Our guest coach this week is Julie Young, who has appeared before on Fast Talk—episode 91 (“Beyond the data—training is not only about numbers”), to be exact. Julie is a former professional cyclist turned coach. Her road racing career stretched over a decade with teams including Saturn and Timex. She continues to race today at a very high level across multiple disciplines, and is currently part of the talented team behind the Kaiser Permanente Sports Medicine Endurance Lab in California.
On to the questions:
- Erik Olsen from Aarhus, Denmark asks about time to exhaustion and the true definition of fatigue.
- Luis Arrondo in San Jose, California, wonders if there is a “currency exchange” between adaptation and recuperation.
- Reuben Kouidri, in Bristol, in the UK, has some goals far in the future, so he wants to know when the goal is a long way away and he doesn’t need to peak until 3 years from now, is there a more optimal way to train for maximizing fitness than, for example, that 80:20 polarized ratio?
- Klemens Plasser in Vienna, Austria asks about glycogen use during exercise, the different exogenous and endogenous sources, and how each is utilized.
- Dan Draper in Salt Lake City, Utah ponders whether he’d be faster if he cut back or eliminated grains from his diet.
- James McKay in Yorkshire, England wants to know if a greater fat intake will help him improve performance and health.
- And finally, Tom Maher in Horwich, the UK, has questions about changes to heart rate in relation to power as he makes his way back from injury.
All that and much more today on Fast Talk.
Let’s make you fast!
References
- Cronise, R. J., Sinclair, D. A., & Bremer, A. A. (2017). Oxidative Priority, Meal Frequency, and the Energy Economy of Food and Activity: Implications for Longevity, Obesity, and Cardiometabolic Disease. Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, 15(1), 6–17. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1089/met.2016.0108
- Hearris, M., Hammond, K., Fell, J., & Morton, J. (2018). Regulation of Muscle Glycogen Metabolism during Exercise: Implications for Endurance Performance and Training Adaptations. Nutrients, 10(3), 298. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10030298
- Murray, B., & Rosenbloom, C. (2018). Fundamentals of glycogen metabolism for coaches and athletes. Nutrition Reviews, 76(4), 243–259. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuy001
Episode Transcript
Chris Case 00:12
Hello, and welcome to Fast Talk, your source for the science of cycling performance. I’m your host Chris Case. Today we have another fantastic q&a episode with a diverse range of questions. Our guest coach this week, Julie Young, who has appeared before on Fast Talk Episode 91. To be exact. Julie is a former professional cyclists turn coach. Her road racing career stretched over a decade with teams including Saturn and Timex. She continues to race today at a very high level across multiple disciplines, and is currently part of the talented team behind the Kaiser Permanente sports medicine endurance lab in California. Onto the questions. Eric Olson from Aarhus, Denmark asks about time to exhaustion and the true definition of fatigue. Luis. Rondo in San Jose wonders if there is a quote currency exchange between adaptation and recuperation. Ruben coutry in Bristol in the UK has some goals far in the future. So he wants to know when the goal is a long way away, and he doesn’t need to peak until three years from now. Is there a more optimal way to train for maximizing fitness? Clemens placer in Vienna, Austria asks about glycogen use during exercise, the different exogenous and endogenous sources and how each is utilized. We have some nutrition questions as well. Dan Draper in Salt Lake City ponders whether he’d be faster if he cut back or eliminated grains from his diet. James McKay in Yorkshire England wants to know if a greater fat intake will help them improve performance and health. And finally, Tom Maher and Norwich in the UK has questions about changes to heart rate in relation to power as it makes its way back from injury all the Much more today on fast. Let’s make you fast.
Chris Case 02:11
This episode of fast Talk is brought to you by whoop. Whoop is a fitness wearable that provides personalized insights on the performance of your sleep, how recovered your body is and how much stress you put on your body throughout the day from your workouts and the normal stressors of life. Trevor, I know there’s a lot of tools out there to measure how stressful your training is. But what about all that other stuff in life that can be stressful and wear you down? How do you measure that? What is Woop, good at that, measuring that?
Trevor Connor 02:44
Well, it’s a really important thing because when you are talking about recovery, stresses stress, you can factor out life stress. When you’re trying to look at the overall stress on your body. You got a good laugh out of this last week because as you know We’re trying to launch a website. We had a couple weeks there where I was probably at the office past midnight, way too many nights, very stressed working really hard. And that website launched on Tuesday. And I came into work at Wednesday, it showed you and Jana by recovery score on which was 1%.
Chris Case 03:22
And how much writing had you been doing up to that point
Trevor Connor 03:24
Well my training has been going down. So that’s a whole thing. If you look at my overall training stress, it’s been going down, but I had a huge amount of life stress. And even what I woke up on Wednesday morning, I actually was kind of like, feeling pretty good. I went out and actually did a off the bike conditioning workout came into the office and kind of laughed about it said, Hey, take a look at this. I’ve got 1% and wasn’t fully buying it at the time. That night. I went home I was exhausted. You know by Thursday and Friday. I was I was like an 18 year old, I was out.
Chris Case 04:01
The office zombie: Trevor.
Trevor Connor 04:03
It caught it, it picked up on it. And it was really interesting to actually looking at, so whoop will map out your – it’ll show you your 24 hour heart rate variability, so your heart rate. And it was fascinating to look back at that because it wasn’t just you got to 1% Oh, well, I was able to look at why is it saying this? So I was able to – it had a sleep score, I could look at my sleep score, I was able to look at my sleep pattern. And one things I noticed was my heart rate was insanely high. That whole night while I was sleeping, heart rate variability was really low. You could see all these trends that I wasn’t feeling that I was able to pick up on and sure enough, day later, I collapsed. I just absolutely fell apart. Whoop is offering 50% off with the code Fast Talk. That’s f a s t ta l k at checkout, go to whoop. That’s w h o o p.com. And enter Fast Talk at checkout to save 15%. Sleep better, recover faster, and train smarter. Optimize your performance with Whoop
Chris Case 05:19
well. welcome back to the program. Julie young. It’s been since Episode 91 that we had Julie on. And it’s a pleasure to have you back. Thanks for joining us.
Julie Young 05:30
Super excited to be invited back. I appreciate it.
Chris Case 05:33
Well, we’ve got a list of really interesting questions today covering a range of topics. Shall we dive straight into this one?
Trevor Connor 05:44
Got a lot. So let’s do this. We got some interesting questions. And this is again, I think we said this in the last q&a. There’s some questions here where it’s really more coaching opinion, coaching experience, so I’m looking forward to them. I hope Julie and I have some different perspectives. And what I’ll say the same thing I said before, which is, there may not be a right or wrong if we have two different opinions. Try both Julie’s probably right. But what I say might be, might actually worked for you too.
What determines time to exhaustion at a given wattage and what is the true definition of fatigue?
Chris Case 06:19
Great. Well, let’s start off with one from a listener in Aarhus, Denmark. His name is Eric Olson. And he asks, say you are doing sub threshold work at 85% of FTP for a prolonged period of time could be to exhaustion. If you did a lactate test every 20 minutes, I would assume that the readings would be fairly constant. Is this correct? If indeed it is correct, is my fatigue a pure result of energy depletion? If not what determines our time to exhaustion at a given wattage. Julie Do you want to Start with some thoughts here.
Julie Young 07:01
So I mean, I would, I would assume that the primary cause of exhaustion at that effort would be just to fuel the carbohydrate depletion. And then I would also suggest that perhaps the lactate buildup and the hydrogen ions associated with that lactate buildup, inhibiting the muscle contraction. But that’s that’s would be would be my first guest. I think, you know, for me, it’s interesting that in the lab and doing these, these metabolic efficiency tests, and the fact that you know, you really can become more efficient in that there’s not these these formulas that necessarily apply is what I’ve experienced. You know, this oftentimes will say, like, you know, that this percentage, you’re burning this this type of fuel, but it’s so individually dependent. There’s ways to improve these abilities in terms of fuel utilization, but what do you think, Trevor?
Trevor Connor 08:00
We talked about something similar a few episodes ago about what is fatigue. And actually, I looked for this study last night or review, I read a review when I was in school that tried to identify what is the cause of fatigue. And basically, what the review said is, here’s 12 potential causes of fatigue. And what it came down to the the commonality is think of fatigue as a loss of homeostasis. Once your body can’t maintain some aspect of its physiology in balance, it basically shuts you down. So that’s, that’s fatigue, so there isn’t one cause. It’s just that loss.
Chris Case 08:43
I’ve heard you say before, though, in a theoretical sense, if you were riding at a given intensity, and maybe it was less than this 85% of FDP that Eric has identified, but that you could theoretically last forever Assuming you were fueling properly, because your muscle fibers could continue to operate.
Trevor Connor 09:08
And this 85% of FTP is important because well, there is huge individual variants. When you talk about the two thresholds, and so that lower threshold, that aerobic threshold where theoretically Yes, you can go forever, is often placed right about 85% of your anaerobic threshold or FTP which is a analogous. So he is asking, basically, if you’re at the top end of this intensity, it’s supposed to allow you to go forever. Yeah. You do it mostly on fat. Fat is for all intensive purposes, unless you want to ride straight for three weeks. Unlimited. So fuel. So in theory, fuel availability would not be an issue in practice. Yeah, no, you You’re gonna burn glucose. Eventually you’re gonna bog if you’re not repleting, but something is going to eventually fatigue you. And it’s the my answer to that question is that’s gonna be very individual. It depends. All these different aspects of your homeostasis, how well trained are they? And for one person, one aspect of their homeostasis is going to shut down first for another person, it might be a different one, I made some a list of potentials of Yes, fuel availability is still a potential. And Julie, you brought that up. muscle damage is another dehydration. Going back to Reckless central control hypothesis, essentially just mental fatigue, right, shutting you down. Even something that a lot of people don’t consider is postural fatigue. If you’re sitting in a position, let’s say you’re not positioned well on your bike, or you’re not used to being in that position, your back muscles might start To seize up or weaken and just not be able to hold that position, you might not have the best shoes and eventually your feet are gonna start really hurting. There’s a lot of things that can contribute to that fatigue.
Julie Young 09:16
The other thing I think’s interesting is if it is a fuel depletion, how like the lack of carbohydrates can inhibit the calcium release, and then that can then inhibit the muscle activity. So yeah, exactly, Trevor. So many so many factors in play.
Trevor Connor 11:32
So do you want to talk a little more about that inhibit the calcium release?
Julie Young 11:36
I actually brought up some studies. I kind of pulled pull the page out of your playbook, Trevor.
Trevor Connor 11:42
oh, I did not come well armed today. You’re gonna beat me.
Julie Young 11:47
No! yeah, I thought I followed in your footsteps. In these studies. They don’t really go into the particulars of that. They just note that as one of the factors or the contributing factors to the fatigue.
Trevor Connor 12:02
So without going too deep into muscle physiology basically every single time that a muscle contracts it releases calcium from the – We were joking before we got on here that Chris is gonna find things I can’t pronounce. We’ve already found one – sarcoplasmic reticulum, Did I get that right?
Chris Case 12:25
Yeah, pretty close.
Trevor Connor 12:26
So it’s going to release calcium into the cytosol of the the muscle fiber that allows the contraction and that sucks all that calcium back up. And every single time that muscle contracts, it goes through this process. But as you get some muscle damage, its ability to release that calcium suck it back up, gets reduced or diminished and that can really contribute to fatigue. And if you if it gets bad, where are you the calcium is released in just days. In the cell, then you’re gonna start to cramp muscle, is it going to be able to relax anymore?
Julie Young 13:04
So, Trevor, you think it’s more the second half of the calcium as opposed to the availability of calcium for the cross bridging like you think it’s more the sucking up?
Trevor Connor 13:15
I think this is where we’re getting into something really complex. And I think it’s multiple. So I agree on both routes I I have read personally about as you fatigue. So I’m really long rides, the ability to take the the calcium back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum gets reduced. So you see less than optimal muscle firing after that. But certainly, yes, also, the availability of calcium would be a factor as well.
Chris Case 13:44
It seems like kind of a simple question on the surface of things. Why do I get tired if I’m riding at a, you know, relatively moderate pace, but the answer is really complex and we could spend all day talking about the different mechanisms by which you would get fatigued. But we shall leave it there. That was a pretty good answer for Eric in Denmark.
Is there a “currency exchange” between adaptation and recuperation?
Chris Case 14:08
Let’s move on to another question. This one’s perhaps a little abstract comes from Luis Arrondo in San Jose, California. He wonders if there is a quote unquote, currency exchange between adaptation and recuperation. Here is his question. How do I know when enough is enough? When a long zone one ride has triggered adaptation without the need for excessive recuperation? And I’m going to assume he’s talking zone one and a three zone model. So we’re talking, you know, below the aerobic threshold, but there is some effort going into the pedals here. Is it when my normalized power starts to descend relative to my consistent heart rate in these long rides? Is it a half or an hour after I see cardiac drift. Are there levels of adaptation, super compensation? And how do I find out how much adaptation I have triggered compared to the level of needed recuperation? Is there again, a quote unquote, currency exchange of adaptation versus recuperation that can be quantified. Trevor, do you, a) does that make sense to you? Do it know what Luis is asking here?
Trevor Connor 15:31
So I will start by saying I actually have to be careful about what I say because Dr. Seiler is actually writing, a wrote a whole paper about this. And he did ask me to read it over. And he has not published it yet. So I don’t want to steal any of his thunder.
Chris Case 15:49
All those secrets are stored in your head.
Trevor Connor 15:52
So I’ll just give the short answer. I have my own opinion of it before I read his paper in his paper. goes into it a lot more detail, which is yes, another thing that can contribute to cardiac drift is dehydration. But I do believe that if you are staying in a high, relatively hydrated state, when you see cardiac drift, that is a symptom of fatigue. So when you are for years now, when I had my athletes go out and do these long rides, where I wanted to see some sort of adaptation, I want to see some cardiac drift. And part of how I could determine their aerobic fitness is their ability to sustain these long rides is how long they could go before you quite literally just see them fall off of this wall where heart rate and power would stay relatively consistent with one another and then they just hit a point and heart rate would start skyrocketing relative to power. So I do believe that when you’re talking to us about a long ride, that is one of the ways you can determine that yes, I’ve now done Some stress, I push the body a little beyond its limits, and I can get an adaptation out of this.
Chris Case 17:06
But it’s probably pretty hard to say, yeah, go to that point where the two start to drift apart from one another, go 30 minutes more and then stop your ride. It’s not that simple. There’s no formula for such a thing.
Trevor Connor 17:19
This is where I going to bite my lip. Julie, do you have any thoughts?
Julie Young 17:24
In terms of teasing out all this information? It’s important to think big picture and stick with a good program and not try to I think you still you can’t shortcut the process and you can’t shortcut the recovery. So I guess no, I don’t know if it’s that’s kind of off subject. But I just think it’s like, sometimes it’s hard to tease out these particulars. And I think if you stay diligent with the program, it works. It works out in terms of the recuperation and adaptation.
Trevor Connor 18:01
I want to take this kind of a step further, because I did hear some general questions about adaptation and super compensation in the question. And Julie, you might have a lot more thoughts about this. I’ll just give my kind of one minute thought, which is, there is no metric, there is no graph that says, You have now done enough stress. Now you need to recover. And there’s no graph that says you’ve now done enough recovery to Super adapt. I think it’s highly individual. I could write up a training program, give it to one athlete, it would be perfect, give it to another athlete, it wouldn’t be enough. Give it to a third athlete and it would kill them. Everybody is different in terms of how much stress how much recovery they need. And I don’t think you can just quantify it, put a number on it. I think it comes much more down to you have to learn the fields. You have to learn to say okay, Now I’ve got that feeling to tell me it’s time to recover. Or when you go out and do a workout, get that feeling of, okay, I’ve done enough. I don’t need to do another interval. Julie, what’s your thoughts on that?
Julie Young 19:13
Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked about this, that there’s, there’s so much data, but it’s data doesn’t tell the whole story and it does become an art. And to your point, like with those three athletes, it’s not only the physical tolerance, but it’s the mental emotional tolerance. And, you know, I, the same, you know, you have these athletes that, that some are just so durable, and others are more fragile and just understanding each one of those individual athletes, and then also that partnership with the athlete that, you know, really is their feedback and that allow you to help them, you know, guide them on this process, but I’m just such a firm believer that we just have to, we have to be patient with this process. And I think a lot of times, we can Try to force it and try to do more and try to push and, you know, we just have to appreciate this. This really is a process and you work hard and you rest hard, and there’s really can’t accelerate that.
Trevor Connor 20:12
I think the one suggestion I have for every athlete out there is keep a journal. You have to try different things, and you have to see what works for you. And the most what was eye opening for me the most visual example of this I ever experiences when I was training in Victoria. I had a friend who was a frequent training partner with me. We were about equal level cyclists. So this story is not about Oh, I’m I’m stronger than him. I was not we are about equal. He was more the sprinter type rider though. I’m much more the endurance I like to just put my head down and go hard type rider and we were both building to the Mount Hood stage race. He asked to train with me for the full three week building up to it. Because I’d had a couple pretty good years there. So he’s like, I want to try what you’re doing, Trevor. So he came and trained with me every day. And by the time we got to Mount Hood, he had to quit after the second day, I had a good race because it was the right build for me. It was not the right build for him. And he did really well there later, but he did really well there later when he found the right build for him. And that’s why I said there is no right answer to this question. You have to find what’s right for you.
Chris Case 21:38
As you were describing that exchange between you know, data for how hard you’ve written and data for how well you’ve been recovered it it honestly it sounds like what whoop is attempting to do with their product and I know Trevor you wear it and you you work with athletes that wear it as well as it helps Helping you guide decision making around what Louis is asking here in this in this question.
Trevor Connor 22:07
Well, let me just say what what I’ve seen, because yeah, I’m using a Whoop myself. Now I have several athletes who use it. And it has shown what I’ve kind of intuited from myself and from some of my athletes. So with me, what I have learned about the way I train is I actually have to go pretty deep into the stress pain cave to get an adaptation. So that’s why that friend of mine didn’t do well at Mount Hood, because you tried to do it. I do. And I go deep, but I can come out of it. Yeah. And there’s downsides of that of anytime I want to be strong. I have to rip myself apart. Be nice to not have to do that. So you see, when I have worn a Whoop strap although I’ve done what I know works for me. And it’s just sitting there saying you’re in the yellow, you’re in the red you need recovery. So I’m aware of the fact that no That’s kind of the way I need to train. But then get back to the green before I’m racing. I have another athlete who I kind of intuited before he started using Whoop strap, that he is more of that other type of athlete that he can’t go very deep into the pain cave, but just a couple days of yellow or red, and that he’ll adapt pretty quickly. And that’s what works better for him. And you’ll see that with the Whoop strap with him as well.
Chris Case 23:27
Are these all experienced cyclists with years and years of miles on their legs? And it’s just..
Trevor Connor 23:32
Yeah, so with you know, he is a cat one actually on a pro team over in Europe. So I wouldn’t say he’s amateur. Yeah. And so yeah, I mean, that’s that’s an important point. Going back to that. It isn’t a case of as you get higher and higher level, you need to go deeper and deeper, deeper to improve. He is somebody that we need to just hit him a little bit and then let him recover but he needs to do less stress more recovery, where I have to do a ton of stress, very little recovery. And it’s not an evaluate, we end up at the same place. Right strength. Yeah, it’s just how you get there.
Chris Case 24:10
Yeah. And that’s part of the complexity here is it’s not as simple as you have more years are in the sport, how many or more miles under you, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to build up this tolerance, so to speak, it makes me think of is a bad analogy in a way but somebody who drinks often sometimes, you know, they have to drink more to get the same effect of the alcohol. If you don’t drink at all. You have one beer, and that’s, you know, you’ve reached your happy place. But that’s not true when it comes to training. Some pros don’t need to go as deep as you, Trevor to get to elicit the same response.
Trevor Connor 24:53
So you’re saying I’m the cycling equivalent to a drunk. What’s the cycling equivalent of AA?
Chris Case 25:01
Gosh, I don’t know. That’s a good question. EA exercisers anonymous. I don’t know. Yeah, you do need it.
Trevor Connor 25:12
First part of what’s their expression?
Chris Case 25:16
You have to accept you have a problem. Is that what you’re getting at?
Trevor Connor 25:19
I haven’t gotten to the first step yet.
Chris Case 25:21
Yeah, this is a 12 step program. You got a long way to go, Trevor.
Trevor Connor 25:25
This weekend. So we had these horrible fires in Colorado. It actually I was supposed to go out and visit Julie but I thought she was in the middle of the fire. So that was not a good idea. But I went for a ride up Flagstaff, my eyes started watering uncontrollably. My throat started hurting. And my thought was not maybe I should go get inside where it’s air conditioned and clean air. My thought was, maybe if I head north, it’ll get better.
Chris Case 25:51
The last episode we talked about how you broke your handlebars and you kept riding your bike, you clearly have a problem now.
Is there an optimal way to train for future peak performance?
Chris Case 25:59
Move on. On. All right, so this next question is all about peaking. But peaking three years from now in a hypothetical situation, the question comes from Reuben Kouidri in Bristol, UK. That is a name that I’m not sure I pronounced correctly. So we’re now even in this episode, Trevor. There’s a little setup here. He writes, I have been targeting almost exclusively my aerobic system since March as I realized that I was pretty aerobicly deficient. The results thus far have been insanely positive. I’m not racing at the moment and I don’t have any intention to race in the near future due to my university studies. I would however, like to compete in full distance triathlon in the future and the main reason why I trained is actually for high altitude mountaineering and albinism, which is more akin to ultra endurance events or even major stage racing, or long hard days are stacked back to back for weeks on end. I intend to finish my university Studies in summer of 2022, and then use the following year until June 2023. To train full time. My question is this, what is an intelligent way to train for an event like this in terms of intensity distributions? Should I, for example, keep training at around 95, a ratio of 95 to five, I would assume, not intense, too intense, or however you want to polarize it here for the first year, as I am still seeing huge gains using this at the moment, then change for the second year to say 9010, then again for the third year to 8020. Obviously, there’s an infinite number of degrees of freedom. I’m more after a methodology than hard numbers. Or put another way, when the goal is a long way away, and I don’t need to peak until three years from now, is there a more optimal way to train for maximizing fitness than, for example, that 8020 ratio from the start? Do we shall we start with you, Julie?
Julie Young 27:56
Sure. So I thought this was interesting. I just tested a client in the lab, a lactate test. And he’s a relatively new rider and he’s been working with a coach and doing primarily an endurance program. And I tested him before, and he made just huge gains in his in the aerobic region to like minimal lactate is great lactate clearance and really pushes his aerobic threshold, pretty darn close to his lactate threshold. So it obviously paid off. But his lactate threshold, regressed a bit and he obviously didn’t make any gains in his lactate threshold. So I guess I feel like you need to, you know, keep increasing that ceiling with with the lactate threshold and take everything to the right. So it seems to me that, you know, if he continues, just doing what he’s doing, he’s going to stagnate a bit. So it would probably be Some time to include some concept threshold work, try to push that ceiling to the, you know, that set threshold to the right.
Chris Case 29:08
Trevor, what would you add here?
Trevor Connor 29:10
I had almost exactly the same notes. Same idea, just the way I would express it is, even if you don’t have racing, even if you using this as a build year, we adapt to what you throw at your body. So you have to be careful to say, Well, I don’t have any racing. So I don’t need to do any race training. Because if you don’t do that work, you might be surprised where your body ends up. And you want to example that go out and train with a ride with somebody who’s a professional randonneur Hmm, they will out under you. But all you have to do is attack them for a minute and they can’t do anything because they don’t train that side of their systems at all. So I would say even though right now you’re just trying to build that aerobics system You still want to keep a balance. And I think that you know, 95 five. I don’t know exactly what you mean by nine, you know exactly what percentages how’s week looks. But I would say you still want to be getting in some high intensity, as Julie was saying, you don’t want to see your your top end systems suffer.
Chris Case 30:24
In that regard, and maybe even with the randonneur writer, you might argue you might make the argument that they should do a little bit of intensity because don’t those two systems work in tandem? And if one goes up the other can has the potential to go up as well. So they could improve endurance capacity, even by eliciting a response from the anaerobic system?
Trevor Connor 30:50
I think so. Whenever I get asked this question I always think of I had a friend that used to train with us who was a professional Iron Man athlete. And I remember what timer. We wrote with us for about an hour and I was like, I gotta go do intervals. Well what sort of interval work are you doing? It goes, Oh, three by one hours. Huh? Like wait that’s intervals? A little bit of change in it. Yeah. So yeah I you know, in terms of the thinking three years out, there’s actually you look at what Olympic athletes are doing people are focused on the Olympics because they do a periodization that’s that’s a four year build that starts with the the year after the Olympics you tend to do an easier year it’s almost kind of a rest year. Then you do that year that’s more focused on the aerobic work build that system and then the actual Olympic year, you bring the volume down and you’re doing a lot of racing, and that’s kind of fine tuning. But Julie, very interested to hear what you have to say about this. I don’t think at any point in there. They’re not Racing, they’re not doing any sort of intensity. I think that would be a mistake. Julie, what do you think?
Julie Young 32:06
Well, I guess, I mean, I think it’s a bit different for someone that, you know, training for mountaineering as opposed to like a cyclist, you know, cuz I feel like there’s so many components that you have to train on the bike as just not not just, you know, these energy systems or these these intensities, but it’s like your, your mechanics and you know, your efficiency. And that’s obviously a little different for for Ruben, who’s, who’s more looking for the fitness but I would, I would agree with you in terms of the cyclist, like training for the Olympics, you know, I think he just always, you always have to be, and it’s the mental side of it, too. You know, like, always be in touch with that intensity level and being able to mentally handle that intensity level as well for the race situations.
What are exogenous and endogenous sources of glycogen and how do you utilize them?
Chris Case 32:58
All right, shall we move on to Some questions dealing a little bit more on the nutrition side of things. This question comes from another international listener Klemens Plasser in Vienna, Austria. He writes, how is glycogen used during exercise? Our muscle and liver glycogen used in the same way and can either store be, quote, refilled during exercise through nutrition? to rephrase the question, if muscle glycogen stores are empty during a long ride, does this lead to a sudden fall in performance? Even if blood glucose levels are held high through nutrition? Trevor, I know you are a wizard of nutrition science. Let’s start with you here. I know you’ve got some charts and graphs. Hopefully you have a like a laser pointer that nobody can see to work your magic.
Trevor Connor 33:55
I you’re just doing this because you want to laugh at me again. ,
Chris Case 33:58
No that’s not true. I would never Want to laugh at you.
Trevor Connor 34:00
So I have the –
Chris Case 34:04
Oops I laughed.
Trevor Connor 34:06
You could put all that straight face or two seconds, I have this thing that sometimes I read these questions that are sent and they get me thinking about something that I think is really interesting. And then somehow, in my head, that becomes what the person asked. And then I go and research the thing that’s in my head. And this was a classic case of this where I went and research something I found really fascinating found this really cool study. And then when I was pulling my notes together this morning, I reread the question and went, Wow, he didn’t ask a single one of the things I spent all last night researching.
Chris Case 34:41
So what you’re going to hear is a short answer to his question, and then a bonus answer to a really interesting topic that has nothing to do with what Clemens asked.
Trevor Connor 34:50
Well, actually, all my notes are related to his question okay, the end there’s just a little side. Still this cool stuff I could have told you about.
Chris Case 34:58
All right, well, let’s get into it.
Trevor Connor 35:00
So I’ll start this. And then Julie, I know this is your area of expertise. So please jump in and take it away. So where to start? I guess the first thing to point out is your muscles have two sources for glucose. So let’s just use the terms endogenous and exogenous. So endogenous would be its own internal stores or glycogen. And then exogenous would be glucose from the blood. Your muscles can’t differentiate if that glucose came from the liver, or if it came from glucose that you consumed. It just knows there’s glucose in the blood. important to know that you do not have transporters in your muscle cells to transport glucose out of the cells. So muscle cells are very selfish. They have transporters to take glucose. They don’t have transporters to give it back. If you want to get really complicated, yes, once it’s in the form of pirate Vader lact are actually lactate really, then it can be transported out of the cell, the muscle fiber where it can then go to the liver and the liver can convert it back to glucose. So but for right now just let’s go on the muscles can take in glucose, they can’t get rid of it. So the difference bit is asking what’s the difference between its own glycogen versus liver glycogen? Well, the differences are a muscle cell doesn’t know whether it was came from liver glycogen or not. It just knows there’s glucose in the blood. But if glucose is already inside the muscle fiber from its own glycogen, that muscle fiber has to use it. If it’s in the blood, it has the choice of whether it uses or not. Remember also the primary fuel of your brain is glucose. So your body wants to maintain a certain blood sugar level. So there is going to be a preference to say, Please spare the glucose for the brain. If you have your own endogenous sources within the muscle cell, please use that first, Julie thoughts?
Julie Young 37:16
Well, I, again, I kind of go back to it depends on the intensity in terms of the glycogen use. And again, I just find it fascinating like with in the lab and the, how individuel like people are metabolically and that, you know, these, these percentages of like 65% of co2 and you’re burning fat and this percentage and you’re burning primarily carbohydrate. So I think that’s like, the first thing I would mention is just, you know, what is what is the intensity level? And then, yeah, I think I also think it’s really interesting that if you do Like supplement while you’re exercising, it really preserved that the muscle glycogen in the liver, which can then be used, like in terms of like a race situation, you know, you can really preserve that like as a reservoir for the end of the race. So I think, you know, I know there’s a ton of studies on this, but there’s so much, I think it’s becoming complicated with all the new diets and the high fat and all these new trends, but then you just go back and you look at all the good science and it all says the same thing, in terms of, you know, pre pre exercise, feeding and then during exercise, but I also do think we can get better at that, how efficient we are, and then in terms of just preserving that glycogen for when we need it.
Trevor Connor 38:51
So I’m going to quickly mention this study because it’s one of the cooler studies I’ve read in a long time it was led by Dr. Andrew Bremmer And I’m going to say anybody who is interested read this. Because it talks, it was quite a surprise that he was a nutrition study but really focuses at the beginning on oxidization, and our cue all these things that you think of with exercise science. Name of the study is oxidative priority meal frequency in the energy economy of food and activity. And brings up what you just mentioned, Julie, which is this, it’s actually quite complex. And depending on what you put in your body, that’s going to determine how your body uses the various fuels that are available.
Chris Case 39:42
Give me an example.
Trevor Connor 39:44
So they actually have this really cool graph. Talking about you have to look at, you know, we always think about burning calories. And the when you really simplified you go Okay, well if you’re burning calories, easier, you’re losing fat. But they show in this graph that when you are doing intense exercise, you tend to prioritize using glucose, as Julie just said, intensity is a factor. And this is very individual, but if you take your average person and they start doing some intense exercise, they prioritize glucose, and that’s actually going to down regulate your body’s use of fat. So they show in this graph side by side, somebody who’s seated versus somebody who’s exercising and show that over the course of the day of an hour, obviously the person so they use the jogger, the joggers gonna burn a lot more calories, total calories than the person just seated. But then the next graph over they show how much of those calories came from fat. Hmm. And actually, this is where you See, it’s not actually that different because that jogger assuming they’re going sufficient intensity prioritized. They were prioritizing carbohydrates and they actually didn’t up the amount of fat they were burning that much from the seated individual.
Chris Case 41:20
You said that maybe this is a bit of a tangent here, but you said that the meal that you have right before you do a bit of exercise prompts the body to prioritize different fuels during the exercise.
Trevor Connor 41:38
So are there is that true that factor this was focusing this study was focusing more on just in general. Okay. So there I actually found this study because I was trying to look up. So I’d always called it auto oxidization hierarchy, which they mentioned in here, but it’s actually in the title. They called it oxidative priority. Which is when you take in certain nutrients because you have a high ability to store some and a low ability to store others, your body’s going to prioritize which it burns first versus which it stores. So for example, you have no ability to store alcohol. So if you consume a mix meal so let’s say the example they actually given this review is having a wine and cheese C of crackers which are high in carbohydrates. You have cheese, which is high in fat and some protein and then the wine is alcohol. And basically what they said is, first thing your body’s going to do is burn that alcohol because it can’t store it has to do something with it. You so there’s only whatever you take in calories, only three things you can do with it. You can burn it. You can store it or you can excrete it. We generally don’t excrete it too generally looking at either your burn or your store.
Chris Case 42:55
I didn’t realize you could use alcohol as a fuel.
Trevor Connor 42:58
Yep, yep. You can
Chris Case 43:01
Sweet – that that makes the helps.
Trevor Connor 43:04
So the order of priority – no Chris do not go on your ride with a water bottle of wine
Chris Case 43:12
I’m having those two beers before I commute home – on my bike, people, come on.
Trevor Connor 43:18
But the order of priority of what your body is going to use first for basically process first versus storing is alcohol, protein, carbohydrates fat. So if you eat a meal with all those, basically it’s going to take all that fat and go Okay, store this because we have a fat store, right? And then we’re going to prioritize the other stuff.
Chris Case 43:44
Does this bring up the very big question of what should your pre meal or pre workout meal be? I mean, it’s that’s I know that that’s not a simple answer whatsoever. But
Trevor Connor 43:55
We’ve kind of gotten away from exercise here.
Chris Case 43:59
Yes, I know.
Trevor Connor 44:00
This is the stuff I was researching last night. Oh my God is so cool that I read the question like the question has nothing to do with this.
Chris Case 44:06
Yeah, well, that’s all right. I mean, it’s still makes for interesting conversation.
Trevor Connor 44:13
But there is also that prioritization of so what he was asking about glycogen versus exoticness glucose. How do you prioritize it? Again, this is getting off topic. But another important thing that for people to be aware of, is we talked about, oh, if you eat a ton of sugar, it just gets converted to fat. Not actually accurate. We don’t have a great ability to interconvert. So when you talk about, well, you eat a ton of sugar, it gets converted to fat. No, actually what’s happening is you ate a ton of sugars, your body’s going to prioritize burning the sugar in any fat you have in the system at the same time, it’s just going to be stored. So it’s not converted. It’s just changing your priority. So same thing when you have glycogen stores liver glycogen, muscle glycogen and, and consume glucose. Your body’s going to prioritize it based on the availability.
Chris Case 45:16
Gotcha,
Trevor Connor 45:17
not going to convert that much. It’s just gonna prioritize.
Chris Case 45:20
So when you have sugar, just have sugar, don’t have any fat anywhere around you because then you can’t store anything. Just eat sugar. So what you’re saying, is that your nutrition recommendation for the day, lots of alcohol to burn through and sugar. That’s what I’m hearing from this discussion.
Trevor Connor 45:39
Julie. Apparently, I’m completely unable to communicate here. So you want to correct that one?
Julie Young 45:46
Well, I guess you know, the way I see it, and it’s exactly what you’re saying. And it may be a super simple way to say it, but I feel like your, your body takes the path of least resistance. And I think like if you put a bunch of carbohydrates It’s gonna burn that cure point. It’s just going to burn at first because it’s easy. And I think you know, I had mentioned I thought about this in one of your earlier podcasts. I think you guys were talking about fasting. But I really think this is a name. This is a good name for you, Trevor asked her dukan group.
Trevor Connor 46:20
We had him on the show
Julie Young 46:22
You did? Yep. Yeah. I think that I think they’re I love their work. I think they’re so spot on in terms of and I know I’m kind of on a tangent right now, but just periodized the nutrition with the training. But yeah, I guess I just feel like kind of back trying to get back to the question that the body is going to just take the path of least resistance and burn what’s what’s accessible and easy.
Chris Case 46:47
Let’s get to Clemens. The second half of this question, Julie. If muscle glycogen stores are empty during a long ride, does this lead to a sudden fall in performance even if blood glucose levels are held high through nutrition.
Julie Young 47:03
My understanding is that the muscles will uptake that blood glucose. And so that’s I mean, the value of the exogenous feeding while while training is that you can the muscles do respond to that blood glucose. So I That’s my understanding, Trevor, what do you understand that?
Trevor Connor 47:24
I think it goes back to what you were saying before. With your point about path of least resistance. Your body’s gonna go to highest availability, first your muscles and it’s going to try to avoid fatigue. There, he’s talking about a drop in performance. So if muscle glycogen is readily available, it’s first going to prioritize that as it becomes less available. It’s going to say, Okay, let’s take up blood glucose, but it doesn’t want to starve the brain. So if muscle glycogen is low and blood glucose is low, then it’s good to start prior ties into other fuels which are hard to use. So start using protein, particularly l glutamine. It will obviously use fat for fuel, but you can’t do much high intensity with fat. So yes, at that point, performance is going to drop and going back you brought up asker. You can droop. Yes, it’s going to try to use blood glucose. So consuming glucose is going to keep you going for a bit, but as he pointed out, you can only absorb so much in an hour, and we can burn if we’re doing high intensity, we can burn a lot more than we can absorb. So eventually, you’re just not gonna be able to consume enough to keep up.
Chris Case 48:41
And that takes us back kind of to the original question. If you’re above that 85% of FTP, then you your time to exhaustion is cut down and for several reasons, but one of them being nutritional. You can’t keep up with the demands.
Trevor Connor 48:55
Julie, anything else to add? Before we move to the next question,
Julie Young 48:57
it is interesting to understand As you train, you become better at storing the glycogen and then also, just taking it in in turn with a mix of sucrose and fructose, you can absorb it better. So just different strategies in terms of increasing your storage ability.
Chris Case 49:18
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Trevor Connor 50:08
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Will a greater fat intake improve performance and health?
Chris Case 50:34
Our next question comes from James McKay and he’s in Yorkshire in the UK. It’s a voice memo. We’ll play it now.
James McKay 50:41
From doing a lot of training volume, I can meet my fat and protein requirements quite easily through eating. And I can also meet or exceed the recommended eight to 10 grams per kilo body weight for carbohydrate. I’m still left with quite a large number of calories after this and I tend to eat them Back mostly in carbohydrate, I find it helps recovery. And I’m certainly not on the stock in my glycogen levels, which is not it’s just a peace of mind, if anything, but I didn’t know if there was any benefit of eating more fats just because that’s another energy source. I’m not at all interested in fat adapting. If anything, I’m more inclined to prioritize carbohydrate over fat to not blunt my ability to burn carbs for high intensity efforts. How much fat is too much at the moment, I mean, about point nine to one grams per kilo of bodyweight fat, which is about 60 or 70 grams for me. And sometimes I could be eating well over 100 grams of carbohydrate per day, my train is going well, but is that something I should be concerned for? On a health level or just for a performance benefit? Would I be better eating more fat
Trevor Connor 51:59
so I have a lot grants for this but I do want to address one thing first, which is, remember we talked about before your fat stores in your body are essentially unlimited. So where we focus in Endurance Sports on replenishing glycogen, this is not an issue with fat, meaning eating more fat is not going to for a couple hour race, improve your fat stores. That’s just not an issue. So bearing that in mind, let me start now with my longer answer by giving my bias we are too focused on carbohydrates, fats, protein, and Chevy eating high carbohydrate, low carbohydrate should be a high fat, low fat and that defines a healthy or unhealthy diet. I think that is the wrong way to look at diet. So my unfortunately my answer to his question is he said should I be increasing fat does that help my health Does that help my performance? What’s the source of your fats? My depth of fats? Are you eating and as a matter of fact, I was just looking for it. I can’t express this enough I found this review because I completely miss read one of the questions. looked up something else found this great review and I am loving this review. As a matter of fact, after we recorded it, I’m gonna go and read it again because it covers so many things that I love.
Chris Case 53:23
Just gonna say you know what you’re doing tonight?
Trevor Connor 53:26
Yep. And, boy, I am really boring.
Chris Case 53:29
Yep.
Trevor Connor 53:30
Why don’t I get more dates?
Chris Case 53:32
Ah, gosh. How much time do you got? Trevor?
Trevor Connor 53:36
Want to come read this study with me.
Chris Case 53:39
Let me read it to you.
Trevor Connor 53:41
Okay, we just went down a bad road. Yeah, so I’ve tried to find the exact quote, but he does in the or in the introduction. These authors state: They talk about two shifts in nutrition that they feel has led to a lot of the health issues and the obesity epidemic epidemic and there’s A better quote for that I couldn’t, I just can’t find but at the beginning they said. So with a shift away from sustenance and towards either pure palatability. It’s basically saying we’re just eating for taste, or specific nutrition, ie, high protein diets, low fat diets, low carbohydrate diets, or combinations thereof. So one of the main themes of this review is a big part of what has led to a rise in disease states, a rise in obesity is simplifying diets down to high carb, low carb, high fat, low fat, high protein, low protein. If you read this already, you basically are saying stop doing it.
Chris Case 54:45
placing an M over emphasizing one macronutrient or another and then focus way too much on something like that.
Trevor Connor 54:53
So unfortunately, my answer the question I’ll let Julie take it is, I can’t give you an answer. When you’re just Should I be increasing or decreasing the fat that I’m eating, because I am all about what are the foods you’re eating? Mm hmm. Not. Is it high fat? Is it low fat? Julie, what are your thoughts?
Julie Young 55:12
As you said that Trevor reminded me I have a client that just went on a No, he’s been on it for probably, gosh, six months or so but a plant based diet and he’s totally convinced it’s the way to go. But, you know, I think it’s back to your point like it’s more than those macronutrients it’s the micronutrients and those are so those are like the most valuable players that and he is just he’s starving all the time. But he’s in he’s just like ravenous and can’t get enough to eat and but he’s convinced it’s the right thing for him. And so I agree with you. I think there’s too much focus on the macronutrients and I also think we’re just we, we really want to think of absolutes and it’s kind of easier like oh, I’m just going to do all this or all that and and I think we always need to think of context and like what are our goals I think of just kind of this whole high fat diet trend and you know, if we think about like, it was really initiated by the ultra runners and their their demands are so different than than a road cyclists, for example, where that endurance that ultra endurance runner is typically running their events at that, you know, aerobic pace relying on those fats, whereas the road cyclist is hitting every intensity level, no demand, and they need to be able to be flexible in terms of, of accessing those fuels. So I think it is it’s so easy to want this one size fits all type type diet, and I think it’s, it’s confusing right now. There’s, there’s so much information out there and kind of conflicting information.
Will you be faster if you eliminate grains from your diet?
Chris Case 56:50
All right, let’s, let’s follow that up with a third sort of final question here in the nutrition realm. This question comes from Dan Draper. He’s in Salt Lake City, Utah, he writes, I try and eat mostly healthy. For example, healthy carbs, small portions of meat, I avoid fast and fried foods. I avoid highly refined grains and junk. But is it bad to eat whole wheat bread? I love it. And I feel really good after eating it. And it helps me feel full. Would I be faster if I cut back or eliminated grains? And I included this because? Well, I bet a lot of people have this same question. It’s not a simple answer. You could talk endlessly about the debate here of what including grains in your diet does to you. We’re looking for maybe a simpler answer. Trevor, I’ll I’ll start with you on this one as well.
Trevor Connor 57:47
So hard for me to answer this one because you know, I have a giant bias. Yeah, my entire master’s thesis was on the effects of wheat on health. And let’s just say I don’t eat it. Huh, so I am going to jump away from my bias. And since I have identified the fact that this review I read last night has probably the meaning of the universe in it.
Chris Case 58:14
Your our brains halfway there isn’t
Trevor Connor 58:16
I’m obsessed with it today, like in a week, we’re going to do an episode like I’m sorry, I quoted anything out of that study, but for right now. Yeah, it actually has a great paragraph in here that I’m just going to read that actually quite effectively defines or states what I would want to state.
Chris Case 58:36
If you were a smarter, more handsome man.
Trevor Connor 58:40
Yes, exactly.
Chris Case 58:41
Right. Go for it.
Trevor Connor 58:41
So it goes. Perhaps there’s further confusion resulting from the unintended consequences of aggregating whole food complex carbohydrates, with highly refined refined grains and sugars, simply because they share the same defining glyco siddik bond found at all. carbohydrates. Not only does this detract from the important negative metabolic effects that excess simple sugar consumption has on hepatic steatosis and mitochondrial dysfunction, but it also offs for scates obfuscates. Thank you the role that excess dietary protein in brackets amino acids, alcohol and carbohydrates play and driving dietary fat storage and interfering and stored adipose disposal through normal metabolic activities during the fasted state.
Chris Case 59:32
I want to say that man needs a good editor, he needs to add some punctuation
Trevor Connor 59:37
That was so cool. Are you kidding me?
Chris Case 59:41
I would like you to restate that in your own terms. I mean, I get it but I think that’s a it’s dense.
Trevor Connor 59:50
It’s basically saying we are making a mistake by taking by simplifying foods into carbohydrates, proteins and fats. As opposed to look into something as a complex meal, a complex food and and thinking we’re talking about the same thing. So, you know, going back to this question of he brought up carbohydrates. I eat healthy carbohydrates. Well, how do you know because you are taking a complex meal a complex food and simplified to well it’s carbohydrate. It’s not. Yeah, you’re not looking at the overall effects of that that bread. And this paragraph differentiates that complex food containing complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, and lumping it all together with these simple sources of carbohydrates, which can have very negative health effects, which tends to be bread, and they can you’re talking basically about the same thing, right? So that my simple answer to this is I think bread is a high caloric density, high glycemic index, low nutrient density food. That will certainly provide you with glucose, quick glucose for exercise, but might have some negative health effects. And you need to look at it as a little more complex than just a, hey, here’s a good source of carbohydrate.
Chris Case 1:01:23
Yeah, I also kind of like this question only because it’s, it’s a little unanswerable. Would I be faster if I cut back on grains? There’s different who could say
Trevor Connor 1:01:33
nobody could say that? Yeah, that can answer that. Yeah. And again, that’s trying to simplify it down to Well, this is gonna make it faster. It’s gonna make it faster. Well, if you have celiac disease, no, it’s not going to make it faster at all. Mm hmm. Everybody’s individual I, you know, my bias against wheat. Mm hmm. But even removing that bias. You just can’t answer that question. Right.
Chris Case 1:01:54
Yeah. Julie, anything to add to this discussion here.
Julie Young 1:01:58
Nutrition can can become an obsession. And I think it’s, again, it’s important to figure out individually what works best for you and based on your goals and, you know, I agree like there’s, you know, not all carbohydrates are created equally, and you can make better choices, I think, you know, in terms of trying to get faster, trying to make good choices and everything in moderation. So you can, you know, fuel your body so you can train harder to get faster. And I think oftentimes we get a little sidetracked with so much focus on nutrition Of course, it’s important but at the end of the day, it’s it’s filling your body well so you can train harder and recover better, and that’s going to make you faster.
What are the effects of energy on power output on performance?
Chris Case 1:02:42
Well, let’s wrap up this episode with a final question. This one has to do with the effects of injury on on power output on performance. It comes from Tom in horror, which Tom was injured at the time he wrote this 11 weeks Previously after hitting a cat damn deck that ran out on him into the road he crashed badly on the side. x rays showed no broken hip, which he had previously broken in 2018 took three weeks off the bike completely. When he wrote us he was a further 10 weeks on from that point, despite rigorous physical therapy and advice and advised exercise program, his hamstrings were still sore. So his questions are, whilst I am now hitting the same power numbers in training, my heart rate is higher for the same power was which suggests I have lost some fitness and not yet regained it. Aside from the loss of aerobic fitness due to time off the bike initially, how much could the ongoing muscle intendant weakness be affecting the physiological expenditure for a given power output? My power meter suggests I am still fairly balanced left right but heart rate is perhaps 10 beats higher at sustained sweetspot threshold efforts. If a muscle is pulled strange, strange, but I still have the aerobic capacity to do the effort, then what mechanism is causing the increased heart rate? Julie, would you like to start us off with this one?
Julie Young 1:04:15
I will my my answer might be a little bit of a little bit of a tangent, but I always think of like an injury as an opportunity to come back better and more functionally fit. And so I guess I just think that it’s obviously it’s challenging, from here to understand, you know, exactly what’s going on physically and has his physical therapy and his recovery. But I think it just, it just takes time. But I do think, again, an injury is that opportunity to come back, functionally more fit. And so perhaps, you know, the body is just not neuromuscular Li firing quite the way it did prior to the injury. I also, you know, asked I wonder in terms of like his hamstrings being irritated, you know, if anything’s changed with bike fit, and then I think about like posture on the bike and how important that is in terms of, you know, ensuring that the big muscle groups are firing like the glutes versus a posterior tilt and too much reliance on hamstring. So think just that. Those are some things that came into my mind in reading this question. Yeah, Trevor, what do you think
Trevor Connor 1:05:33
the first thing I wrote in my notes was to actually ask a question back, which is, he made the statement that he is still aerobic he still has the aerobic capacity fitness to do this. My question is, Are you sure? If your heart rates 10 beats per minute higher, how do you know all that work is still being produced? aerobically? Maybe you’re you’re producing that power differently. And so it’s not the same thing, even though you’re at the same wattage. Right?
Chris Case 1:06:09
Well, but Tom isn’t here to answer that question for us, unfortunately. So, we don’t know.
Trevor Connor 1:06:16
But no, I think Julie made a great point that that you should view an injury as an opportunity to come back stronger. And the the main thing I had to bring up is there’s, I think two phases to recovery from an injury. There’s the acute side, you actually have the muscle damage that has to be repaired. But in physiology, you tend to talk about neuro muscular units, there’s a whole neurological side. And my experience is you the muscle itself might heal, but it takes much longer to get that neuromuscular firing pattern going correctly. Again.
Chris Case 1:06:55
Any suggestions on what he should do then to get back to that person previous level assuming that he can
Trevor Connor 1:07:02
actually Julie, what are your thoughts on as you said, this is an opportunity to get better what are what are the opportunities here?
Julie Young 1:07:11
For me, you know, I think, like I’m such a proponent of off bike, trans stability, hip stability, mobility, strength work, I think it’s, unfortunately the first thing like often slips through the cracks when we were busy and all we really want to do is ride our bike more. But I do think again, like the, like, the more injured or in pain it is, we’re more motivated. So I’m just I think, good, consistent trunk stability program, and it’s not with, you know, extension and flexion through the spine, but more being able to find that that neutral spine and engage it and hold it muscularly and then the hip hip stability, you know, making sure like the the glute medius was firing, so the glute max had That that stable platform to direct the force. So to me it’s attention to detail that that really makes a difference making sure the body is really firing as a unit and doing some some single leg strength work. And perhaps you’re doing that and it’s physical therapy, but then I think you’re able to see those imbalances and really use this time to get the body back in balance.
Trevor Connor 1:08:23
agree that the last thing I just wanted to add, because he brought up what is driving up the heart rate? And I think in the question, he kind of assumed, well, I’ve lost aerobic fitness. I wouldn’t necessarily say that. I would say there’s three potential things that could drive up heart rate relative to waters Yes, one is loss of aerobic fitness, and there’s likely some of that. A second one, my experience is when somebody is takes a long rest, whether forced or at a choice. When you come back, you tend to see max heart rate rate go up. And as a result your all your heart rate ranges go up. So you do have to adjust them slightly when you come back for an injury or extended period of time off. The last one is going back to what we were just talking about with the recruitment patterns is muscle recruitment, drives heart rate, the more fibers you recruit, the higher your heart rate goes. So if your neuromuscular firing pattern is not optimal, you may have to recruit more muscle mass more fibers in order to produce the movement. If that’s the case, that’s going to drive heart rate up. Yes, that’s a sign that you have some work to do. But it might not be that you’ve necessarily lost aerobic fitness, you may have to do exactly what Julie’s talking about really work on that muscle firing patterns.
Chris Case 1:09:47
Well, thank you, Julie, for joining us and sharing your wisdom with us today. It’s been a pleasure.
Julie Young 1:09:52
So appreciate the opportunity.
Trevor Connor 1:09:54
great having you on the show. We appreciate it.
Chris Case 1:09:58
That was another episode of fast Talk. As always, we’d love your feedback. Email us at Fast Talk at Fast Talk Labs comm or record a voice memo on your phone and send it our way. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. subscribe to our newsletter by visiting www dot best labs calm. The thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talker are those of the individual for Julie young and Trevor Connor. I’m Chris case. Thanks for listening.
