Breakthrough Endurance

Leave it to Twitter to get me riled up. A tweet caught my attention a few days ago. It read: "Greater improvements in cycling performance parameters following HRV-guided vs. block training." I was intrigued, so I read the abstract . I didn't have access to the peer review journal at the time, but I could see in the abstract, "Between-group fitness and performance were similar after the study." So I called out the original "tweeter," saying there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Claiming one is superior, misrepresents the study's findings. By this point I noticed the individual is a  professor and researcher and maintains a blog devoted to heart rate variability (HRV) research - which surprised me. If he's a professor, surely he understands statistics - I couldn't help but think he was misrepresenting the findings to support his bias in favor of  HRV-guided training... After I pointed out...

I've expressed my opinion several times - separate the two when the goal is either strength or endurance But if you're into combining them into one workout, recent research ( link here ) indicates that performing strength training after endurance training results in the more favorable endocrine response than strength before endurance. Be careful with this information, as no performance measures were taken. While strength training after endurance training resulted in higher serum concentrations of  testosterone and IGFPB-3, it would be irrational to assume that this results in the greatest performance gains - and at what performance measures: strength vs cardiovascular endurance. At the end of the day, more work completed = more muscle damage and more energy expended.

Interesting research concerning running economy and muscle damage from researchers (and runners) at Georgia State:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24531437 Last year, a colleague and I tried to collect some pilot data assessing ankle jerk/patellar reflexes and running economy following a brutal eccentric workout (drop jumps and leg press). The reflex results were unclear and a broken treadmill threw a wrench into our running economy analysis... What implication(s) could this have for athletes? It would be wise to avoid muscle damage (downhill running, eccentric resistance training) in the 2-3 days before major competitions. Could cross training that elicits less muscle damage than running (cycling, elliptical, swimming) in the days immediately prior to a race increase running economy? Of course, if you have a race coming up that has a substantial amount of downhill, you may be able to attenuate some of the muscle damage that would be attained during the race by consisten...

I got an email last week with a link to this article from the NSCA's Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. It caught my attention because I've done "concurrent training" in the past and I'm currently tinkering in the weight room 2-3x a week while running and cycling. Further, it seems as though resistance training for runners is a hot topic as of late. In my post from March on concurrent training, I essentially concluded that through a number of possible mechanisms, same session strength and endurance training may limit the adaptations that you would get from resistance training alone or in a separate session. For example, if you go for a 2 hour long run then completing plyometrics or a weight workout -- you may not get the benefits from that second workout to the same extent as you would if you had separated those workouts. Cellular signaling, fatigue/overtraining, decreased glycogen conten t may all be part of the reason. Think about it -- how many ...