. There are also training regimes which improve buffering capacities.
They all involve high intense intervals to stay at higher lactate concentrations.
K. I have three more to go, it seems.
With older athletes, I see that it often takes more time to ramp up to the heart rate in thirty seconds intervals.
Why I thought it could be beneficial to do rather two sets of ten thirty thirty than four?
Yes. So, Peter, you're saying because it takes longer for the heart rate to go up, you use that as an indicator for VO two, and therefore, you would do, more like the ten seconds one ten times one. Yes. I totally agree to that. I would also do more if you can do that.
Emira, my last question. Okay. No problem. For today, I want to add lactate values to the current PVD test protocol and especially increase your two max accuracy. Three minutes seems reasonable, but the new REM test confuses me. Yeah.
REM test, MRIs, really, just an add on. It's a nice to have, it's a nice to have which you can do, if you have athletes testing indoor, and it's I would say, is a benefit it's not necessarily the accuracy. The benefit is it can be more accurate if people struggle with their pacing and the three minute effort. If you can do a lactate test, do it.
Just what I just say, just here crunching numbers in the last day with our mathematician on on on on the on accuracy. If you use an all out effort with lactate, it's it's as good as as a measured VO2max with a metabolic card. So, yeah, I can highly recommend that, and don't mess mess around with the REM test. It's really only for people who have problems with the pacing of the three minute.
Peter, I prescribed the same three times, six times forty twenty session to different long distance athletes. So training peaks based on the current FTP. The RPE was very different, and one struggled a lot each time.
Afterwards, I did entire test, and I calculated the lactate levels based on the inside test result. It's Very dramatically different and made the session very different for each other. Did I understand it right? That's a new potential integration with training, which will make standard workouts individual based, the inside results.
Well, there's two parts of that is, I actually I actually we are working on a on a new blog post which describes more or less exactly this problem. So you prescribe an intensity based on FTP.
And, I mean, we've been telling this forever. Right? So the problem is you are basically, when you prescribe training intensity based on FTP, you are extrapolating from FTP. And it's so easy to understand if you have an athlete who has an FTP at eighty percent of VO2max and athlete at ninety percent or seventeen, eighty five. Doesn't matter. Okay? So two different percentages of your VO2max and you extrapolate from FTP, then one guy if, let's say, one hundred percent is one hundred twenty percent FTP, then one guy is at VO2 max, one hundred percent, and the other guy is at simplified mass here at one hundred ten percent VO2 max.
And now you have different VLAM x, and one is saying staying at five percent VLAM x, the other twenty percent VLAM x. And therefore, you get entirely different training responses.
Right? Then this is what you see in practice. Right? You see in practice, you do the same interval training. There's two people and you see different responses. And the reason is they have different metabolic profiles. And what we just did, we just extrapolated from an FTP to a VO2max, and we should not do that.
A little bit sorry. A little bit, maybe provocative, but that is like that is like saying I go to the gym and I do Russian deadlift, one repetition maximum. And then from Russian deadlift, I extrapolate to bench press, workouts or extrapolate to to leg press. It's just it it just doesn't work.
Okay? So one part of the problem is to and that is what I indicated with Nicolas here to maybe try to develop a tool which based on these questions, this is what I learned from this ask me anything session. This is what is great for us. I learned what are your main pain points, and then we can think about if we can develop a feature for that.
So if you think about, can we? And that's not something, quick, but can we develop a feature which allows you to plan these kind of interval training sessions without a little bit trial and error of what you would currently do with the training zone builder. Right? Setting up different training zones, a different percentage of VLX and VioAtomics.
Mix.
This integration, this platform like Azum solves it partly. It solves it partly because now you can send training zones to to Azum. So you can create those training zones and send it directly in there and just prescribe it based on that.
Will it be the same with the other training platform? That's exactly what we are trying to solve. There are custom zones, but there is no external interface or an actual API to send custom zones. So that is currently what blocks us here.
But I'm very basically, I'm apps I'm I'm convinced. I'm thinking positive. I'm convinced that we will get over this block. But, again, it's currently a question of resources on the other end.
Last one, and then I want two answers for today. Robert, could it beneficial to increase VLX? For example, a long distance athlete with VLX of zero point two. Almost not. Zero point two is very low.
I would argue maybe not.
But you can you can almost find, long distance long distance triathlete.
I would argue no.
I wanted to say you can find out. You can see what is the what is the, lactate production needed for the intensity they are doing. But, their long stored distance is all significantly below threshold. So oh, I don't I don't see why, Robert, honestly, you would do that.
Nope.
For now.
So that's a full hour.
I really enjoyed this session. I hope you did too. That was great. Thanks for the great feedback.
I wish you all happy holidays and happy New Year. This was the last, ask me anything session for twenty twenty four.
Stay tuned for updates. We will, likely have short notice webinar about the new features we're going to release next week.
So stay tuned, and hope to see you in a webinar by the end of next week. Fingers crossed.
And, as I if not, then I see you next year for the next ask me anything session. Thank you.