Forums >Running 101>aerobic training/MAF/180-age hr is it really crucial??
Feeling the growl again
My question is: how does any of the talk about cortisol and cells and whathaveyou affect your actual day-to-day training (no offense to spaniel)?
For people who are chasing maximal performance and who do not have a coach who knows their stuff, it helps to understand what you are trying to acheive with certain workouts etc and avoid some of the trial-and-error approach to training.
For most people....absolutely nothing....and it is of very limited value unless you reach a high degree of understanding you are unlikely to get in message board threads.
My purpose was not really to show how it would affect day-to-day training....I often took our buddy Richard to town on this very point...but simply to correct some myths and faulty information.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
i wasn't worried about muscle mass. I was just wandering if I would destroy cells etc from training too hard anaerobically. It takes anywhere from 3 months to a year from reading spaniels and others posts to achieve maximum aerobic capacity and all the cellular changes i.e. capillary, mitochondria, etc. So if they take a year for someone like me who is out of shape, I wouldn't want to make it take even longer by destroying some of my progress. If this isn't a major concern, I would like to add some hill workouts and a few short sprint workouts to my routine to get some neuromuscular adaptations, turnover speed, mechanics, etc.
Yup, do some hill sprints, long hills, Tabata Intervals, over distance long runs, sprint workouts (atleast 3 sets of 20 X 400), tempo runs, Cruise Intervals for stamina, downhill runs to work on turnover, making sure some of those runs are under MAF, and doubling or tripling sometimes, Yoga for flexiiblity while also lifting some weights or better yet use some ankle weights for power, and maybe do something to cause muscle confusion and on Saturday race a 5K, and on Sunday check if there is an ultra you can run to train your fat burning metabolism, and repeat next week.
It takes anywhere from 3 months to a year from reading spaniels and others posts to achieve maximum aerobic capacity and all the cellular changes i.e. capillary, mitochondria, etc.
It tapers off but in general even a hard-training athlete can continue to improve these slower-building adaptations for 5-7 YEARS....for most of us hobby-joggers that means the only excuse we have for not getting faster -- if we are not at a point where age is really working against us -- is our dedication to pursue what it takes to get the improvements.