Discussions of energy system training have been raging as of late and with the importance of the aerobic system being talked about more and more many are getting confused about how to structure programming or how all the pieces fit together.

One of the biggest misunderstandings seems to come when discussing the lactate system as numerous coaches are under the belief that lactate training is the most important type of energy system training and that this is where many sports are played at. I have had numerous discussions with colleagues who call or email me asking me questions like, “But sport “x” is more of a lactate sport so we need to train with high intensity intervals to improve that and don’t need to do as much aerobic work, right?”

Now, I am not going to say that performing intervals that produce lactate is a bad thing or wrong (it’s not actually bad at all and it can be extremely beneficial and important to enhancing the individuals buffering capacity when used appropriately at the right time in the training program and in the right amount of volume/frequency). What I will say however, is that when an athlete is in shape and fit to play their sport and their aerobic system is well developed those same intervals or those same work to rest ratios of the sport should not require them to rely so much on the lactate system to produce energy as their lactate threshold will be at a higher percentage of their max HR.

There really aren’t any sports (that I can think of) that are truly “lactic”. Even sports that we often consider to be “lactic” events, such as a 400m sprint or some of the short duration rowing events in the Olympics, will have a lower contribution from the lactate system in those that are at a high level and fit to perform the event. The only reason they would ever be very “lactic” would be if you were out of shape to perform that event and thus you would rely more heavily on your lactate system for energy production and instead of running the race you would suffer through the race.

The key to improving an athletes sport specific work capacity or sport specific energy system is to understand what the requisite competencies of that energy system are. For example, many colleagues understand the Functional Movement Screen and its hierarchy as far as choosing exercises and correcting the tests. If an individual has a really poor Overhead Squat Test but they also have an asymmetrical Active Straight Leg Raise Test then you would not begin by attempting to “correct” the overhead squat without first spending time addressing the active straight leg raise and making sure that it is symmetrical and at the least a “2″ on the FMS grading scale.

The same concept could be applied for energy system training. If an athlete is unfit, has a lactate threshold that is relatively low compared to their max HR, and fatigues at a faster rate when playing the sport, you wouldn’t just start doing a ton of high intensity interval training (IE, high volumes and very frequently in the training week) right out of the gate to make them better as the requisite competency for improving the above qualities is to enhance the aerobic system and the individuals lactate threshold so that they can produce more high intensity efforts with less fatigue and without relying on the lactate system – a system which happens to be inefficient for energy production in the long term and also an energy system that requires the body a longer period of time post game, post practice, or post training to try and recover from as it can be pretty taxing stuff.

The goal in this situation really comes down to three key factors:

1. How you sequence your training session/training qualities within the training week
2. Applying your anaerobic training methods in the correct training phase
3. Choosing the right amount of anaerobic work – the right aerobic to anaerobic ratio within each specific training phase –  which would depend on the athletes fitness level, the sport, the goal of the phase, and where you are in your training program

When used appropriately some lactate intervals can be beneficial for raising the lactate threshold in a team sport athlete, however, that type of work should be chosen wisely and done at the correct time to ensure the requisite competencies are first developed and appropriate recovery time can take place between these workouts to allow the athlete to reap the biggest benefit.

Furthermore, when thinking about the sequencing of training within program design/planning it should be considered that having a sound lactic capacity is really a product of having a well developed aerobic system, which would allow you to work at higher percentages of your max HR (higher lactate threshold) and buffer hydrogen ions more efficiently.

My article yesterday about Lactate Training sparked some good debate and questions on Facebook. Justin Rippy of Athlete Genesis had some good comments that I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention and comment more specifically on.

First, he asked what I felt the most effective way of training the aerobic system for a power athlete would be. To which I replied:

“Justin, it depends on the athlete and sport. “Power athletes” is way to vague. How much aerobic capacity does a powerlifter or olympic lifter need vs a soccer player or a football player? What about the position on the field? If all you do is run back kickoffs, then I don’t need you to have as much of an aerobic capacity (since you will do one high intensity effort and then rest for the next 8-10min) but if you are an every down receiver who runs the go route all the time (like Randy Moss) then you will need more of an aerobic capacity. See what I am saying? Everyone wants a simple formula of “do this on Monday and that on Tuesday”. It isn’t simple like that! You need to actually sit down and think about training and what sort of adaptations you are trying to bring out.”

Then Justin posed the following question/statement:

I very much agree with your post, I’m just seeing it from a neurological perspective. Very few athletes ever recover to that ‘normal’ state where neurologically all muscles are capable of fully lengthening against load. What I’m saying is that in training we often stress someone maximally to create adaptation. Recovery has always been viewed as more of a submaximal stimulus, whether it be during a training session or between training sessions. What if we were to look at a new paradigm where we stimulate the recovery systems of a person maximally, as opposed to just the mobilizers. What happens to a human being when their recover systems become so strong that there’s almost nothing that can be thrown at them they can’t recover from? Then hrv always stays high and we enter into an adaptive state where many of the negatives of training disappear (soreness, inflammation), allowing high neuroplasticity and rapid adaptation to any stressor. In my experience, this ability to recover is a much more general trait to train within every human being.

-Justin

Justin, you have some interesting comments. I think I know where you are going with this but I choose to explain things differently.

The goal of training is not necessarily to stimulate the recovery system but rather to disrupt homeostasis and allow the body to recover and make adaptations. What you are describing is the resiliency of the body to bounce back from stressors applied to it. This is what I refer to as the Physiological Buffer Zone. I discussed this concept briefly about a year and a half ago when I talked about my Theory on Movement Reserve. I also go way more in depth on this concept as well as programming ideas in the DVD I did with Charlie Weingroff and Joel Jamieson, which should be coming out in October (I’ll update the blog when it comes out).

In a nut shell, three things make up my physiological buffer zone:

1. Good movement
2. High level of stress resistance
3. High level of fitness

We have ways of measuring these capacities and we have ways of improving/training these capacities. When an athlete is functioning at a high level these capacities are at their highest. Stress resistance is a particularly interesting one as it tends to modulate up and down depending on what else we have going on in our live, giving it a very plastic quality. Something I talked about when I discussed my concept of the Stress Account.

So, in reality, we want to create some breakdown, some damage, and some disruption of homeostasis. Basically, if we are always recovered then there is nothing for our body to adapt to and there is no reason for it to ever improve. The goal of training is not to be optimally recovered but rather to have the ability to OPTIMALLY ADAPT to the stress that is being placed on you. Thus, your comment about stressing someone maximally in order to create adaptation needs to be clarified as the goal is not to stress them maximally but stress them only as much as they need to get the result you seek and then no more. Think stimulation not maximal stress.The same is true with your comment on recovery being more of a submaximal stimulus. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. It just depends on the individual and what you are trying to achieve – you don’t always want to intervene on the natural processes of the body and force recovery while other times you may want to help push an individual into a more recovered state.

The key to understanding this concept of stress, recovery, and adaptation is the biological term hormesis. Basically, this term helps us understand the bodies adaptive response to low or high dose stressors. When we apply a low dose stress the body is able to make a favorable adaptation and is actually beneficial to the cells; however, a high dose of that same stress causes the body to break down or, in terms of toxic substances, can kill us. I believe this is what Robert Sapolsky is referring to when he made the quote, “We have a definition for a low level of stress – it’s called stimulation.”

As coaches, being aware of this we can then stimulate the athlete to the appropriate amount, allow adaptation to take place, and slowly continue to build the individuals resiliency, their physiological buffer zone. As that buffer zone improves the athlete can then handle greater loads, greater volumes, and greater frequencies of training. A good example of this might be an Olympic athlete or a Tour De France rider who trains for years, and years, and years, building volume, fitness, and tolerance to those stressors. The flip side is the person who sees this training program, has about two years of training under their belt, and then tries to mimic the training program and gets burned out, injured, and throws their hormonal system in the dumps within 12 weeks because the dose of stress was way to high for their body to adapt to (IE, it was toxic). Thus, instead of going slow and stimulating, they welt full speed ahead and crushed themself.

So, it is not the recovery system that needs to be strong as much as it is all aspects of the physiological buffer zone that need to be firing on all cylinders to allow the person to favorably tolerate the stressors being placed on them. Of course, it takes time – a long time – to build something like this and most people are very impatient so that can make things challenging!

Hope that helps give you some ideas!

Periodization and planning are always hot topics as the way in which coaches program various qualities – strength, power, capacity, endurance, etc – is something that gets debated often.

Concurrent training is one method that many coaches employ as it consists of training multiple qualities at equal amounts of focus within the same training phase and often within the same workout. The biggest issue that can arise from this sort of programming is that often times the two or three qualities one is looking to enhance end up competing with each other for adaptation.

All types of training, whether it is strength training or long distance running, will produce specific responses from the body which trigger gene expression and molecular changes that in turn cause the body to adapt to the training stimulus in order to make us more prepared to tackle this stressor should we need to face it again (our next workout or competition). One of the arguments against concurrent training is that the adaptations that the body’s internal environment under goes in response to the differing training stimuli brought on by the multiple qualities being trained in the training day or training phase are on different ends of the spectrum thus confusing the body as to how it should respond and leading to less than favorable adaptations. This is referred to as the Interference Phenomenon. You can’t be an elite powerlifter and an elite marathon runner at the same time. In addition to the arguments about performance outcomes another big issue with concurrent training is the reported overreaching or overtraining that tends to occur when an athlete attempts to cram several training qualities into a workout or training phase, detracting from their recovery time and increasing the amount of training miles they are placing on their body.

Interestingly, despite these arguments against concurrent training studies looking at the effects of concurrent training appear to be mixed in regard to the results with some studies showing it to be effective and other studies showing it to be detrimental to strength, power, or endurance adaptations. Of course it is important to take into consideration the subjects in many of these studies, who are often college aged exercise science students with minimal to no training background, thus they may respond in a different manner than someone with a higher training age or more elite in status.

Recently, Wilson and colleagues (2012) conducted a meta-analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research,Concurrent Training: A Meta-Analysis Examining Interference of Aerobic and Resistance Exercise.

This analysis looked at 21 studies on concurrent training to better understand its application and potential detrimental effects when looking at parameters such as hypertrophy, maximal strength, power, and VO2max.

Some of the interesting findings that they noted:

1. Hypertrophy and max strength did not differ between the strength only and the concurrent training groups, however, power was significantly decreased in the concurrent training group versus the strength training only group.
2. No decrements were found in VO2max between an endurance only group or a concurrent training group which indicates that aerobic capacity may not really be inhibited by this method of programming. An interesting aside is the same result has also been seen in elite endurance athletes.
3. Concurrently performing strength training and running led to significant decrements in hypertrophy and strength gains however this result was not found to be the case when strength training was performed concurrently with cycling. The authors hypothesized that his may be due to the fact that cycling is more biomechanically similar to many of the strength tests used in the study or since running has a higher eccentric component (while cycling is primarily concentric) there may be potential for greater muscle damage. However, despite the performance decrements, concurrent training with running led to a greater decline in fat mass versus concurrent training with cycling.
4. While the common ground between long duration endurance training and resistance training is low (as I indicated above when discussing the interference phenomenon) there does appear to be a common ground between short duration, high-intensity, sprinting and resistance exercise due to the way the neuromuscular system is recruited for these tasks.

Thoughts on application for team sport athletes

Research is great but at the end of the day we have to figure out how to really apply this stuff in order to drive change in our programs. Team sport athletes are unique when it comes to fitness qualities as each sport has different needs and demands. Team sport athletes don’t often need to be able to display the uppermost limits of their individual strength or power (like a powerlifter or olympic weightlifter, for example), however they do need to be able to display high amounts of power efforts and then posses the capacity to repeat those efforts over and over during the course of a game. The athlete who can display a high amount of power output but then needs a significant period of rest to do it again becomes a detriment to the team when they are on the field (and potentially an injury risk). While concurrent training may appear to be helpful in this instance it can also be a detrimental as the athlete doesn’t have the time to develop specific qualities to a higher potential (qualities that may be important to success in their sport or the position they play on the field) and ends up being a “jack of all trades; master of none” thus holding them-self back from greater success.

That being said, there are times when concurrent training can be very useful and warranted – total beginners or even during some inseason periods when training time is cut short due to more frequent competitions and practice – however, it would be wise to prioritize specific qualities during specific training cycles when you can so that the athlete is able to (a) work on whatever qualities are a weakness to them that need to be better developed to play their sport and (b) to get those most of your training and ensure you are developing your abilities to their highest potential within the construct of the team sport environment.

For example, if the goal of your first phase of training is to develop the aerobic capacity for an individual that is out of shape or lacking in that area, using a powerlifting program while throwing in a few aerobic activities at the end of the workout would not be the most productive way to go about it. It would make more sense to reduce the intensity of your lifting program (<80%) and perhaps even the frequency (2-3d/wk seems to work well) as well as using training methods that would be advantageous to your goal of improving aerobic and general work capacity. The other days of the week would be more focused on aerobic development using a variety of methods and modalities which target that athlete’s individual needs. Rather than concurrently training during this phase and “getting a little better at everything” you can take the time to focus more specifically on a single quality and reap the benefits of it which will then support your training in later phases when you shift focus towards a different quality.

So much can be said about periodization and planning and the topic is very interesting. One thing to keep in mind is that no two athletes will respond or adapt the same way to the same training program. Just because something worked for one individual does not mean it will be optimal for another individual. It is best to keep the individual’s needs in mind with regard to where their current level of fitness and development is and how that level of fitness and development relates to their sport, their position in that sport, and what other athletes who have had success in that sport posses.

Over the past two blog entries I got a little more in depth into the idea of tweaking physiology and the importance of the methods you choose to use with your exercise selection.

Having Sam Leahey here on an internship basis has been interesting because I am typically a one man show when it comes to work. I just show up, do my thing, and don’t really talk much about it to anyone. But, now I have someone standing there all hours of the day asking me a million questions about “why this” and “why that” and “what about this” and “do you think that” that it has forced me to articulate my ideas much more clearly and explain everything that I do – this is a good thing.

Sam and I take our discussions to the white board often and Sam will give me a situation or an example and ask me what I might think with regard to program design and then we hash it out – he grills me on why I would do certain things verses others and we go back and forth with ideas.

This week, Sam’s big “ah-ha” moment came when we were discussing program design. Sam commented that what he liked so much about looking at training in this manner was that you can really train any sort of athlete as long as you know physiologically what you are trying to produce. From there, it is just about selecting certain methods, setting up your phases of training and figuring out what your training week is going to look like.

That last part is clutch!

The key is really looking at the days you have available to train and figuring out how to spend your time. This is where I use the phrase Divide and Conquer.

Oftentimes, we get tend to get swept up thinking about trying to do so many things in a single training day that we end up not achieving what we set out to achieve in the first place (or we get a little bit of what we wanted but not really the full pie – Jack of all trades, master of none).

Instead of trying to cram tons of stuff into one training day – speed, power, plyos, strength training, ESD, etc – it makes more sense to look at your training week, look at the training phase and what you are physiologically trying to enhance, and then dividing the qualities up through the week so that you can specifically focus on one single quality at a time and ensure you get from your training what you want – Divide and Conquer.

This can be a difficult thing for some coaches to do because they want to hold onto the things that they believe to be true and often have a difficult time embracing the cognitive dissonance of looking at things from a different lens. My friend Dave Tenney made a great point about this as we were talking once when he said, “It is always hard for someone to listen to you when you offer them a perspective that is a complete 180 degree difference from what they are already doing. Sometimes they come around and listen and sometimes they don’t.”

My quote to Sam is always, “Sam, let it go! Give up trying to slam things in on training days or during training weeks because you are “scared” that the person is missing something.”

There is always time, later in the program (if you sequence things well), to attack all the qualities that you are worried about trying to fit into one day and when you get to that point in the program attack you will – Divide and Conquer.

Wrapping up, there are times when training in a very concurrent manner is warranted, useful, and logistically makes a lot of sense. But, when possible attempt to concentrate your efforts on something very specific so that you can pull the most from it before moving onto something else. It all comes down to how you look at the training week, sequence various training qualities, and what you choose to focus on in the overall big picture.

One of the hot topics over the past year or so has been energy system development and the idea of developing a sport specific work capacity to further enhance an individual’s athletic potential.

Taking this a step further, a common theme in many of the discussions I have been having with some of my friends/colleagues in the field has been the idea of tweaking physiology to optimally get what we need from the athlete – specific to their needs, their sport, and their position within that sport – whether it is to prepare them for a competitive season or in some of the ideas we have been bouncing around about the athlete’s return to play following an injury.

No two people are alike and the idea of individualized training is one that gets tossed around a lot – How individualized does training need to be? Does each person need their own program? What if we have a large group of athletes, how do we individualize then? What about the general fitness qualities which are consistent between all sports/athletes?

What do I mean by “tweaking physiology”?

Each athlete has some sort of physical quality that makes them great. Some athletes possess an incredible aerobic system. Some athletes may have an amazing alactic system and are able to display great strength, power, and/or speed. Other athletes may have a mix of both and be ahybrid of sorts.

As I stated earlier, when looking at the individual it is important to take into consideration their sport, their position on the field or court, and what physiological qualities are needed to succeed in those two situations. From this understanding we can then begin to develop a training program that is specific to that individual’s needs.

For example, we may have an athlete that has a lower aerobic capacity compared to others on the team but is highly explosive and quick. Depending on their position on the field or the type of system the coach runs, this sort of makeup may be optimal. However, if the athlete played a different position on the field or was asked to play a different role on the team (for example if there was a coaching change and the new coach ran a different style of offense or defense) this type of makeup may not be optimal and may require a change in program design to tweak the athlete’s physiology a different way.

A good example of this might be seen in football where you may have an offensive lineman that plays in an offense that is all about pounding the ball, taking time in the huddle, and slowing down the pace of the game. If all of a sudden a new offensive coordinator came in who wanted to run more of hurry-up style of offense and play more of a “run-and-gun” type of game then the offensive lineman needs to develop more of an aerobic capacity to allow himself to repeat efforts rapidly with minimal rest to keep up with the rest of the team and ensure that the pace is fast enough to keep the defense on the field and not allow them to substitute out players so that they can get rest.

This concept was discussed by a few of the coaches during the Sounders Sports Science Weekend during the soccer periodization round table discussion and then further emphasized by Christ West during his lecture.

Sometimes the flame burns too bright: Looking at physiology a different way

Some athletes possess a very wired nervous system. Their 90% seems to be a much more intense effort than other athletes 90%. They go harder, they push more, and their nervous system is always running hot (I refer to this as their flame burns a little brighter than everyone else).

The problem with these individuals is that they may be able to really turn it on and display amazing power but over the course of several attempts, when rest is incomplete (as it so often is in American team sports), that flame that burns really bright tends to also die out a bit quicker.

The flip side of this is the athlete who’s flame doesn’t burn as bright but it stays lit for a long period of time. They may not be overly explosive or have a lot of power but they can repeat their efforts consistently without much variation (even though those efforts aren’t as intense as you would like them to be).

In both of these instances, training will have to take on a different shape and result in us trying to tweak their physiology. In the first case, we actually may need to dampen this athlete’s flame a little bit. While their 100% effort may be incredibly impressive the flame burns out so quick that in a team sport setting it is pretty much useless (although it might be ideal in a setting suck as track and field or swimming where they need to just blow through one single event as hard as possible and then they get a ton of rest). In fact, with this athlete, we may actually – in the processes of dampening their flame – turn their nervous system down a bit. For this individual we may have to be open to the idea that having them at 95% – but being able to repeat that 95% over the course of the entire game – is more optimal then having them at their 100% – even though it is very impressive – which they can only display once every 2-3 minutes. This can be a difficult thing for the athlete to understand and teaching them to turn down the volume on their nervous system a little bit and pace things out will take time and patience on the part of both the coach and the athlete.

In the second example, we actually have to teach the athlete how to turn the volume up on their nervous system. We want to throw some gas on that flame and try and get it to burn a bit brighter. These athletes will need less emphasis on their aerobic capacity development and more emphasis on intense efforts.

Again, it is important to emphasize that a lot of this will be specific to the sport and position the athlete plays on the field. For example, the special teams return specialist on your football team may not need to have as much aerobic capacity as your wide receiver who plays almost every down and is on the field for longer periods of time and needs to be able to repeat their highly explosive efforts play after play (alactic-aerobic ability).

Sounds Simple….Right?

Obviously this sounds simple and many have talked about similar concepts before; however, it isn’t as easy as it looks. Tweaking someone’s physiology and their unique physiological make up takes time and you will need to sit down and think very specifically about their program design and what you are attempting to get out of it.

It isn’t as easy as just training everything – speed, power, strength, energy systems, etc – on each training day or doing a little bit more strength work or doing a few more tempo runs. It takes some thought and (maybe) some creativity when it comes to developing the program.

These are certainly hard questions to ask and often leave me with even more questions than answers. However, they are important questions to ask because in the long run they will make our program design better and ensure that we are extracting the highest potential out of an athlete without just doing something very general and hoping for the best.

I don’t have all the answers (or even some of the answers). Right now, we are just playing with a lot of concepts and ideas on how to go about developing an individualized training program to specifically tweak someone’s physiology. Sam Leahey has come out to Phoenix to spend the summer with me and we have been sitting down and going over my document of training methods and having long discussions about how some of the methods fit into a program, where they fit, and how we can use these methods to create certain adaptations – physiological adaptations, hormonal adaptations, structural adaptations, etc. Some of these methods and the training programs that we have been using look nothing like the traditional training programs you may see if you walked into a sports training facility and this is mainly because we have established specific goals or themes that we are trying to emphasize on certain days of the week or in certain phases of training.

It is still a learning process and not everything works out as planned but the idea is that we are trying to push the envelope a little bit. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that just because something did not work for one individual does not mean that it won’t work for the next guy or girl that walks through the door. There is no telling how any one person will respond to a certain training stimulus and because we all have some individual qualities we all will have individual responses.

The goal is to hopefully look back five years from now and have a much greater understanding of what it takes to tweak someone’s physiology. Right now we are just trying to keep our minds open to many ideas and concepts.