Short and Fast
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 12:18AM There should be no doubt in any reader's mind that I believe in training long to go long. It is not the only type of training I recommend but you will not perform at your best in long events if you have not put in your time. Yes, I know, you can find a few entities on the web that suggest otherwise but you will be hard-pressed to find any of those athletes who train short to go long at the top of elite competitive ranks in any endurance sport. It is true that some will experience what they feel is a satisfying performance on a training diet that is low on volume and high in quality but it will not be, in my opinion, the athlete's BEST possible performance. A good reason to adopt one of these "lean" training programs is for economy of time. Not everyone can swing a 20 hour training week. However, do so knowing that you may perform adequately (by whatever standard you chose) but that your best performance will elude you without the other hours. Fair enough.
As I said, long, easy hours are not the only training I recommend. In recent articles I have covered extensively the importance of interval and resistance training as additional keys to optimal performance. As a cyclist, I have always touted the merits of sprint training. How can one expect to finish fast or sprint to make the break without first training to do so? There can be no other way. However, until recently, I was not convinced of the benefit of sprint training for sports that have no sprint component. The sport most relevant to me in this regard is ski mountaineering racing. Aside from getting off the start, racers essentially go as hard as they can for the duration of the event. Period. Races finish at the bottom of downhills so there is no striding sprint to the finish. So, why bother sprint training, right?
Well, I recently came upon an article on a training website called Purple Patch. In it, the author referenced a couple of studies published in big-time, peer-reviewed scientific journals dealing with the subject of sprint training and performance. For the science geeks out there, the molecular biology of muscle contraction is also covered in detail. Below is most of the piece pasted directly from Purple Patch.
"Jens Bangsbo of the University of Copenhagen has shown that if you want to run, cycle or swim faster at any distance, you have to train at a pace that is almost as fast as you can move (Journal of Applied Physiology, November 2009). He asked competitive distance runners to reduce their mileage by 25 percent, and to run 8 to 12 30-second sprints 2-3 times a week, with some additional 0.6-0.8 mile sprints 1 or 2 times per week, for 6 to 9 weeks. The control group of runners continued their regular training program, and showed no improvement. The sprint group improved both their 3K (1.8 mile) and 10K (6 mile) race times by more than three percent (more than a minute in the 10-K race). Half of them ran their best times ever, even though many had been racing for more than five years.
Two years ago, Dr. Bangsbo did ground-breaking research supporting the leading theory that exhaustion of the sodium- potassium pump is the major cause of muscle fatigue during exercise (Acta Physiologica, November 2007). In this new study, he shows how sprint training improves a muscle's capacity to pump potassium back inside muscle cells during exercise, which helps all athletes run or cycle faster in competition, even in endurance events such as marathons and multi-day bicycle races.
A muscle can contract only if it has an electrical charge across the muscle cell membrane. This electrical charge comes mainly from having sodium primarily outside the cell and potassium primarily inside the cell. This higher concentration of sodium outside the cell and higher concentration of potassium inside the cell is maintained by sodium-potassium pumps in the cell membranes. The pumps get their energy from an enzyme called ATPase.
When the brain sends electrical signals along nerves leading to each muscle fiber, sodium moves rapidly into muscle cells followed by an equivalent movement of potassium out of the cells, causing the muscle fibers to contract. However, the sodium- potassium pump cannot pump potassium back into the cells as fast as the rapidly-contracting muscle cells move potassium out.
Dr. Bangsbo showed that during rapid contractions, muscle cells lose potassium so fast that there is a doubling of the potassium outside cells in less than a minute. The electrical charge between the inside and outside of muscle cells is reduced, and they contract with much less force until finally they cannot contract at all. During continuous contractions of muscles, the loss of force from a muscle contraction is directly proportional to the amount of potassium that goes outside the cells.
Over time, repeated muscle contractions themselves will markedly increase the ability of the sodium-potassium pump to pump potassium into cells. The greater the force on a muscle during training, the more effectively the potassium pump can pump potassium back into muscles, resulting in greater endurance for the athlete. So intense training is necessary for endurance, and any training strategy that increases the number of intense workouts will give the athlete greater endurance.
You can also increase the effectiveness of the sodium potassium pumps by being excited before a race (which increases adrenalin), and by eating before and during races (which raises insulin levels). Hormones known to strengthen the sodium- potassium pump, and therefore to increase endurance, include adrenalin, insulin, insulin-like growth factor I, calcitonins, amylin, thyroid, testosterone and cortisones."
Pretty cool stuff, right? So, basically, no matter what your sport, you should do at least one or two days of sprint training each week. The key is to keep the intervals short in order to limit the lactate load. This allows repeated bouts of effort (10-12) without the cellular damage and subsequent longer recovery period requirements of longer efforts. Intervals should be between 15 and 30 seconds in length. Of course, these are in addition to the longer threshold intervals I discussed in an earlier post.
The interesting thing about this for me is that previously, my training structure was based on performance requirements of a given sport. Attending to these requirements lead to physiologic adaptations to be sure but the impetus for the particular recommendation was first based on an activity characteristic. Train sprints to sprint better, do threshold intervals to go hard longer, etc. By applying this new science, we are essentially ignoring the characteristics of any sport and, instead, manipulating the cellular physiology first and foremost. This, in turn, will lead to an overall enhancement in performance independent of specific sport demands. Whoa! - Brian
Reader Comments (3)
Brain, I have really enjoyed geeking out on your recent training posts, given that I share your interest in endurance sports and science these have been freaking awesome! Not to hijack your post but I would really appreciate if you spread the word about the Pebble Creek Randonee Rally on Sunday February 28th. The race starts at 8:00 am and has roughly 3000' of climbing/descent some on the areas some slackcountry/backcountry it should be a good race course. Good warmup race for the powderkeg and the US champs in J-hole.
Great find, thanks Brian. See you at the pkeg tomorrow maybe? Or "the big one" next week for sure!
It's a beautiful article! You let me learn more about it! In part time,I always log in the same websites to learn knowledge discount A.Lange & Sohne watches