How To Use Lab Testing To Tweak Your Training Plan w/ Nick Jankovskis - METS Performance

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Today on the podcast, we have Nick here from Mets Performance. Mets Performance is a testing and coaching group locally here in Melbourne. And we really value a lot of their content and the stuff they put out. And they really are helping all athletes, age group triathletes, endurance athletes, and from a wide range of sports, test themselves, find out their thresholds, find their VO2 maxes, their lactate thresholds, their training thresholds, and how to apply that to training. So we're really excited to have Nick in the studio with us today. Nick, welcome to the Trivello Coaching Podcast.

No, thanks. Good to be on and good to have a bit of a chat and sort of talk some ideas about training and testing and all of that. And hopefully to your audience, we can bring a little bit of value and insight in terms of what we do.

Now, the first question I want to ask is, as a sports scientist and as someone who's grown up around sport their whole life, what does sport mean to you?

Yeah, it's sort of an interesting one, I think for me, I was definitely very similar to, I guess, a lot of kids who grew up in Australia. If you, you play as much sport as you can as a kid, so did the, the standard football in winter, cricket in the summer, that was sort of the main two. And, and I guess, like, as a real young kid, wanted to do the double, wanted to play in the AFL and then play cricket for Australia in the same, the same calendar year. But that was never going to happen once I, once I got a little bit older and that playing probably wasn't on the cards for me, but I've always just sort of been inquisitive. Like my, I can sit down and watch basically anything and you sort of ask my parents. It's like, like, when the Olympics is on, I'll literally watch every sport I watch. The weirdest stuff, like European handball, like, I'll, I'll sit down and watch a full game and analyze it. And I've always sort of been like that. And I guess that's where sports science came in, was I've always had that, like, inquisitive nature of, like, how is this happening? Why is this happening? But specific to a sporting circumstance. And then looking at the parallels, like, what can I learn from. Take a Strange sport like European handball. What can I learn from there that's then going to apply to football? Or what can I learn from your track endurance type runners or track enduro cyclists that might be able to apply to longer course stuff, like looking at all those sort of things I've always sort of had that interest in and I guess that sort of flowed into sports science. And once I sort of realized I probably wasn't going to play football or cricket at the top level, that's where sports science became a genuine sort of career path and sort of sustained that, that just sort of interest. So basically I just get to watch a lot of sport and problem solve sport, which is something that I've always wanted to do and love to do.

So we'll get into the sports science things asap because we've got so much to discuss. But I do want to quickly touch on a unique side of you that not a lot of people know. And I only found out last week that you are actually in a VFL AFL umpire. A field umpire, yeah.

So that sort of came about as a byproduct of again not being good enough to probably play anymore, like. So I was always. And I'm not very, not very tall, so I was never going to make it as a footballer, but wanted to sort of stay involved in the, in the sport and sort of picked up umpiring at about 14 years of age, 13 years of age. I'm just doing some local stuff. So I reckon that was probably the best endurance I've ever had at that point. Umpiring two games of football in the morning, then going and playing like under 16s in the afternoon, generally in the midfield too. So I was winning cross country those years, which was fantastic because I never used to. But yeah, so I've been umpiring now for, oh, the better part of what, 12 years, so a handful at local football level and then moved up to the VFL about 2016. Did some VFLW and some under 18 stuff, couple of under 18s, grand finals along the way as well. And then obviously into the VFL and fortunate enough through, through an injury occurrence last year to get myself on for half a game of AFL footy, which was a bit surreal. Definitely one of those things that it's the, it's the next best thing to playing. Like if you, if you can't get out there and play afl. Well, not, not too many people. I think there's only. There'd be less than 500. Like there's 400 actual or 450 actual numbers given out to those who, who debut if you, if you're selected for the game. But in terms of those who've actually unplugged AFL football, it'd be less than, less than 500 total in the history of the game. Which is a. Pretty, pretty sure it's a real thing to think about after you come off the ground and go, I'm one of a very, very small group that have actually gotten to do this. So yeah, a bit of a different one. Not something I generally talk about and post about a lot. That's probably one of those things that people are a little bit surprised, but that's probably just the nature of umpiring too. We sort of. You're doing a good job if you find under the radar.

Yeah, well it's interesting because you know the Australian cricket shirt has the number on what number selected cricketer you are.

So see the same thing on the umpire shirts. Actually if you have a look closely, it's just under the AFL logo there's a little three digit number.

It's a great idea. And so just talking a little bit about science, you would have to have a specific type of fitness to be an umpire because it is a lot of ground to be covered and a lot of short bursts. So has your exercise physiology background really helped you prepare yourself to be a fit and up, up the ground umpire?

Yeah, I think it has. So I mean it's one of those interesting ones that from a, from a game perspective, typically in a, in a men's game it's going to differ if you're doing AFL vs VFL vs AFLW under 18 boys just by the nature of the game. Lengths mainly, but also ground size sometimes plays a bit of a part. But generally in a VFL men's game we'll cover anywhere between 14 16ks a game. Last year had a couple of games up at the 18k mark. So you're running decent amounts of volume. Admittedly part of that is not really working too hard like when, when you're at the other end of the ground, you're still actively involved but obviously the intensity is not on. But once that ball starts flying up the middle like now you, now you're working. So it's an interesting mix really. The closest to it is probably you train very similar to what the players do because it's a lot of that stop start. Very rarely are you running continuously at the same speed for two, three minutes. So we'll do some of that stuff. Like you when I say traditional endurance work in the off season because we don't need to worry about kicking footies or handballing or marking or anything like that. Tackling, it's just out of it. So the major thing is the running but then we're still working on change of direction. I mean probably a third of our runnings backwards as well. So that's completely different to then running forwards. You're also then trying to run not just looking this way, like I've got to be able to run in this direction but look at a 90 degree angle. So how can I keep my body going this way really quick whilst heads turned? I'm looking at something. You've also then got to be fit enough that and like we're working pretty hard on field like you, I've tracked my heart rate a few times. Like you get up in the. I get up in the 180s pretty, pretty comfortably at the best of times but on field it's definitely up there. Think about that sort of workload. But then also I've got to make better part of 50 to 100 decisions every couple of minutes under pressure, under, under pressure but physiologically under the pump too. So like the way I describe is like you think about your, your hard VO2 sets like for the, any of your triathletes or the cycle, it's doing a VO2 set but then being asked a bunch of questions that you have to get right like as you go on the spot it's pretty tough. So. And then communicate and well and then communicate it. That's probably the hardest bit when you're out of breath. Explaining one, blowing a whistle when you're out of breath, you've got nowhere to pass out. But then trying to explain it but also trying to explain in a way that like you're working hard, you're under the pump, you're under a bit of pressure but we have to just stay level headed. We can't be emotional about the decision because we're impartial. It doesn't go either way but you've got a player coming at you quite aggressively. It's like how do you handle that? How do you manage it? So it's a really interesting mix but I guess training wise like the background in sports science been invaluable being able to sort of manage what do I do in my off season but how can I go about it so that I mean our football seasons get longer and longer each year so it's. How can I get, how can I get fit enough without overcooking it so that I can get through the rest of the season.

AFL women's now, right?

Yeah. So AFL women's starts quite early and so we're the same from a VFL perspective with basically the bulk of the umpires who do that of which will finish an AFLW season. So they're in finals now. We had round one VFL last week, so there's a crossover. So you're pretty much season to season, which is tough. And really it's like. I was talking a couple of clients the other week about sort of workload. It's kind of like getting up for a 10k time trial each week for 9 months of the year, if not 10 now with the extension of the seasons. But physiologically that's what it feels like. You have a game on a Saturday, you get to the Sunday and you're like, I just don't want to do anything now. But like, how do you. How do you build the fitness in the first place and then get it up? Yeah, correct that. So we've got some really good access to some great guys from a high performance side of things that, that help out a bit and, and that's just good for my own learning to get some ideas off other people who have probably not the background in, I guess the, the real endurance, traditional conditioning side of things. A bit more of they've come through team sports and football players and things like that, which definitely sort of then drives my, like, again, that inquisitive side of, well, how can I do things differently? What can I take to then bring back to my clients? What can I bring from my work side of things in. But they're enough. There's enough of a detachment that like, I don't just feel like I'm doing the same thing all the time. I think that's the main thing. Sometimes it's just good to switch off and let someone else coach you.

We've spoken a lot about that and we had a great discussion, us three, about that last week. Yeah, getting extra eyes on just this combination of what you're saying, being inquisitive, being willing to learn. Because we had a great discussion last week about the fact that the whole world is still, still in an experimental phase about all this. We know, we know some key things that work, we know some key things that don't work. But yeah, there's a constant learning that needs to happen. If you're not willing to learn and adapt, then you're going to be left behind. So it's great to hear that. Obviously you're learning from people around you. In different settings. That's what we're trying to do, especially in this podcast. We're trying to interview every single sport scientist we can around the world to get their opinions. And let's jump into it because there's a lot to talk about. So I want to start with a bit of a unique one. But misconceptions around testing and what testing does and what testing can and can't do. What's some of the common things that you get hit with?

Testing will give you a set of numbers. That's probably the big one. It's like there is only so much a test can actually give you. It's what you do with the data afterwards that actually makes the difference. So that's probably the. When I say probably the biggest one that we say quite a bit, and it's one of our, I guess, little frustrations, is that people come into a test and that's fine and they'll get some good information, but then not really do anything with it and then it's kind of a one and done. Like there's no, there's no desire to then look at, well, how are things changing over the long run? And testing again, it's just a means to an end. It doesn't. When I say it doesn't matter how you test, obviously we would like you to jump in a lab and go through that process, because that's what we specialize in. But at an absolute minimum, you have to do some form of regular benchmarking, whether it's the same training session you do every sixth week or eighth week, to just see, all right, how am I going comparative to last time? Or how did I feel? Or was pace different, was heart rate different? All of those things, like some form of benchmark to then measure yourself against. Could be race day. I mean, like triathlon wise, the sprint race series is a pretty good one. You test yourself in the first race, you test yourself in the last race. Did I improve across the season? If. No. Well, what did we do that we could improve on next time? So I think that's probably the biggest thing. It's like testing just is fundamentally finding where you're at at that point in time. Probably the second one that follows on from that is it's not a great predictor. Like in terms of predicting performance you are predicting is taking an educated guess as best you can. But ultimately there's stuff you can't predict for, particularly the longer the event goes. And that's where we see a lot of our long course guys. They'll come in and go, oh great. From the testing results, what do you reckon I can do at Ironman in four weeks? Well that's gonna be a really hard question to answer because you've come in fresh, you've tested. The test has probably lasted somewhere sub 21 minutes depending on how, what protocol we've gone through. Particularly if we're looking at VO2 max. That's a very different set of physiology. Once you're like if we've done a run test in the lab, if you're trying to then work out run paces for Ironman, well short of me putting you through the better part of seven and a half hours worth of work for a before it, before it and then jumping in and trying to get you to run like we're not really going to know. I don't know what conditions are doing. I don't know how quickly you're burning through fuel potentially. Have you over swam or over biked? Did you lose a bottle on the bike? So now your nutrition's out the window. Like all of those factors and, and there's more to it. How many punctures did you have on the bike? Like all those little things are going to then gonna add up to that. So they're probably the two. It's like just getting numbers and going cool, that's where my numbers are at. And then that's kind of the end of the process. Like that's the big thing that I would avoid doing. Like then there needs to be a process of well here's where I'm at and here's where I'm trying to get to. Let's monitor that progress. But then also like looking at the numbers, yes, we can get some ideas but we can't specifically predict what is going to happen in a certain situation. That's probably the good things I've taken from umpiring is like I go out in the field, I have no idea which way the ball's going to bounce. I have no idea who's going to hit who or what free kicks. You're calm but I know it's like I can prepare myself as best I can for that stimulus but until I actually get into it I'm not actually going to know. And so I try and impart a little bit of that in terms of into athletes. It's like there is still going to be some unknown particularly if it's your first race, like if you've been through it before you're going to know those points where it should start to Hurt or. And if you get past those points, you're feeling great, like good, you've done something in the lead up that's working. I think they're probably the two. Like there's only so much you can do with just a set of numbers. It's then how you implement it off the back end and how you sort of go from there that will inform more your decision making.

Well, I think it's a really good start and they're the two areas that we want to really dive into today. And of course getting the test numbers will give us some idea of where you are amongst the general population. So that in itself is a reasonably good, good starting point. And you can say to someone, you know, you're really weak in this area of high power. You look like you've got a lot more endurance based type of physio physiology in your body. And the second part is, what are we going to do with those, all those numbers we've got. What areas should we be really training? You? Of course you're going to have strengths and weaknesses and maybe you've got all weaknesses and you've got a long way to go. Or you've got an athlete who's unbelievably talented and has a great set of numbers and yet is not performing so well. What is he doing wrong? The example, I was just watching a YouTube video the other day on Kipchoge and his testing and he didn't test very remarkable. Yet he is undisputably almost the best marathoner ever. Yep. Yet his VO2 max was 80 something.

Or 70 high seven, which is still very impressive. Like that's not a high number.

Let's don't get that wrong.

Yeah, let's, let's not gloss over the fact that's still very, very good. But comparative to the rest of the field.

Yeah. Compared to a Lance Armstrong who's in the 90s or you know, some of the, some of the wrong. Wrong person problems. Some of the, some of the kid.

Elevens or something like that who was up in the, well up in the 80s, 90s or even some of the.

Norwegian cross country skiers are all 90.

Plus, you know, Blumenfeld's high 80s, isn't he?

I haven't seen what his recent set of data is, I don't think. Yeah, again they tend not to release too much about what it is now. But yeah, I mean something like that, that's your perfect window of opportunity to go, well, how can we get this person better? But like coming back to The Kipchoge example, it's like. And we say this to runners all the time, like, cool. Your VO2 Max is 5 mils per kilo per minute lower than what everyone else is running at. Who won the Olympic gold medal? Who broke two? There's a reason why he can break two. Largely, that's running economy, if we sort of know that. But fundamentally, it's like he doesn't need to have a really high VO2 max. There are other things more important in that sport that he's just been able to nail better or genetically, he's just been able to have the lucky run of it.

A good question would be, if you are in charge of Kipchoge's program and he's obviously like any other human being, how can I get better? Can I run a sub 2 in a race? And you. You. You know a fair bit about him already. What, what, what would be some of the things that you would be saying in his program? Wouldn't change much.

Obviously, I was gonna say it's not. I mean, yeah, it's one of those things. Sometimes it's like the old, if it ain't broke, don't, don't. What was it? If it fixes it. Yeah, don't fix it, or whatever the phrase is. But, I mean, it's a tough one without not knowing everything. It's one of those things. It'd be very interesting to have a look at exactly what his lab data was doing. Wouldn't surprise me, though. Like, and this is a conversation I've had with some running coaches before, there's a pretty strong debate around whether two hours in a legitimate sense, so not with the paces and all that that he had. Whether two hours is actually achievable in a genuine race circumstance where you are basically the only one out the front. A lot of coaches, a lot of running coaches been in industry. While genuinely don't think it can be done, I'm sort of still a bit skeptical. I mean, there's a lot of assistance going on in the pacing side of things. I think he definitely could do it. What would I change? Well, ultimately, it's. I mean, really, if he wants to be able to do it, he's just got to get faster. So it's finding a way he can get faster. Whether that is. Does he have more to gain from an economy sense? I would probably think that physiologically he's probably max. Pretty close to maxed out. I don't think there'd be much more in terms of oxygen consumption. You could get him to, particularly from an age perspective, too. The older he gets, like, the more and more difficult that's going to become, whether it's a genetic limiter. And I think this is probably one of those things that I guess, changing topic a little bit, but I sort of look at some of the Norwegians in a triathlon sense and I go, are they doing anything revolutionary? They could be, like, all credit to them, they're doing great stuff. Or are they just really genetically gifted? We haven't seen that before because that was the initial conversation that we saw around, like an Alistair Brownlee stepping up to long course. Like, I was at that. I mean, he did at Busselton where he set the course record and it's like. I mean, he dominated that field and admittedly it wasn't a really strong field that day, but, like, genetically, have we seen someone like him at Ironman distance? Potentially not. Have we seen a Blumenfeld Ironman distance before? Maybe not. Like, they're all very, very good athletes, but, like, a bit of that is going to be. I mean, were they just. Are they slightly higher in the pecking order in terms of. Do they have that optimal genetics to go really, really fast? Part of it is going to be that. So I think Chogi is sort of an interesting one. It's like, could. Could we get to 2? I reckon part of that is just. It's going to be a bit of timing. You run perfectly, like, absolutely nailing, like, he's got to have his absolutely best day ever. Perfect conditions on course, the most optimal course conditions as well, and maybe be able to find a little bit of extra speed, which I think is probably going to come from. If it's a slight tweak in his economy, which might be. Can we find a further advancement to the shoe?

Yeah, maybe that's the point I was going to make. He's got to find like a minute 45 that could just come from the shoe.

Maybe. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely. They're definitely doing a lot right. And I mean, for all those marathon runners going really two hours ten and less, like, they're doing a lot right. Largely the difference between a 205 and a 210 is probably just going to be the taper for most of them and just nailing that recovery phase leading into the race, I would think, and.

Enough competition in the race to keep them pushed.

And that's the thing. It's like, how many guys can actually sustain that? There's not many. There's not many. So I think it's also a bit of a four minute mile. That's probably the last point on this is like four minute mile theory. One guy breaks it, everyone breaks it. All it's going to take is someone to actually do it in a race before you just start saying it happen. Like that was the four minute mile thing. It's like people were physiologically good enough to do it. Absolutely. Just mentally. No one really had that edge of, oh, it just can't be done. Just can't be done. It can't be done. One guy said, yes, it can be done. Breaks it. All of a sudden now we have so many people about the 4 minute mile instantly.

It's an interesting comparison because that was 60 years ago and training principles weren't as sound. We didn't have as much knowledge, have nearly as much testing. Whereas like you're saying, based on all the testing, we know Kipchoge is basically at his max and he's almost found his full potential. So can he find more? Not sure. But that is also a really encouraging example for the age grouper. And especially what you said at the start, the numbers don't say everything. Sometimes people might do a VO2 max test and then they let that score depict their potential, which just absolutely isn't true. You know, you've got, you get your score, but that can be improved. Again, you guys use the, the cylinder engine example a lot. Let's say someone gets a VO2 max of 55. You know, it's below elite standard. You might think, oh, that's, that's a limiter. A limiter. That's disappointing. You know, whereas you guys say, well, no, you can, you can grow that, you can grow that number to a certain point of the genetics. Genetics allow. But then also you can do a Kipchoge and, and work on how much you can actually hit of that potential.

Yeah, absolutely. It's like at the end of day, running wise, we don't want to be using large amounts of oxygen really, if we can, if we can avoid it, the more economical the better. But yeah, like probably the, probably the other myth that I missed earlier is the point on you, like your VO2 max is your VO2 max like that. That's kind of it. You go in and test it and that's like, that's why a lot of people, days gone by, a lot of professionals like, no, I'm not going to go and test because I didn't want to know what the ceiling was for some of them. It's like all right, we're only trying to move maybe 1%. Like, if we get 1%, like huge, like, that's a massive improvement. The average amateur, like, I'll, I'll say quite regularly, people come in, they have a VO2 max of 50, 55. Pretty, pretty okay. Like, compared to the general population, who's probably at 40, 45, like, they're doing really well. Could they get 65? Absolutely. Part of that's going to potentially be just dropping weight for some of them. But also, like, from a training perspective, one, they're probably just not training to how their physiology needs to be trained to get that up. Typically that's not going hard enough, which, if you don't know what is hard, it's really easy to go and bury yourself in a session and feel really fatigued. And it's really easy for someone to write a program to fatigue you at the end of it. But is that the right amount of fatigue? Is that the right stimulus we need for the adaptation? Maybe, maybe not. Like, you could come out, you do it, you do an hour time trial at threshold and be pretty exhausted. You could do five 2 minute efforts, feel the same at 100 of VO2 max or higher, and feel exactly the same amount of exhaustion immediately prior. We've got a completely different stimulus. So that's where, I mean, that's where it's become super useful. You just have to understand it in terms of, this is my baseline now. Right. As of today, I cannot change anything more about my physiology. I come in our test and just see where things are at. Once you accept that reality, it's much, much easier to actually interpret that data and move forward.

Also, one of the things that, just using Kipchoge again, he's able to perform so close to his VO2. And if you can have a VO2 of 50 and perform to 48 to 98% of your 50, you're doing quite well compared to someone who's at 70 VO2 and is at 80%. Explain that.

Yeah, assuming that you were both running at the same speeds. So this is where it's tricky because we can talk about oxygen consumption all day, but I, I'd say again, say it to a lot of guys, it's like when they come in, if you're not running quick enough, the other guy's still going to beat you if he has a lower VO2 max. Like, I could have a VO2 max of 85 if I wanted to, but if my FTP is 210, the guy's FTP is 240 is going to beat me more often than not, like assuming everything else was equal. So it's that combination of all. Sure, oxygen consumption be really, really high, but if we're not actually producing the output to match it, that, that's, that's ultimately economy, really. And that, that's where someone like a Kipchoge, it's like he's not necessarily have. He's. He's really economical. So he's not necessarily having to use large amounts of oxygen to actually create the output, but he's still running like 250, whatever speed it comes out to be for 42Ks. Like, that's the part I think that gets lost is like you can't just have oxygen consumption. Like, I, I've seen plenty of Amateur athletes have VO2s in the 60, 65 sort of range. It's like, great, but you're still 10 minutes off the pace. Like, I'm not too far. If your oxygen consumption goes up from here, great. Like it's, it's a bit of a tick in the box and it's a nice little ego boost when you come back in the lab and go, oh, my, VO2 is now 65 or it's now 70. But if you're not racing any quicker, we have, like, we haven't really done our job in terms of providing the right recommendations and advice because then it's. I'd be more, I'd be more excited if that person got the same VO2 max, but they got 4, 5 minutes further into the test, which is probably going to be a boost of 1k an hour, potentially, or 30, 40 watts in terms of cycling. But what does that have in relevance to their race intensities? Well, FTP is probably up by 20, 30 watts or half a K, 1K an hour. They're easy zone 2 type pace. The first lactate threshold that most people run your long core stuff at, that's going to be up by about half a K an hour or 10, 20, 30 watts, depending on how much stuff moves at the top. That's now of interest because engine moves up. VO2 max is the same, our outputs up, but our race intensity that we were previously sitting on is now by nature a lower percentage of our engine. So now it's much easier to sustain. So it's either I've got two options. I can sit on that same pace just for a longer period of time, which might be the go for some people, particularly like Ironman, if they blew up at the end of the bike it's like, well, you don't have to go any faster, let's just sustain that because you'll actually be saving your legs a bit better. Or. Well, we cover, we just cover the same amount of ground, but we just do it quicker because we can, we can see the same percentage of our max, which is probably more that upper end age group are heading into the professional set setting that we sort of look at that more. So of now you've got the ability to push faster, like you can ride 20 watts harder and it's not going to hurt you over four hours on the bike or two hours on the bike, which assuming arrows no different, like you add an extra 20, 30 watts, you're gaining like a couple of K now pretty quick, which is huge. Over a couple of hours worth of riding and same from a running perspective. So it's that combination of factors. Like just looking at the auction, the auction consumption number is borderline irrelevant really for VO2 Max because again, you look at like a kipchoge goes into the lab, if he's a little bit flat, a little bit fatigued and he's not quite ready to push himself absolutely maximal, he won't actually hit a genuine VO2 max. And that's probably what we see also. It's like you hit a VO2 peak, it's the highest oxygen consumption we got to today. Was it a genuine max? Maybe, maybe not. Pending readiness, hydration, how much training you've done, how much recovery have you done? What time of the day did you test? Do you like training in the morning, in the afternoon, all these factors compound to give us a particular result. So that's where as well like you do a test, like if it's not quite what you thought and things like that, it's like again, it's just that baseline. Don't get caught up in where we are now because particularly if your race is in, unless you're planning to race that week, that's where you're a little bit more trouble. But I wouldn't recommend testing immediately before you race. But look at it in that timeline of. It's just a reset. All right, Am I, am I ahead of schedule or am I behind schedule for where I thought I would be by the time I'm getting to race day?

So the listeners heard that, okay, we get, we get a VO2 and that's great, but it's not possibly the be all and end all of anything that we've discussed in the last 10 minutes. So the lactate reading just take us through that and how relevant that is.

Yeah. So again, like, oxygen consumption is not, not everything. There's other processes going on. Blood lactate, as a reading, we might touch on this if you wanted, but has become super popular last little while. Again, has its, has its waves. Sometimes people are all, all on it, sometimes they're all off it. Fundamentally, what we're looking at from blood lactate is realistically, we're going to get blood lactate produced from anaerobic processes. So break anaerobic glycolysis, breaking down carbohydrate without the use of oxygen is fundamentally what we're talking about. We break a glucose molecule, it funnels down into blood lactate. Lactate isn't bad per se. We're going to reuse it, we'll recycle it as fuel. It's essentially just half a glucose molecule. Your body loves to use it. So the really, really aerobic guys would generally have quite low blood lactate. Reason for that is one, they're already using good amounts of oxygen so they can break down fuel aerobically to begin with. But any small contribution they have from anaerobic, and there always will be some. Like, even as we sit here right now, if we measured our blood lactate, it'd be one, one and a half maybe depending on what each of us did last night, training wise and things like that, you're always gonna have some. But the really, really aerobically fit guys will just be able to basically recycle that through the system a little bit quicker and a little bit faster. As intensity goes up, we'll inevitably have to rely a little bit more, a little bit more on that anaerobic contribution. All the way up to VO2 max, though, we're still more so aerobic than we are anaerobic. I think that's a really key point to make clear. It's like we're not. I'm using air quotes. I realize I'm on a podcast, talking in an audio. We're not anaerobic as such. Like, if my VO2 max was say 300 watts, that was the power at my VO2 max we tested in the lab. I'm not going to be more anaerobic until probably 600 plus watts. Like, it takes a lot to have more of an anaerobic contribution than an aerobic contribution. So it's the type of thing blood lactate will increase with exercise intensity because we just need that little top up. We just can't process the oxygen quick enough because it takes time. You think about that system in terms of, well, oxygen has to start somewhere. It starts in the atmosphere, in the air around us. We first have to breathe in the air. We then have to diffuse oxygen effectively into the bloodstream through the lungs. We then have to transport it to the working muscles, which for the most part are going to be lower body for runners, cyclists, et cetera. Then we actually have to diffuse it into the working muscle that then has to be getting transported to the mitochondria to then be used. Such a long convoluted process, it's going to take time, but if we need the energy quite quickly and rapidly, we're just going to get it from the most readily available source, which is that anaerobic contribution. So small tool top ups as intensity goes up. That's why pretty much everything up to like threshold or FTP, however you want to term it, it's pretty manageable, pretty comfortable, might start to pinch a bit after a while if you like, just sub threshold. But if you hit FTP, you can sustain it for a good amount of time. At 45 to an hour, typically we go above FTP, things start to fatigue a little bit quicker. Why? Because it's just an extra little bit of anaerobic contribution that we need because we, we're still using a large amount of oxygen, don't get me wrong. But it takes time to be able to use it. We want that energy quicker. We're trying to produce decent amounts of power at this point, so we need to find a way to get the fuel, which is where blood lactate is going to come into it. So that's where it's sort of interesting to look at as a, I guess a secondary metric of, well, what is accumulating in our system. We know if there's an accumulation of blood lactate, clearly our body is starting to require energy from a different avenue, more so than it was before. That's where that clear defining point of something like FTP. We, like a lot of people, talk about four millimoles of blood lactate. Realistically it's anywhere between three and a half and six and a half, pending the athlete training history and all that four millimoles is, was, is and was never actually a genuine benchmark.

Let's break that down a little bit. And just for the listeners who have no idea what each threshold point means or what those lactate threshold point mean, basically when you're testing, you're trying to.

Find that either you could refer to.

It as VT1, VT2 oxygen wise or LT1 LT2 if you're measuring lactate, but break down that fundamentally so we can get a real good grasp of that.

Yeah. So realistically, and I think this is a good point to touch on in terms of like leading into training zones. But fundamentally all training zone systems are basically based off the same three points of our physiology. VO2 max is one, because that kind of dictates the overall size of the engine. But then we have these two threshold points. So LT1 lactate threshold 1 or LT2 lactate threshold 2. Effectively LT1 is just the first accumulation above what is considered typically a resting blood lactate. So commonly it's somewhere around 2.5, might be a little bit lower, might be a little bit higher depending on the person. That's really that tipping point of you. Most people call it a zone 2. If you use a 5 zone system, tipping point between what's a really nice comfortable all day, all day pace, you're still working but you feel like you can stain it basically forever as long as you fueled up. It's that tipping point between that and then what becomes more of a tempo. What becomes. I can probably sustain this for 90 minutes, two hours maybe, but that's where it's starting to cap out. There's a small increase. You'll go from something like a 2 or a 2.5 up to maybe a 3 or a 3.5. We're looking for that first little, little rise. It's. But it's not enough to really do some damage. The second point, LT2 is more of our functional threshold. So that's where we're seeing a really clear increase. And commonly this gets referred to as lactate inflection point. So when we plot it out on a graph, it'll be really, really steady, sustained maybe little increase in blood lactate. We hit FTP or LT2, you'll see a blood lactate like I said before, somewhere between three and a half, maybe six and a half. The following reading as we up the intensity is probably going to be like if it was, say let's use four for this example, the next one's probably a six and a half and then the one after that's probably a nine and then it will just go up exponentially. So we're really looking for that, that last point where, that last point where blood lactate accumulation is like is exceeding the removal rate quite clearly. I mean if we're just dawdling along at 4 millimole, if it goes up to 4.2, like that's not a clear exceeding. If it's 4 to then 6 and a half. We're looking really 2 millimolar more increase in blood lactate. That's a clear change in what's happening. So there are two threshold points which ultimately is going to be. If you're using a five zone system that, that we use at Mets, typically that's the top of your zone, your zone three. If you're using a three zone system, just like these just sit bang in the middle. Like zone one is everything up to LT1, zone two is LT1 to LT2 and then zone three is just everything above LT2. That's a really simple way of looking at physiology. It's like you've got three areas. If you're doing a polarized approach where we're bottom and top. If we're doing a bit pure model or a threshold approach, we just change that slightly. But all zones will work off some version of where those three points sit.

I wanted to ask you about the zones as well because it's common among a lot of pro groups. Just use that three zone model and just go work up to LT1 or work up, up at and around LT2. We prefer five zone model as well. But why do you guys prefer that?

I think it's just a little bit nicer to break down, I think for the. For the professional athlete who's got a pretty clear idea of what what an easy run should look like, but then also what's a challenging easy run, if that makes sense. So like when we're going out, we're trying to push the upper limit of that LT1. They've got a pretty good grasp on it for a. Or like they have a good grasp on what tempo means versus what sub threshold and threshold and super threshold. All these different terms mean for sometimes the amateur athlete who's a little bit unsure hasn't maybe got a full grasp on it. I just like breaking it down a little bit more and going we're between here and here. This is the type of session we're trying to achieve. This is where it should sit. Here's just a little bit more direction, I think then going on the other end of the spectrum. It's like, I think sometimes a lot of athletes can get a bit too complicated with like the 7, 9. I've seen 11 zone systems before where it's like literally a 10 watt window. 10 watts is so insignificant it's not gonna make a difference. But I think it just breaks it down a little bit cleaner and really. But even then like if you look at the Mets 5 zone system. We're not really doing anything too different to the three zone system because design our zone two, our zone three and our zone four all match up to that three zone system. We just have a zone one that's like, well, anything below this heart rate is going to be genuinely active recovery. So for the most part, that amateur athlete is just not going to benefit at all. And we, I generally steer people away from recovery runs, for example, purely because if you're going out and doing 10ks, just run it that little bit higher in heart rate, you're not gonna be that much more fatigued, but you actually get an aerobic stimulus rather than being down there. So that's a good one to make sure people are working hard enough but still keep them in that range. And then at the top, we have pass VO2 max. We just have a zone 5 that realistically, it doesn't really matter what your heart rate does there, and it doesn't really matter what your power is doing because it's gonna be. You're right up on the limit and you're not gonna be sustaining it for very long again. It's just a good one. Just for people to know. Well, in those sessions, I was actually working up to my full potential potentially, or maybe did I not quite hit those numbers. Okay, I probably need. We need to adjust something in the session. Do we need to make it harder? Do we need up the intensity, drop the rest period? How's that going to allow us to get back into that area? We should have been.

So just for the listeners who probably might be getting a little bit lost. And it is a complex, it's a.

Tough thing to interpret.

It is. And, and we want to make it as simple as possible. And we can't, we can't on our training sessions, test lactate. So the reason we're in the lab testing it and getting the measurement is because we can then see your 2.4 or your 3 equals a heart rate of 140, 145, which equals a possible running pace of 440. So just to make it really clear, we are using the label so that we can actually then implement those data results to heart rate and to a running pace and heart rate and power. So using heart rate, as if people only have that access to that, there's so many variables with heart rate. And all of a sudden my LT1, which might have been 3.2 on one day for a heart rate of 150 the next day, I might have a small Virus in my body. I might be.

Had a coffee.

Yeah. There's fatigue, dehydrated stre.

Yes.

The heart rate is such a problem issue. Problematically given so many excuses to make it inaccurate. How do you deal with that?

Yeah, it's one of those, one of those interesting ones. And quickly just touching a point on that, like we measure in the lab to then be able to get those. Those numbers and be able to apply again. Back to my point of retesting is to again isolate those in the lab and go, well, was our 440 pace like last time? Okay, it was whatever millimoles it was in lactate. Next time we test has it reduced? Because ultimately if it's reduced, well, we're probably going to see that same blood lactate marker. It's just a higher pace. That's big tick in the box. We've improved in terms of managing what that does out in the field. You're right. There's so many confounding variables with heart rate. I've primarily still like to use heart rate as a bit of a guide in longer, slower sessions. Say more so than pace majorly. Because unless you're going to go and run every session on the dead flat, you're going to get all over the place with your pace. Like if we say 440 pace, we use that. All right, Go out and run for an hour at 4:40. Well, if I run 440 on the track for an hour, it's very different. Running 440 on a reasonably flat slide undulation versus if I get up in the hills and run 440. Like now there's a very different variance. So terrain is going to play a bit of a factor. That's where like if I sit at 140 beats per minute, though. All right, now I know physiologically I'm working as hard as what I need to from I'm getting enough of a stimulus on respiratory system and cardiovascular system, the muscular system. Does that mean a slower or faster pace today I quite like that as a. In combination with a bit of rpa. So it works a bit of a readiness thing. It's like if I wake up in the morning, I feel absolutely fantastic. My heart rate's 140 and I'm running at 420 pace. Go nuts. Like, you're gonna get more out of that session there. But you still, you're still running within yourself, but you're allowing yourself to progress. So you wake up in the morning, you feel absolutely terrible. Big training day the day before heart rate's 150. Like straight away, you're running at 5 minute K pace. Okay, today's just face the reality of today's maybe not a great day. Do we need to just cut the volume back a bit? Do we need to recover up a bit more? Like that's a clear sign. Your body will tell you pretty quickly. So that's why I say I like to use heart rate as that bit of an indicator, but then also in relation to RPA. Like if you're still feeling about a 3 or a 4 out of 10, you're still pretty comfortable. It's just hard. It's a bit higher today because you might be dehydrated, you might not have slept perfectly the night before. Maybe you are running up, maybe running on gravel instead of an asphalt surface. So looking at, it's one of those things, looking at one number or one metric in isolation can be okay, but it's never going to give you the full picture, which is again, it's probably the argument that I have against like power meters for running, for example, is like a lot of people starting to talk about and over the last year, two years become really popular with like the stride power meters. I think it's a great piece of technology, but if we just look at power, if I give that to someone who hasn't fully investigated, doesn't fully know and go, oh, we're just going to run it, I don't know, 300 watts in their mind, instantly it's, well, more power is faster, but it's not because if I just stamp my feet really hard and I run really heavy, I'm going to produce more power, but I'm not going any quicker, I'm just going to fatigue myself. So that's where it's. If you just look at that, I'd be looking. If you want to look at power instead of, say pace, great look at power, but then still see what your heart rate's doing, still see what your RPA is doing. Use them all, use them all scientifically. And arguably the most valid measure of intensity is rpa. Because your body will tell you that's.

An amazing sentence, isn't it?

Which is hilarious to listen to from a sports scientist who works in a lab who talks about data and numbers all the time. But RPA realistically is probably your most accurate measure of intensity.

It's ironic because this morning I was saying to Jordan, the session I woke up, jumped on the bike and I'd done a VO2 session last night, which is literally eight hours ago, and I felt shocking. And I just thought, no, I'm just gonna still do the same session because I've done it three weeks in a row and I've had such variations in time in this particular session, because it's a time session. I'm doing up to airs on Zwift. And the feeling I had at the start was horrible. And two weeks ago, I felt unbelievable. And the difference in my RPE was exactly what I was trying to convince my brain to just go with. And halfway through the climb, I started to feel better. And so I started to work a lot more. And sure enough, my heart rate was still in the range that I wanted it to be. But that's an example of using all of the facilities and your own intuitive feel of, what am I like today?

Yep, big time. But I guess the. The underlying must have. That goes with that is you got to have a really good calibration of what your RPE means. And that's where the testing can be useful because it's. Well, I thought I was working hard. Like I said before, you can have a hard session. You feel like a nine and a half out of ten in a threshold set because of the volume aspect. But is it a nine and a half out of ten from the intensity aspect? You may not actually know how hard that is, of which case we then don't know what a 6 out of 10 means, what a 4 out of 10. You get a good calibration of that now you're going to be a lot more in tune with. And that's one of those funny things. Like you, the athletes who are really in tune with that, they'll jump out. And they're the ones who aren't looking at their watch every two minutes, trying to check what heart rate is. They'll just run. It's like, why? Because they know, all right, it should be a 4 out of 10 today. They look at their watch and like, oh, yeah, cool. It's bang on the 150 like I was aiming for. And they haven't looked at their watch for an hour and they've just gone out and run. Like, that's what we ultimately should be trying to get all of our athletes to.

And that's what you should practice. You should practice using your watch to understand what. What a 150 heart rate feels. Keep looking at it every two minutes and then gradually wean yourself off that so that you test yourself. I feel like I'm at 145. And then check it. And this is A really good way to learn rpe.

Yep, big time.

The next point on that is that's easier, the lower intensity because it's a lot more control. The higher intensity you get, the closer you get to VO2 max. Like you're saying, it's a lot harder to start figuring out. Is this a 9 out of 10 because of the volume I'm doing or.

Let's face it, once you get past nine out of ten, it's a fog.

Probably anything above seven or eight for most people, threshold and above, it's all the same. Feels like exactly right.

So I want to get into the topic of kind of time under stimulus. But yeah, it's really hard once you're getting into those three minutes at VO2 max kind of efforts to really trust your RPE. And that's where you've got to lean much more towards looking at the data.

Right.

And you've got to kind of go, I'm, I'm feeling somewhere between an 8 and a 12 out of 10. I've kind of, this is my wattage I'm supposed to be sticking to. So kind of forget how I'm feeling and just really try and I'm trying. The goal of this session is to get that stimulus and so try and hit those ranges.

It's sort of an interesting one this in terms of because like we said like you still want to be, you still want to be conscious of. Just because it was. If your RPA comes up really, really quick, it doesn't necessarily mean you can just have 40 watt lower power in the same session. To some extent we do still have to work hard. So you sometimes have to just manipulate the other variables to allow that to happen. Yeah, largely that's just going to come down to your programming and smart, I guess, choice of where you place those sessions. But sometimes you just gotta go. Like if we have to, if we're aiming for 285 watts or 300 watts in a three minute effort, you're just gonna have to sometimes just ride that. And that might mean today instead of doing three minute efforts, we have to do two minute efforts because at some point we do need the muscular stimulus. There is a bit where in from a. I guess a understand physiology where we could maybe manipulate that and start out a little bit harder and start to drop power and keep things up like becomes a little bit complex but ultimately it becomes a bit of a tricky one where it's like you don't want to just go and blow yourself up and ride at 300 watts and not get through the entire session. Because at the end of that for VO2 set, we realistically depending the type of intensity unit, you still need about 12 to 20 minutes of working time. Because it's the time, it's. It's the working time in say a three minute on, three minute off type session. The 12 to 20 minutes of, of total work that you did, that only equates to about maybe 6 to 7 minutes of actual time of VO2. That's the stimulus we need. So if you just can't produce enough of an intensity to get your responses up. So your ventilation, your heart rate, your actual uptake of oxygen at the muscle, you might be at a nine and a half out of ten, but you're just not working anywhere. Like your body is actually not working anywhere any hard enough to get the stimulus. So it's a tricky balance at that point. So hopefully that sort of answer your question there. It's like I'd rather then go if we're, if we're not performing, we just can't get those numbers up. Probably worth just cutting the session short. Let's have a couple of lighter days and let's revisit it.

Yeah, scheduling is key. Isn't it big?

Yeah, it's a massive component like being fresh enough to actually execute those sessions. That's why I always program them first. If I write a program, the first thing I write in is I couldn't care less about all the other little, little rides and things like that in the week. We can program them later. Where are the big key sessions in the week? Program them in first, get the spacing right, then go for the biggest volume. Because really that's your key, isn't it? It's like if I can produce the intensity that I need to, that's when I need to be my freshest. I need to nail those sessions. Then my biggest volume in the week is like in a single session is probably my next key. All right. That's the next priority. Every other little top up ride or top up run, swim, whatever it might be, is just additional K's that if you can get the work done, great. If you need to cut a session, they're the ones to go.

And one of the things I get asked a lot is is it okay to really smash out the first couple of VO2? Let's just talk about some VO2 sessions where it's basically 30 seconds to 3 minutes or even 4 minutes for some.

Legendary athletes, people who like to make himself hurt.

But I'm Getting, I'm getting. They're, they're saying 300 was the range that they were trying to hit and they, they smashed out 304, 305 for the first couple and then it's a, you know, 290, then it's 270, then it's 250. From what you've just said, they're actually only getting four minutes out of the 12 of the stimulus.

And possibly this is where it gets really complex. And this is why I try, I try to. It's a bit hard to not dance around it too much without confusing people. But say I jump into the first set, let's say we're aiming for 300 first effort. Your first one or two are key in terms of we're trying to get enough of an intensity so we can get everything up. Classic, classic example is you look at your heart rate in a VO2 set first effort. Let's say you're actually trying to get it up into the high 180s. You only get to 170. Reason for that is because you're going to have what we call your biggest deficit period in that first effort. We've gone from a very low. You just finished a warm up, maybe some easy spinning. Now we're going to jump.

It's an 80 improvement, isn't it?

There's a big, there's a big jump in intensity. So that's where we're not going to have our heart rate go from 100, 120 after the warm up up to 180 straight away. There's going to be a lag period as that intensity comes up. But we get 300 watts straight away because like I said before, that anaerobic contribution was kicking quicker. So effort one, when I say it's a bit of a write off, like the importance of getting. Now the intensity in effort one and probably effort two in say a three minute efforts as an example is key because it's the flow and effect into effort 3, 4 and 5 where you'll get through that deficit period quicker because we're starting from a slightly higher point, particularly if we're starting to reduce the recovery period, like a 3 minute on 90 off type stuff. Your auction consumption is not going to drop all the way back down because the body doesn't want it to, because it knows there's another effort coming. Let's get up quicker so you'll start to work through and effective sessions here. You should be seeing heart rate drift each effort like effort one's 170 effort two is 175 effort, three is 178 if it, four is 180. Now we're starting to get to that range. You should be seeing some of that. If you're seeing like 170, 170, 170, 170, you're not working hard enough because the body's clearly recovering well, making it up really well. If you're seeing really good heart rate, steady stats like 30 seconds in the effort and heart rate doesn't move, you're probably managing that really, really, really, really well. So starting out, like coming back to your example of if we start out a bit harder than we fade sometimes I don't necessarily mind it because as long as if we were still getting heart rate drift, the body's still under the pump because as we're fatiguing, maybe muscular wise, we're fatiguing and we can't produce the power. But the process of taking and transporting and utilizing oxygen is still up at that maximal level. So like, a bit of interesting stuff that I've been playing around with a few of my guys who, like, how do we improve once they get to that top end? Like, they might be producing 450 watts in these sessions or higher. How do we keep improving? Like, is it just more power? More power? Well, it could be, but for some of them, like holding, if you try to hold 450 watts for three minutes, like you're going to be like, legs are going to be hurting. How does that then adversely affect our next session? Maybe the answer isn't necessarily putting us under the pump from a muscular stimulus perspective. Maybe it's working on something like, all right, let's start out pretty hard. Let's allow power to fade, but let's spin cadence a little bit higher because that'll force my heart rate up a little bit more so we get better cardiac output. What that's going to mean is more oxygen supply to the working muscle so I don't have to produce 450 watts. I might start there, but slowly fade down to 420 watts by the end of the effort. The less force I can exert through the pedals though, is probably going to save my legs a little bit. There's not going to be as much damage, there's not going to be as much fatigue because I'm just not exerting as much effort into the pedal. But I'm still getting all of my responses up because I'm still working just as hard. The body is feeling that same, like, you know, if you're at a VO2 like intensity, because you should not be able to do much more than just suck the area in and your heart, heart rate's right up there and you're like, I cannot exert anymore here. So if power starts to fade, that's where it becomes a bit of a tricky bounce. For the most part, the more beginner athlete, jump on a power and stick at it because that's, that's going to be, I guess, more appropriate stimulus there. It's a little bit more accountability side to make sure we are working hard enough for the more advanced athlete. That's where if you start to fade towards the back end. As long as we're still seeing some of those benchmarks from a data perspective. So heart rate in particular, heart rate's still drifting, but power is starting to drop off. I'm not, as. I'm not looking at it going, I'm disappointed with that session. Maybe it's not ideal. Maybe we can change a few things, like, was it something fundamentally wrong? But as long as we're still seeing that drift, you should still be getting the stimulus.

Let's not be liberal with that word.

Advanced athlete, because when I say advanced, I mean anyone who's probably raced a handful, like couple of seasons, four or five seasons, and you've got, you've got a bit more knowledge of how you react to the stimulus and you've got some training under your belt. I mean, when, like I sort of, I sort of separate advanced from professional and elite. Like, we're not talking that very 1%, we're talking probably the bulk of most serious amateur races.

Yeah, we have a lot of athletes that we would call advanced that, you know, we're all age groups still, but, but we still know that even the most experienced trainer still gets that wrong. And you can cross that, that, that balance really quickly of you're saying you're not afraid of going a little bit too hard early and maybe fading bit. There's. It's easy to cross that line and just gas yourself. And then you do end up ruining the session because you just, you're not even close to that.

Those first two reps. Yeah, more of a blanket rule. You're better off starting out harder than you think, than easier than you think and easing into it because of that deficit period. Like, if we're aiming for 300 watts, if you start out the first minute at like 280 and then gradually build into it. Same with running. If you start out a little bit under pace and try to work your way into it. One, it's harder to manage from a fatigue perspective because it's always easy to get slower than it is to get faster, run out of fuel and things like that. But also from an auction consumption perspective, that's just going to slow that rate of uptake, which is not what we want. We want to try and get that up a lot quicker.

I'd love to add two caveats to that. Just because you are very big on. On making sure people start easier. But easy is the wrong term there because it depends on the range of what's set. If. If the range is a bigger range, if you start too low, that's going to be. Going to be a problem. Whereas range is set quite accurately to the VO2 max level, then even the bottom of the range, quote unquote, easier, is going to be enough to. Exactly what you're saying. It's enough stimulus. Yeah.

It's within reason, isn't it? It's like you can't. If someone's aiming for 300, I'm not expecting to go out and ride at 450. Like, it's all right if you start out at 310 or 315, but then faded back down to 300, it may be a little bit below. Like, that's probably fine, but you don't. What you don't want to do is set out at 250 and gradually build your way into it. There's got to be a band with there. Absolutely. You want to be as close as possible. But I'd always. If we're either side of it, I would rather. If we're aiming for 300 watts, I'd rather start at 310 and fade than start at 280 and try to build. If it's a VO2 stimulus.

Exactly. And the reverse, you. You would rather start at 300 and stay there compared to starting at 360 and then the last rep only being able to push 250.

250, yeah.

Correct.

Correct, yeah. And look for the person who's listening. We're just talking about a specific form of training session here, you know, come race day. We absolutely don't want to do that. We don't want to bounce out of it flips.

The science on pacing is completely opposite to what we're talking about there. But we're doing that in training for a specific stimulus, aren't we?

Exactly.

Right.

So I want to make that clear to everybody who's listening, because, you know, I just saw another article on the, the world records for running races from 10 minutes and above are all even or negative split. And there's a certain amount that's under, I think it was under 5 minute races and let's face it, that's only 400, 800, 1500.

Wow.

And 3k is even over that. So there, there's no, there's no evidence to tell us that starting fast and fading is going to give you the best result.

No. In terms of, in terms of pacing science to sort of change the bit there. It's like most of it is those who start conservative and maintain will beat those who start out too quick and fade. Like there's a lot of, there's a, the research in terms of swimming, they've seen that a lot in the pool in terms of like 200, 400, things like that. So similar sort of numbers we're talking about. It's like you, you go out all guns blazing. Apart from anything, you're just going to run out of fuel quicker.

Yep.

So you obviously like setting out a little bit more conservative is probably gonna be the best way to go. It's very difficult, particularly as the event goes on to pick up pace. So most who have done marathons and things like that, very hard to increase pace. And that's why holding, even splitting is quite common to see. It's like if you can even split well, great, you've maintained intensity. What does that mean? Next time we just have started a bit faster and then maintained like, okay, we can talk about that. But negative splitting, negative splitting can be a very difficult thing to do. Unless you under split the first one.

Yes.

If you're, if you're way too conservative. Well, yeah, you've got, you've got plenty left in the tank to go. But if you go out at. When I say perfect pace, realistically you should be even split within a very small range.

It's always intrigued Jordan and I watching the Olympics with the swimming and seeing them all do a 200 or 100 and their first lap and I know they're diving so the time is not really first lapse.

Always super quick.

That's right.

Because of that. Yeah.

But if you're doing a race where there's four laps and three of them are all just tumble, turn, push, and they just progressively get slower. Every single race you watch race after race, they're progressively getting slower and then you'll find someone who actually negative splits the finish and invariably they win. It's quite incredible. The person who, and you know, knowing the pace because you can't, you can't look at your watch obviously, but now with form, form goggles which have got the screen screen with the pacing in it would be such a game changer for, for understanding how to, you know, we talk about RPE with, with every other sport and that's kind of the same in swimming but, but you know, wouldn't it be making sense for people to be, okay, let's just pace this a little bit better. Swimming is one of the ones that I think's lag behind in understanding pacing for racing.

Yeah, swimming, swimming's a, an interesting one I think on, on that with the like some of the performance analysis stuff that they've done. Looking at like tracking swim speed in the pool. It's funny like the, sometimes you do see the negative split, but it's still pretty rare. It's like more often than not that that person's actually hasn't increased their speed at all, they've just maintained. And so when someone goes past someone in the pool at the back end of a 200, it's because the other person's going slow. So, so that's, that's sort of an interesting bit. I think you're dead right in terms of swimming. Swimming's. Well sometimes when I think about running, I think like running sometimes can be that one that like still seen a bit of quite old school. Swimming's even further. Like swimming's very traditional. Like you talk to any, anyone who's been around swimming and been a swimmer like for 100 meter or 200 meter races. Like you've got developing athletes who are still swimming like eight, nine times a week and doing 4K sets. I'm like, your race is over in less than a minute. Why are we swimming that much? Like you're just exhausted. One of my first placements through uni was with elite developing swimmers in strength conditioning. And it was like we would quite often get 15, 16, 17 year old kids come up to the gym after their swim set and just go, I just can't lift today. I'm just exhausted. They've had six hours at school, they've swam. In the morning, they swam again. It's like, well, what's your race? I race hundreds and two hundreds and they're doing like 30Ks of swimming a week.

Do you think, do you think the coaches are scared to try? Say someone came along and said, right, we're swimming, you know, our race is 100, 100 meters. We're gonna cut the volume and spend a whole lot more time looking At. At training at lactate VO2. And then they started to get really good results. That's the only way things change, isn't it? Once it's.

It's the same as I reckon, what the Norwegians are doing, isn't it?

It's exactly what I was alluding to.

It just takes one person.

Like.

But like I say, swimming is probably more traditional. Running, running, you still see it. Cycling, you still see it. Like, how. How often do I see people come in the lab and I'm like, oh, what do you do? I run 1500. So what does your typical week look like? Well, I got a 10k threshold or a what? Like you doing 10? Like, okay, maybe if you got one run in the week, that's a bit longer, just to keep the endurance up. Sure. If you're gonna go do some other longer racing later on, you're racing 1500, your race is over in four minutes or less. For the most part, the top end, it's like, it only takes a handful of people, but it's the resistance to change that is the hardest bit. Like, yes, it only takes one person, but it takes a really gutsy person to step out of the norm and be like, no, I'm gonna do it differently. Then you gotta back it up with the result. Cause just, I'm sure, like, people. People go and do it. But if you haven't got the results, if you haven't got the results, like, one byproduct of who did I have available to train? Maybe I didn't have the genetically gifted swimmer who's going to be fast regardless of what we give them. Maybe I had someone who did drastically improve, but if I had the really top end, genetically perfect person, well, they would have gone crazy. But, like, it doesn't look like a great result because my swimmer still didn't make the final, Even though they're 4 seconds faster over 100 than they used to be. Like, that's the tricky. The tricky part of it. Because most people who are at that top end are like, well, again, why would I change? Because I'm winning.

I want to finish with the golden question, which we kind of touched on, but really time under stimulus. So how much time is ideal to be spending at VO2 max at just above LT2, just below LT2 sub threshold, just above have LT1 zone 2.

So in all areas, we won't go through it all. But VO2 max, I guess. Yeah. VO2 max is probably the easy one to answer there. The. Generally speaking, it's sort of like if you can get. If you can get up to a point where you can get about 8 to 12 minutes of actual time at VO2, like you're doing really well. Which 8 to 12 minutes of actual time @VO2 might actually be a set of, say, 7 by 3 minute efforts to achieve that. And it's gonna. But then it's gonna depend on what you're doing. If you're doing 30 on 30 offs at well above VO2 max, well, you might not get the 12 minutes, you might get close to the 8, but you're gonna have to do like 20 or 30 repetitions to be able to get up to that point. So it depends on the factors that are leading to it. But ideally, if you can get 8 to 12 minutes of actual time at VO2, which for the most part is probably going to be somewhere, but like, you're probably having to go 15 to 18 minutes of working time in those long. When I say long intervals, 2, 3, 4 minute type stuff.

How do you know? How could someone measure that themselves? Is it that time when they're actually in that zone?

Yeah, so you would have to. The only way you can directly measure it is to hook someone up and measure their oxygen consumption. Is the only way you can measure VO2 accurately. That's why I say things like, looking at your session, post session, like, as long as you're, like during the session, ways to know that you're at VO2 max, you're blowing as hard as you can, your heart rate's up there, you're. You're feeling like. I don't have much more to give here and I'm just going to finish this effort. There's some good, good things. It should be really 9 1/2 to 10 out of 10 RPA for the most part post session. It's that heart rate drift. If heart rate's drifting, clearly there was enough of a stimulus if bodies under the palm. So that, that's one of those things that as the, as the efforts go on, we should be seeing heart rate just drift up a little bit, A little bit more. A little bit more if you hit genuine maximum heart rate. So, like, if you're normally a. I can get it to 196 and you see a 196 and then it stays at 196 and the next one. Well, like we're just at maximum heart rate. It's not going to keep going necessarily. But you would know that you're pretty close because you'd be. Yeah, you'd be working, working pretty hard. The question around, probably the more million dollar question is, well, how much time below LT1 do you spend? I could put six different athletes on six different programs of increasing or decreasing amounts of volume and get to race day. And they all have the exact same race. If if there's some similarities between them, that comes down to what do you need? Are you very, very good aerobic capacity wise, and you can just sit on a pace and go all day. You've got really low blood lactate and you're running, you're running a fast enough pace for what we need. It's more about the intensity probably than can we run faster? That's what we say. From lab data perspective, the vast majority of amateur endurance athletes, or endurance athletes in general, even some of the top end guys will come in and we'll see really, really good aerobic capacity traits and then aerobic power, which is that rate of turnover. So ultimately, VO2 max, there's some clear improvements that can be made. Things start to tail off really quick at that point. In which case, all right, the emphasis has to be on the higher intensity. The low intensity is still important because that still works. What we need to be able to run a marathon or an ironman or a half ironman, whatever it might be, how much time we spend there, we might have to reduce it. Luke's talked about this quite a bit on some of our bits of content before. Like, he's taken guys from like 16 hours a week, brought them down to eight just as a process of. No, like we just need to cut the volume back for a period. Let's really work on the top end. VO2 goes through the roof. It's like, well, now that oxygen consumption's gone up and our pace has gone up, we can revisit that volume and slowly put it back in. And that's probably part of the reason why, particularly Mets as a brand, we kind of get seen as a bit of anti volume. It's like we're not. It's just appropriate timing of volume and appropriate fuel level. If you're working nine to five every week and you can only train 10 hours a week, well, it's a bit silly for me to give you 18 hours worth of training that you're just not going to do because you've got all this other stimulus. But if you've got the ability to train you, can you handle the volume? In theory, you can do as much volume before you get sick and injured as you like. And it's just going to be additive. It just then comes down to what's specific. Again, do we need to go and do hours and hours if our race is under 10 minutes, probably not. But if our race is hours and hours long, it makes sense to go out and do the work point then on what's appropriate in the middle. Again, very dependent on the individual. Like I'll have some guys who need quite a bit of race specific work. And again, it's just then targeting your intensity as close as possible to what you want to race at. If you want to race at 4 minute K's, well, no point going and running everything 4:30 and slower or way, way, way above at 3:30 and quicker. We got to do some work in there building out the amount of time we can work at. Great. The balance then comes like, don't just go out and race your marathon two weeks before your actual marathon. There is a tipping point of how much is too much. You want to give enough that you see some adaptation and improvement and you're ready to go. But you don't want to give too much that you just blow yourself up before you get there or you peak too early. That's again, it's a very individual, individual thing. Very hard to pinpoint in terms of.

The complexity of the answer that that question requires. You've done very well to summarize that.

I gave it a go.

That's right. And look, everybody who comes to a coach wants to improve. So that's the reason. So if you're already good aerobically and you obviously want to go faster as a runner or as a swimmer or as a bike rider, you want to spend some time in the areas that you're trying to avoid. Because they're bloody hard.

Yep. And that's probably the reason they're hard.

And that's, I think that almost summarizes every athlete out there, including myself and the three of us sitting here. The human body doesn't want to put itself under pressure. So it's very happy doing stuff that's easy. But there's no improvement, no stimulus. If you continue to do the same thing, you get very good at that. So I think the majority of people, of course, the intensity is something that we know we have to do. Everybody understands that. But it's doing the right intensity for that right period of time.

Correct.

Is the difference between I've got guys who they train five days a week flat out, and for a period they really improve and then all of a.

Sudden fall off a cliff, they're stagnating.

Or they're going downhill real quick and it's just too much. The body's getting the same stimulus with no endurance, no recovery, no higher stimulus. And that's kind of what you're saying here. We test to summarize. We test to find out where we're at, what are our weaknesses and strengths, and then we apply those numbers into our training. Because everybody has a different strength and weakness that could need a little bit of tweaking here and there, up and down. But generally the intensity has to be appropriate for not something that you can do just for a block of three or four weeks. It has to be something that will build your engine to be bigger so that when you go back to your endurance event, that you can actually run faster, ride faster, and swim faster pretty pretty much.

And like, I guess the general process is we'll start with everything that's really broad. Like what's gonna, what's gonna get me fitter than I am now? It may not be super race specific, but If I've got 16 or 20 weeks till race day, it doesn't matter. Like I'm not gonna be able to sustain that race specific phase for that period of time. Spend 10, 12 weeks of that getting much fitter generally and working on everything. That's a bit of a weakness because you just tuning up the stuff you're already good at that'll come back really quick. But also from a sustainable perspective, like you just can't go and sit on those middle intensities all the time for too long. Like a really easy way of burning out is having a really monotonous training load, which is just day in, day out. I'm hitting very similar. It's the whole gray zone thing. It's like I always kind of hit that same area. It's nothing too different. And not to say polarized all the time is the answer. Definitely isn't. It is in some circumstances. But it's the type of thing that, I mean, if you're always in and around that same point, just above, just below, like, the body will inevitably just keep fatiguing and fatigue and fatiguing. Human body likes a bit more variability. Not to say we constantly need to throw different stimulus, but like Monday, a little bit lighter, a little bit easier zone 2 type stuff. And then the Tuesday, if you do a really hard threshold set of intervals, but then on the Wednesday come back and do some easier stuff. That's the variability we're talking about. If we just did threshold in, it was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, by the Time you got to the Wednesday, you're probably just not going to execute the session well enough because your body needs, it needs a bit of a break. You don't have to stop training. You might be a rest day for some people but for others it just might be taking a bit easier so we can come back and then work hard again. It's a smart program but really, yeah it's, it's finding at what point in time is, is what type of training the most applicable for that person. Which is again where that testing comes in. It's not just test now and we'll test post race or say you got test now, get through that initial phase of the really general stuff that's just going to build us test again because now what are our numbers that we can sit on for that race specific? If you were previously sitting on 4 minute ks for your threshold or your 1k repeats, let's say some threshold type work but now we've gone and improved everything in 12 weeks later we can now sit on 345. You're going to get a hell of a lot more out of that race specific prep because now you can run significantly faster in those efforts. It's just giving you that leeway to do it. Whereas if we didn't go through that process and just go oh, let's just keep going 4 minute K's and try and get. You might get to 358 or 355. We've still left 10 seconds per K on the table, maybe even more.

You've dropped some absolutely brilliant one liners and there was a subtle line you just said then which was your body will get back to what you're good at very quickly. You can put it on the shelf for a short period and you'll get back then. I think that's a really important point is that we get comfortable with what we're good at and we're afraid of losing that. And yeah, I think just knowing that you can put on the shelf for a little bit do something that's a little bit different, you'll come back to it, your body will readapt really quickly.

Yeah, particularly race specific stuff, you don't need much, much time to that last little bit. Quite often it's only sort of maybe six, eight weeks of just really targeted race specific stuff. It's like everything prior to that it can just be all the general stuff like what, what am I, what am I not as strong at? Like build all of that and then. All right, let's really Nail the key strengths in that last part, which ultimately should be the event you're targeting. They should all be the things you're good at because that's the event maybe you've raced before and things like that. A little bit different. When you go into it for the first time, you sort of beat unknown. But I mean, ultimately again, if you just, if you keep banging your head against the same wall, how much fun.

Is it though when you've done all that better work, the better background work. You've got built your engine, you've done the specific stuff and you go back to the stuff that you, you've done for years, that race ready stuff, and now you're running faster and now you're riding faster. It's, it's such a mental lift that you go far out. That was worth doing everything because now I can for the same effort. I'm actually, you know, 15 seconds faster as a runner and 25 watts better as a rider, which means I'm going 2Ks an hour faster.

It's a big frustration, isn't it? I'm sure you guys hear it all the time too. It's like, well, well, I've been training and training and training, but I can't get any quicker. It's like, well, what does training look like? And it's just the same thing again. Again, it's the banging the head against the same wall like you're not going to get through the wall. Find a different avenue. It's, it's open up those opportunities to be able to improve elsewhere that will allow you to unlock it. Like you can be as fit as you like, but if you keep, again, if you keep going after the same, the same stuff you're already good at, like those weaknesses won't get better as a byproduct. You got to find that stimulus that is going to lift some of those up because you come back and yeah, you jump into it. And like you said, apart from anything, if it's a psychological boost pre race that you're like, wow, this is, I'm so, I feel so much better. That's probably going to get you through the race more than like, you could have some physiological change. Sure. But if you're feeling a million bucks because you're like, wow, I'm running real quick in my sessions pre race and like last Prep, I was 30 seconds per K slower, 15 seconds per K slower, you're gonna feel awesome by the time you get to race day.

Yep.

We're gonna have to wrap up there this has been fastest. Hour 10, I think. Podcast has absolutely flown.

Race through it.

I know we, we could just chat for hours about this and there's a.

Fair few things we didn't get to talk about.

Exactly.

One of the ones we were talking about before the podcast was placebo effect. And I reckon there's a whole topic.

I reckon we could do an er, chart on placebo. I reckon we'd race through that pretty quick. Yeah, yeah.

And we, we just started to touch on, you know, lab testing outcomes in terms of the variance in people and we do want to explore that with you. So we'll have to get you back on the podcast very soon to start talking about that and, you know, the difference in results you see and actually what people's strengths and weaknesses are and.

And even the importance of regular testing. And I don't mean lab testing as much as just testing yourself in certain races or, or training, training regime that you might have. And a lot of the people who come to us are really, they're psychologically damaged, they're scared of testing. And it's a real battle we have. And I'm trying to convince them almost that it's just us trying to find out where we're going and along the journey are we improving and if we aren't, we need to change things. And it's a really great training session as well. So there's stuff like that. Once people get the mindset that this is actually good for me to test and not only for a training session point of view, but to, to be training at the right level from this point on rather than staying where we were. There's so many valuable things in that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Nick, we'll have to get you back on and talk about all of that. Thank you very much for joining us. For those who are local to Melbourne or even if you're just in Australia and you want to come to Melbourne, where can they find Met Performance?

Yeah, so check out our website, mets performance.com ortsperformance on any of the social medias is the, the easiest way to get in contact. You find us there. We're just based out in the southeast of Melbourne, so Mulgrave, so not too, not too far from like the cbd. We've got some pretty good access to freeways and things like that, so it's nice and convenient. But yeah, if you want to get in touch with us, more than happy to help you out, particularly if you are interstate or international as well, if there's any, if you want to go get some data and have us look over it. We do that for a number of clients as well, so definitely a number of different ways you can sort of get in touch and we can be helpful.

Awesome. Thanks for joining us. We can't wait to have you back on and we look forward to future discussions now.

Perfect. Thanks for having me.

Thanks.