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Testing 1-2-3:
Figuring Out Your Training Levels
Written by Dr. SkibaI admit it. Being a doctor, I like tests. It’s part of the job description. Well, I should qualify that statement. I like appropriate tests: tests that are relatively simple, work well, give repeatable results, and tell me something that I need to know and cannot find out otherwise. This is why my athletes regularly do performance tests. It allows me to answer the question, "Is the athlete better, or not?" If the answer is yes, great! If not, something should probably change. In this article, I am going to tell you how to do some relevant tests to determine your training "zones" or "levels".
First of all, we should talk a little bit about training levels. To take a reductionist viewpoint, there are three main levels you ought to be familiar with. These are by no means the only “levels”. With this information, you could design and carry out a very reasonable and effective training program. The lowest level is for your “long workouts”, where distance is more important than intensity. You do these workouts primarily to improve the fatigue resistance of your muscles, in particular the slow-twitch muscle fibers. (These workouts also improve your LT and VO2max as well, but to a lesser extent than workouts which are targeted to these systems. We'll explain that below.)
The next level is the LT, or lactate threshold level. Training at this level maximizes the “metabolic fitness” of your muscles. As you exercise, you burn fat and carbohydrates. When you are going slowly, you are burning mostly fat. When you are going fast, you are burning mostly carbohydrate. Your lactate threshold is the point where you start switching from one extreme to the other, and you know it has happened because you see the lactate level in your blood tick up by 1 milimole. You can measure it with a handheld meter. Despite what you have read on the Internet, it has nothing to do with how much oxygen you are getting, or how “aerobic” or “anaerobic” you are, but is primarily due to the fuel switch. By doing workouts at this level, you teach your body able to do more work before it starts to switch over to burning more carbohydrates and less fat. This is important, because all of us carry much more fat than we do carbohydrates, even if we are very skinny and have a very low percentage of body fat.
The third level is the VO2max level. The VO2max is the point where exercise really is becoming dependant on oxygen delivery. The actual number is the maximal volume of oxygen your body is able to use, and is measured in mL of O2 per Kg of your mass per minute. You figure it out by exercising with a mouthpiece that is connected to a very expensive machine. Your VO2max is determined by how much oxygen rich blood can be delivered to your working muscles at any given time. Your muscles will, once well trained, use as much oxygen as your heart can deliver. The actual number isn’t critical, but the speed or power level you are achieving when you reach VO2max is. Training at the speed or power where VO2max occurs (called your vVO2max or pVO2max) causes your heart to adapt by being able to pump more blood per beat, which means your muscles get more oxygen and can do more work, which means you get faster.
So, how do we actually figure out the appropriate training levels? We’ll start from the top. To figure out the speed at which your VO2max occurs, go down to the track and take a stopwatch and a friend who would like to watch you suffer, and who will be willing scream ethnic slurs at you the way Burgess Meredith does at Sly Stallone in Rocky. (You can also do this even more easily by using a GPS system, but it would lack the charm and entertainment value). Start running at about 8 or 9 km/hour. Speed up by about 1 km/hr every 2 minutes. Have your friend keep track of the time, your 100 meter splits, and have him or her signal you when it is time to speed up. The fastest speed you are able to hold for the whole 2 minutes is highly correlated with the “real” vVO2max you would figure out using expensive gas analysis gear. This is the speed you would use when designing your interval workouts. With a little creativity, you can adapt this test for your other sports as well.
Things become a bit more problematic when you start trying to figure out your LT without an invasive test. However, we can discover something highly correlated with it, called the threshold intensity. What you need to do is find out what power output or pace you can hold for about an hour while running or biking. Let me clarify that. You need to find the maximal power output or pace which you can hold for the entire test. Your 10k-15k race pace running, or a 40k time trial performance, should be a very good indicator. For swimming, your 3000M pace is probably fine. This speed/pace/power output will actually be a bit higher than the one where your LT actually occurs, but it is close enough to be training the same system. You use this speed when you design your LT workouts.
Finally, your easy/long pace could be determined in any number of ways, and unfortunately none of them are really accurate, per se. It obviously needs to be lower than the other two. One way to think of it is as maybe 125%-135% of your vVO2max. In other words, take your pace at vV02max, multiply it by 1.25 to 1.35, and there you have it. For example, if your vVO2max occurs at 7 min/mile while running, you would try to do your easy runs between 8.75 and 10 min/mile. You could also think about it as the quickest pace you can maintain and still talk comfortably to your buddies. Another way might be at the pace that gets your heart rate up to 65% to 75% of your maximum.
Unfortunately, I can’t give you a recipe for figuring out your optimal workout schedule. That is what a coach is for! Your schedule needs to be designed around your race distance, your goals, and your particular strengths and weaknesses. It needs to consider your experience and your injury history. This is where the art starts to creep in, and the science slowly begins to take a back seat. As you can read in the preface to my book, coaching is really an art that must be based on science if you are to see the best results.
As always, keep your questions coming by e-mail.
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