How ‘Trainable’ Is VO2 Max Really?
Coming from the era of Arthur Lydiard and LSD, long slow distance and periodization this article got my attention. Even Dave Scott and Mark Allen had different training methods, Dave was more intensity focused and Mark A was more of an over distance athlete.
In this article by Alan Couzens he presents a case study that challenges the intensity method. V02 Max was improved by volume training. In a way it makes me happy because intensity as a Master Athlete just plain hurts and proper recovery requires more than just an easy day. However, volume training does take time.
Back in the day my intensity was all done on the road as fartleks, hill repeats, bounding, and racing 5K / 10K's often. There was no prescribed numbers to hit.
How many of you think of yourself as responder to intensity or volume? Do the big bike weeks that @Coach Patrick is doing and suggesting a golden nugget for improving V02Max?
I do believe we need to always be training fast twitch fibers. But how much training is necessary? All Master athletes need to be asking this. And if you are not a Master athlete is intensity causing injury? And on another note what about heart health and the demands of high HR and stoke volume that is being put on an athletes heart?
Article - https://simplifaster.com/articles/how-trainable-is-vo2-max/
Comments
@Sheila Leard - Thanks for sharing. From last year, the biggest single workout that "moved" my functional VO2 (if that’s a thing) as measured by WKO4 was my 10 hour, 200 mile ride day.
But for me I am more focused on power at VO2…so not moving the VO2 as much as being able to do more watts at that number. If my capacity is "X", than can I push 250W at that capacity instead of 225W?
I am not the smartest person here, but I think the best plan is a combination of both. Intermittent volume for gains and consistent quality training to sustain them….
Thoughts?
@Sheila Leard, a prohibitory part of the method Alan Couzens described is the actual volume of training. Few have 18 plus hours of available training time. Work, family, sleep & life require more time. While Couzens stated the majority of the athletes who KQ he has coached have VO2 in the 65 - 70 range, there are plenty of athletes who compete and qualify with VO2 max lower. IMO, all of the metrics we track are important to monitor. We can see if we have areas that need attention and where we are improving. However, race day is about racing. I believe there is a constant topic brought up in the "Four Keys" talks that says something like Ironman courses are littered with the fittest athletes on the planet just walking. So, I agree that VO2 work hurts. It hurts more every year. It may not be the primary means in maintaining or growing our VO2 max, but they are still needed.
every single one of your questions could be looooong threads on their own, Sheila. Thanks so much for posting. I was chewing on these through my long ride today, and will do the same tomorrow.
But I’ll hold my reply until @Rich Stanbaugh weighs in!
I don't know the science of improving VO2 max, or if it is inbred. But Sheila raises a couple of other issues
First, intensity, age, and injury. I know that I have in the past responded very well to intensity. I also know that in the last five years, it has led to injury. But I don't think it actually *causes* injury. I think it exacerbates two issues which are inevitable as we age. One, it magnifies the natural erosion of cartilage in our hips, knees, etc, hastening the ultimate breakdown. Two, muscular strength is diminished with age (no matter how much we try to avert via the weight room), and those smaller muscles in the pelvis which support the knee and hip while running. And, as we've noted in the past: intensity via cycling is a LOT less likely to lead to injury than trying it with running , swimming, and heavy weights.
For me, heart health is not an issue. My HR is not the limiter to my training and racing that muscular strength and joint integrity is. I think that, apart from atrial fib and fibrosis issues, heart rate and high stroke volume are not concerns for masters athletes.. Our Max HR which drop over time p[rotect us from that, IMO.
@Al Truscott I think you see where I'm going with this. Your statement "muscular strength is diminished with age (no matter how much we try to avert via the weight room), and those smaller muscles in the pelvis which support the knee and hip while running." is exactly what I'm dealing with. I have an SI joint issue that keeps me from running hard. It's annoying as heck to train one day and be plagued with back pain the next day. I've never dealt with this sort of thing. I miss running ... long ... and hard. Jogging is good! 😂
So I need to use the bike for intensity and hope that it will keep me in the game and not worry about aerobic capacity. Like @Coach Patrick said a mixture of both intensity and volume timed correctly is best.
Thanks for your insights.!!
The Science of Ultra Podcast (SOUP) has a number of interesting episodes on these subjects. If you're a podcast listener, let me know and I'll try to find specific episodes for you, although I do recommend that entire podcast.
They talk specifically about athletes who have seen increasing race success while experiencing decline in VO2 Max. The difference is that these runners saw increases in running efficiency at the same time as they were seeing decreases in VO2 Max.
SOUP seems to be arguing that running efficiency is as important or perhaps more important than VO2 Max and that efficiency is probably easier to maintain or improve.
SOUP points to studies that indicate efficiency can be improved with as few as two sets of eight reps of single leg squats and single leg calf raises done twice each week. The set should be done to near fatigue (heavy weights), each rep should be done slowly and the strength work must be spaced at least five hours away from a regular run.
The other thing SOUP recommends is jumping rope. Again, spaced at least five hours from a run. Starting at one to two minutes and working up to, I think, five minutes.
@Sheila Leard - thanks for posting this. I've been intending to respond for awhile now, but life was conspiring against me!
VO2max is a subject that can be really confusing for me, because: 1. It is a term that everyone uses, 2. Everyone has a "general" understanding of what VO2max means, and 3. A lot of really smart people use the term in a way that is "narrowly accurate" but "broadly misleading." I am going to have to be careful not to be "narrowly accurate" and "broadly misleading" in this post!
The first area where I think confusions sets in is this: We all understand VO2max as the maximum amount of oxygen that we can consume while exercising. Sometimes people (athletes, coaches, authors of papers) are referring to the maximum amount of oxygen that an athlete can consume right now, today at today's level of fitness), and sometimes they are referring to the physiological limit that we are (more or less) born with and is based on how much mitochondria we have.
That physiological definition of VO2max is the one that I have understood to be relatively "fixed" based on your genes. Traditionally, it was thought you inherited from your mother, but some recent research indicates you can also inherit from your father (pointing this out since Sunday is Father's day!). This is the figure that I've seen tied to maximum improvement of 10-15%.
The amount of oxygen that each of us can consume right now at maximal effort is also a VO2max number. It can be measured/estimated with lots of different test equipment (including the power meter on your bike). Almost none of us have a measured VO2max that is close to our physiological potential VO2max because of fitness, practice suffering, aerobic development, ..., lots of reasons. Our current number can be improved a lot. I can probably improve mine currently estimated to be about 60 ml/kg/min more than @tim cronk can improve his which is closer to 70 ml/kg/min. When I started training seriously after my year of failed surgeries, my VO2 was estimated at about 44 ml/kg/min... so I am already well beyond 10-15%.
The point of all this is that, when I read an article like the Couzens article, I always find a ton of really interesting and useful information. But, a lot of times, I find assertions that may be narrowly true/accepted (like the 10-15% improvement) but that are probably not used in the right context.
The part I liked best about the article was the discussion about how you can also improve VO2max (meaning your currently measured VO2max) with low intensity. He had great data that showed how he took an athlete that had been chronically focused on HIT intervals, changed the training stimulus and got very measurable performance improvements.
If you think about an interval in general, the things you can control are:
These 5 variables should be put together in a way to trigger a specific training response. Taking VO2 as an example, doing super high intensity with long recovery improves lactate buffering in muscles and with shorter recovery can stimulate the production of new mitochondria. sum-maximal efforts (like sweetspot intervals) for longer duration can lead to improvements in mitochondria respiration (making what you have more efficient).
If we are trying to improve our VO2 and move the current value of VO2max towards that theoretical VO2max, we need to improve all three of these things. We also need to practice suffering, build a better circulatory system (lower intensity intervals help cardio stroke volume), ..., it is a much longer list than I can remember or even understand.
The idea that I have been chasing, and the reason @Dave Tallo said that he was going to wait on me before weighing in, is that I have been working with the idea that triathletes are "chronically underdeveloped" at durations less than 5 minutes (I have a lot of data that supports this idea), and that this "under development" is limiting our abilities to raise our VO2max, our FTP and our 5-hour powers. The data that I have seen shows that people that are incredibly high performing cyclist from 5 minutes to 5 hours (Cat 1-2 riders) are "untrained" / worse than Cat 5 under 5 minutes.
I've been doing some wacky intervals that @Coach Patrick refers to as a "weird science experiment" trying to improve my own performance. Coach P and Tim have also played with maximizing their power at these ridiculously short durations with insanely long recovery periods (Tim documented here: https://endurancenation.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/comment/275462#Comment_275462) and we have all seen unexpected improvement.
Interestingly, Both Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen - inventors of the terms and most of the coaching we apply to our training, advocate against triathletes focusing on building anaerobic power. It's my thought that these guys have no idea how under developed we are in these zones.
As I have improved my short duration powers, I have found that:
My thinking on the subject boils down to this: : "train whatever you are the worst at doing / is the most under developed." Couzens found athletes that had only been doing HIT intervals and he changed the stimulus to low intensity and it helped. Some of us have benefited from the wacky science intervals, probably because we had ignored developing out anaerobic systems. Probably people that focus exclusively on Z1/Z2 base cardio development would benefit from traditional HIT.
But - whatever we are training - it should be with a purpose. An set that is 6x5' @120% FTP (5') will give a very different training benefit than an interval that is 4x5' MAX (12' recovery).
@Rich Stanbaugh This is such a great perspective. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
In the end it always goes back to the basics. Doing hard anaerobic / V02 stuff requires more recovery for Master athletes but it still needs to be in the formula. I'v often wondered what training stimulus I've gotten from teaching a cycle class every week for 15 years. Even though it's not specific FTP intervals or V02 work it has to have helped ... I hope.
One last question. If you build your V02 and FTP long before a race, what is the period of time that it comes back down? I know we do the OS but shouldn't we be doing a block of that type of training 3-4 weeks out from an IM? More specifically - you would not calculate your race day zones off the new bump?
These 5 variables should be put together in a way to trigger a specific training response. Taking VO2 as an example, doing super high intensity with long recovery improves lactate buffering in muscles and with shorter recovery can stimulate the production of new mitochondria. sum-maximal efforts (like sweetspot intervals) for longer duration can lead to improvements in mitochondria respiration (making what you have more efficient).
Sheila Leard - I work under the assumption that if I haven't demonstrated it within the last 60-90 days, it does not exist as a part of my current fitness. I'm not sure if this is right or wrong... I am pretty sure that as I age, 60 is more accurate than 90!
I continue to mix short, high-intensity intervals into my training throughout the season; I just reduce the focus on them. Personally, the very short FRC intervals (3' or less - red on my chart) do not have the recovery cost for me that what I call VO2 intervals (5' - 20' ish - yellow on my chart) do. VO2 intervals can ruin the rest of my week, whereas the FRC intervals do not.
I am planning on going to IM Louisville this year (October). Here is a high-level overview of the plan I put together in February that lays out what kind of interval focus I would have each month. You can see the power targets (some are probably not attainable for me) and the types of interval work that I planned to hit the targets. So far, apart from making some adjustments when I feel really fatigued, I'm tracking pretty true to this plan.
I was a little off target in the beginning of June and had to add some longer FRC intervals (1'-3') to get my data right, so I will not be doing those in July. You can see that I carry on with the 30" and under work throughout, but only do the 31'-3' work every other month.
I find that my VO2 will continue to increase when I move from the yellow to the green intervals - I think this is aligned with the article that you posted. By doing the Reds, if keeps my anaerobic fitness boosted and I feel better when I get off the bike to run.
I 100% think that spin classes can help, especially for the yellow/green sections on my chart. I think that Zwift is a big boos to the yellow / green sections. In my experience, the red sections have to be specifically targeted.
@Rich Stanbaugh this is great stuff! Thanks for all of the detail.
Getting a little off topic here, but it's tangentially related, so let me tie something @Sheila Leard asked with something I saw missing from your chart...
"I know we do the OS but shouldn't we be doing a block of that type of training 3-4 weeks out from an IM? More specifically - you would not calculate your race day zones off the new bump?"
and Rich sort of answered with this:
"By doing the Reds, if keeps my anaerobic fitness boosted and I feel better when I get off the bike to run."
So let me interpret this the way I understand it. Doing the more intense FRC and VO2 intervals (in training) will buffer your ability to recover from these hard efforts that you will "accidentally" do during an IM race. So either you have more matches to burn before your matchbook is empty, or burning a few matches along the way will be mostly forgotten by your body when you get to the run (compared to never having done any FRC or VO2 work in your race prep phase).
But I would say that any shorter time-frame bumps you see from these efforts (i.e. slightly higher FTP for instance) should have almost zero bearing on what your target IM race power should be... This target or "Goal Race Watts" should be refined by your proven ability to demonstrate power output during much longer efforts in training. A brute force method like 70% of FTP is good for a starting point guess, but it has it's limitations. A much better method can be achieved by either doing a few race rehearsals (and assessing how you feel during the last ~30 mins of your 60 min run off the bike) and tweaking your effort each time to dial it in. Or it can be done by really finding your "Maximum" 5hr (or 6hr) power numbers and racing at some percentage lower than that.
I was curious Rich why your Power chart stopped at 3 yours and didn't have say, a "5 hour Power" goal number (other than the obvious that you cropped your sheet to stay specifically on the original topic)?
@John Withrow Good catch - I meant to answer that and then forgot (age again).
"I know we do the OS but shouldn't we be doing a block of that type of training 3-4 weeks out from an IM? More specifically - you would not calculate your race day zones off the new bump?"
I personally never believe anything until I have validated it several ways at several different times. For example, I rode 308w for 20' the other day. One way of estimating FTP is 95% of that effort, which says that my FTP should be 292. This is how Strava, Training Peaks and Garmin have estimated it. WKO4 estimates it at 273w, because I haven't done other rides longer than 20' which would justify the the 20' estimate.
I would never plan a race based on the 292w until I had done longer rides that 'validate' that I've earned that FTP. With WKO4, I don't even use the 292w to set zones for training... I use the WKO4 iLevels that are based off of my unique Power Duration Curve to set workout targets. This is what the WKO4 iLevels are all about, and also what the Sufferfest guys are getting at with their 4DP plans when they say that FTP doesn't matter. They are both using multiple power tests at different durations to calculate training zones that are tailored to an individual rather than using % of FTP to set training zones. As an example, my FTP is about 80% of VO2, but I have data on folks that shows FTP as a % of VO2 ranges from 78% to 85%.
So - I believe the data that I see... but I do not necessarily think that maximal rides that I have achieved around 20', for example, predict what I can do today at 60', or 3-5 hrs. Maybe 20' reflects my potential at those times, but I need to do the work and validate it.
I fully agree with you - Race targets should, in my opinion, be based off of targets that have been validated in the weeks leading up to a race.
"By doing the Reds, if keeps my anaerobic fitness boosted and I feel better when I get off the bike to run."
This is my opinion based on my personal experience / observations. The thinking is that we (people) are always burning both aerobically and anaerobically. We are analog, not digital, beings and the switch is never fully off. Sometimes we are (as a % of energy being used) 'almost all aerobic' or 'almost all anaerobic,' but we are always burning some of each. One easy way to prove this to yourself is to do a 1' all out effort on your bike... MAX effort... while holding your breath. If you were 100% anaerobic, then holding your breath wouldn't matter.... right?
WKO4 has a chart that shows you how much aerobic (ftp) and anaerobic (frc) power is contributing to an effort. Here is my chart for the last 90 days. WKO4 defines the FRC (functional reserve capacity) as the amount of work that you can do above FTP. In the chart below, the blue line (mostly anaerobic power from FRC) + the green line (aerobic power from FTP) = my total power output (red line).
So let me interpret this the way I understand it. Doing the more intense FRC and VO2 intervals (in training) will buffer your ability to recover from these hard efforts that you will "accidentally" do during an IM race. So either you have more matches to burn before your matchbook is empty, or burning a few matches along the way will be mostly forgotten by your body when you get to the run (compared to never having done any FRC or VO2 work in your race prep phase).
I agree with all of this. But, in addition to "accidentally" doing a hard effort, we continually burn FRC at any level of effort.
You can see that on the chart above, that even at 5hrs, I am still getting an FRC contribution to my effort. Imagine 5 hours * 0.5w FRC = 18kJ of FRC burn. If you are only starting with 5-10kJ FRC, there isn't much left to support running. I believe this is why a lot of us get off of a bike ridden to plan but, after about 10k of running, the wheels come off and we are not able to manage the pace. We've simply burned through the FRC because we didn't start with a big enough stockpile. So, I continue to do the super hard efforts under 3' so that my FRC remains high (blue line well above the green line).
I was curious Rich why your Power chart stopped at 3 yours and didn't have say, a "5 hour Power" goal number (other than the obvious that you cropped your sheet to stay specifically on the original topic)?
There are a few reasons for this:
@Sheila Leard Wow this thread has covered a lot of ground. I'm just getting around to putting down my thoughts. There are probably many ways to skin the V02 cat, LSD vs. high intensity I wont debate and I am sure they both work, but my experience is that it requires WORK, which to me is intensity intervals or long WORK (not LSD). Heck I was thinking as I prepare to spend time at altitude, in preparation for Leadville, that alone should improve V02 right? The ability to process oxygen or less oxygen? Anyway not to get sidetracked.
Alan Couzen's blog appears to have all of the library from endurancecorner when it was run by Gordo Byrne. They had done a lot of work in "generalities of different body types" some I found scattered in articles but I think it was mostly in the Qualifying for KONA series. These really struck a chord with me when I first read them. Specific comps and differences between different athletes and generally what works for different body types. Think small male vs. large male, young male vs. older male, male vs. female, etc.
There is a lot of science in this training game , lots of it in the posts above. But its not all about science . There is an Art to the game. When and How much of various stimulus to be applied so that we can peak on Race Day (not the day before or the day after but ON race day). What works for one may not work for another. I do believe that all Zones should be trained almost year round, the only difference is changing the amounts relative to the race day schedule.
We all have our personal individual limits. For the sake of this thread I will call intensity Zone 4/5 and above. Through out my IM training cycles I have come up with my own personal limits that I feel I can handle on a weekly basis, while adapting, and continuing to keep training without going into a hole. Keep in mind this is Ironman volume with longbike and longrun, weekly, roughly speaking 3-4 miles of run intensity per week . 40-60 min of bike FTP work, 15-20 min bike v02 work . I included running but obviously if you are prone to injury while doing run speedwork then one should not do said speedwork. When you remove something like a run speedworkout , longbike, longrun, then it can be replaced with more intensity somewhere else.
MAF training comes up a lot, similarly is the 80/20 training. To me these are similar in that most of the training is done easy with no more than 20% of intensity. While I see nothing wrong with doing a block or an extended period of MAF type training, I think its a big mistake not to do intensity. Funny sidenote and referencing my personal limits above, in a typical IM build week I may run 30 miles with 3 miles of intensity, which is a 90/10 split, I may also cycle 10hrs of which 40min is ftp and 20 min is v02 which is again 90/10 split. Without even paying attention to it , just comes out that way. The biggest mistake I think athletes make is not making the easy , easy enough, and not making the hard , hard enough. Instead they settle for something in the middle.
podcast interview with the author Couzen is on That triathlon show
Thanks @tim cronk I appreciate your reference to body type. That doesn't come up much in exercise prescription.
With all your ultra stuff this year your durability must be really good. For me, I think of the LSD bikes and runs more for resilience and mental prep ... not for improving VO2 such as the athlete in Couzens article.
This also in Velonews from earlier in the week...
@Coach Patrick My take from that article is, train all systems. For long distance triathletes, working a lot around sub threshold will bring benefits. However, we need to work the entire machine.