Education Feed

Welcome to the VO2 Max Forum. Here, I share Science Posts to help you, the reader, bridge the gap between endurance sport science and its application to your endurance discipline(s).

Background

I am a big fan of Lionel Sanders! If you haven’t heard of him, he is a Canadian professional triathlete currently living in Tucson, AZ. He has been a pro in the sport for a while now, since 2013. He also has many, many accolades to his name, including the placing 1st at the 2017 ITU Long-Distance Triathlon World Championships, 2nd at the Ironman World Championships twice (2017 and 2021), and is the winningest Ironman professional in history, with over 30 professional wins at Ironman-branded half and full-distance races.

Lionel Sanders was an up and coming pro when I first got into triathlon myself back in 2014. He was the OG when it came to professional triathletes having a social media presence, particularly on YouTube. He was known for being super raw, unfiltered, and somewhat insane. He usually posted uncut videos of himself training for long hours on his bike trainer…

Background

Polarized training, or “80/20 training” as it is also known, has become a popular training periodization approach in recent years. Initially, observations that elite Norwegian cross-country skiers spend most of their annual training volume at low intensities (i.e., >80% of training volume), very little at modest intensities (i.e., 0-5% of training volume), and then the remainder at very high intensities (i.e., 15-20% of training volume) led to a surge in interest in this style of training intensity distribution among researchers, coaches, and some amateur/recreational athletes (3). This interest has grown into somewhat of a craze among most endurance athletes. Nowadays, many endurance athletes follow this sort of training approach or, have at the very least, heard of it from one of the many voices preaching its superiority as an approach to training intensity distribution for endurance performance success (e.g., Matt Fitzgerald and one of his many “80/20” books).

Background

In my continued effort to take a deeper look at the research surrounding the potential long-term health implications of chronic endurance exercise, I decided to focus this month on ultra-endurance running. Before diving into this topic, I want to be clear that exercise of all types confers incredible health benefits. When I discuss my interest in the potential negative long-term implications of endurance exercise, this is limited in scope to chronic, high volumes of endurance exercise that has gained more attention for its relationship to a small, elevated health risks. In particular, high levels of endurance exercise and sport participation has, in some research, demonstrated a very small increased risk of cardiovascular health concerns.

Naturally, as both an endurance athlete and coach, I figured I should be more well-versed in this emerging area of research so that I am aware of any risks that might be present…

Background

This month’s post will be a bit different from the norm. I will of course be sharing some thoughts as it relates to endurance sport-related science, but I will be using a recently published study as an opportunity to share some learning points about properly interpreting and contextualizing single research studies as this is an incredibly important skill for anyone that is utilizing research to inform a larger context of coaching athletes, including self-coaching.

I wanted to discuss the topic of long-term endurance exercise and its impact on cardiovascular health, or cardiovascular health risk to be more precise. I have come across more and more articles, podcasts, and social media pages delving into the hotly debated topic of chronic over-exercising and the risk it poses to cardiovascular health. “Over-exercising” in this context doesn’t even mean extremely excessive, over-the top, out-of-control compulsive exercise. It can simply refer to…

Background

To answer the question posed in the title of this post, it depends. Truthfully, the answer to most questions posed in the world of sports science is “it depends”. In brief, it truly doesn’t matter what time of day you choose to train, or when your athletes train if you are a coach, as whatever time works best for you to fit in your training as easily and efficiently as possible will always be best. However, if you are an athlete that has some flexibility in the time of day you choose to fit in your training session(s) and you want to maximize your sessions to the best of your ability, there are some important differences in your physiology that characterize morning versus evening times of day. Let’s discuss these differences next.

Time of Day: Morning versus Evening

Firstly, let’s define “morning” and “evening”. Most studies that investigate morning…

Background

Barefoot and minimalist footwear running has garnered a lot of controversy among athletes, coaches, and researchers since the turn of the century. Those in favor of more minimalist running footwear claim that they benefit from a lower likelihood of injury and improved performance. However, those in favor of more traditional or maximalist footwear also make similar claims. Research literature exploring this topic has further added to this confusion at times as some research favors minimalist footwear for certain outcomes while other research favors more traditional or maximalist footwear. The purpose of this post is to help you, as the reader, make some sense out of the confusion on this topic and better understand what the pros and cons are to running in different types of footwear. The topic of barefoot running is a separate topic on its own; so, for the purposes of this post, the conversation will be…

Background

Over the years, the scientific community has come to recognize various factors that are strongly related to endurance performance. These factors are primarily physiological characteristics and include VO2max, lactate threshold, efficiency/movement economy, and most recently, durability (sometimes referred to as aerobic endurance) (1,2). The determination that these factors relate positively to endurance performance has come about from many decades of lab-based experimental research and field-based observational research. However, any sensible exercise scientist or coach working with athletes will know that overall endurance performance of an athlete is a product of much more than just these four physiological qualities described above.

Physiological development of an endurance athlete is, of course, critical to success. Yet, there are other factors that potentially influence performance as well. Nutritional factors, psychological factors, and health-related factors are just some of the other variables influencing performance. It is difficult to establish some of these as determinants…