What determines efficiency ???

Originally Posted by Urkiola2

Dr. Coggan is right about ....<snip>

Originally Posted by Urkiola2

As Coggan said, it is feasible to improve efficiency even long after your VO2max and LT have reached a plateau. I see that ALL the time with professional cyclists. As he said, an additive accumulation in kilometers year after year after year will lead to dramatical changes. I have seen more than 10% increases in efficiencies in pros I have followed throught years. Actually that is quite common...Anyone working with pros could tell you.

Originally Posted by Urkiola2

Dr. Coggan is right about mysosin expresion. It could happen in just a matter of weeks. I endorse pretty much what Dr. Coggan said.

I have only look at Luttrel´s abstract and see that the study has several drwabacks:
1. The n (number) is very low.
2. There are no statistical significant differences
3. There is no biochemical/histological data.


As Coggan said, it is feasible to improve efficiency even long after your VO2max and LT have reached a plateau. I see that ALL the time with professional cyclists. As he said, an additive accumulation in kilometers year after year after year will lead to dramatical changes. I have seen more than 10% increases in efficiencies in pros I have followed throught years. Actually that is quite common...Anyone working with pros could tell you.

[could you clear something up here? I understand how Vo2max is measured in terms of the rate of oxygen consumption and then scaled to body mass. But for measurement of LT ... isn't it a fixed lactate concentration (or an increase over baseline) with output power as the other variable? very sorry for my poor wording here but if power is part of the determination of the LT point, how do you separate efficiency out of the equation? Or in other words, how do you 'know' what change in power is due to changes in LT and what is due to changes in efficiency?

Hmmm ... or do you measure efficiency at Vo2max oxygen rate and with power measured there and infer what's happening at the LT level???


For the average person on their bike, they don't have access to Vo2 measurements nor accurate lactate measurements so this is more of an academic question. Increased sustainable power on the road is proof enough.]


I also would like to say that very few cyclist train so well and so smart as Armstrong did. I have worked with 5 Pro Tour teams (well, 2 Pro Tour teams since Pro Tour birth and 3 former Cat 1 Pro Teams) and I have seen and tested hundreds of cyclists and as a guess, and it is a bit of a shame, about 75% of pro cyclists, in my opinion, don´t train well, or at least near as well as Armstrong did. On top of that we have to considered that Armstrong was already a genetically gifted cyclist before cancer. I have argued many times over this issue with many pro cyclists who where linking Armtrong´s amazing improvement in performance to drugs. I always argued to them that at the age of 21 y.o. Lance was already world champion in one of the toughest WC in the last years with Riis and Indurain behind him. I always asked cyclists to name me how many cyclists nowadays can be a WC at the age of 21??. I can´t think of any name, neither they do....then most pros just won´t continue arguing...
Also Armstrong lost about 7Kg of upper muscle mass wich it is just huge and probably only possible due to an extreme catabolism caused by cancer (isn´t that ironic?).

On the other hand I believe that there has been a lack of talented cyclists, both physiological and psychologically speaking, during Armstrong´s era which have made him his way to win the tour just easier. I have tested 3 TdF podium riders accompaining Armstrong at the podium during his 7 tour wins and although they may get mad at me, and they have very good physiological potential, I was not that impressed by their intelligence and the way they trained... (defenetely and by far near as smart and good as Lance) and I am sure that he would have won 2007´s TdF if he wanted as well since, in my opinion has probably been the TdF with the lowest level in the last decade. Lance was not only the best gifted cyclist, but the smartest at knowing his physiology as well. He pretty much did not need a coach because he knew more about coaching than most coaches.

About Coyle´s study about Lance evolution why not doing it on such an amazing cyclist like Armstrong?. I think it is really plausible. If others publish simple papers with college students...why not a paper about the evolution of one of the greatest cyclists of all times?.
As Coggan said, there is not much data published with world class cyclists...in part due to the lack of time to publish that people working with world class athletes have ( ). Believe me, it is frentic out there working with the pros...

About inprovements in efficiency I would like to add changes at the cellular level, not only about fiber type composition. There are important events, regardless of fiber type composition, occuring at the cellular level and independent of oxygen uptake. It brings up to my mind the "controversial" lactate shuttle mechanisms proposed by Brooks, both cell-cell and intracellular lactate shuttles. I believe that many of the adaptations at the cellular level go in that direction as well as in changes in fiber type composition and energy fuel utilisation and economy.

Originally Posted by 11ring

This article gives a good treatment of the subject:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ar...bmedid=16423857

Still interested in the biomechanical aspect of efficiency variability. Will have to check the references in the article.

Originally Posted by Felt_Rider

Which is good news for many of us with consideration of genetics in the discussion as Armstrong being the prime example and most everyone else falling somewhere below that point.

I have experience in training in strength related sports both naturally and with AAS. While using PED'S, I would guess that I have never had more than a 10% gain while on a cycle period of AAS. Yet even a 3% gain in a field of equally genetic gifted athletes can be enough edge to win.

A few years after retiring from competition I wanted to see if I could take my expanded training knowledge and apply it with my genetics and see if it would be possible to reach a strength related goal in a natural state that I had reached on almost every cycle of drug use. Over a slightly longer training period (longer since I could not sustain the training load when compared to the enhanced recovery period while using AAS) I did eventually reach and exceed that goal which surprised me greatly. The difference was my training knowledge at that point had much more depth than in earlier years. The drugs with less training knowledge gave me xx% gain, but the expanded training knowledge along with understanding my genetic limitations also gained me a near equivalent xx% gain. So based on my own personal experiences in a different type of training environment I am a believer that it is possible to continue to progress with the broadened training knowledge applied to a persons genetic limitations for recovery.

I have used this information to try to convince some local athletes (in strength training) not to cross the line of temptation of using drugs when they feel they have hit a plateau. That there may something else that can be tweaked to gain just a bit more without crossing that line.

Originally Posted by 11ring

Three quick points:

1. How are intracelluar adaptions trained- if cells don't live that long, barring genetic therapy how can what happens at the celluar level be modified over the long term, other than than as a result of external changes- ie a change in the environment in which an individual cell operates?

2. If changes in fibre composition can be achieved relatively quickly, why do we see much longer term efficiency increases in elite athletes, such as shown in the study quoted. Is there a short and long term mechanism for the same adaption or two seperate adaptions being responsive to short and long-term stimuli respectively? What is actually going on??

3. If position changes affect efficiency, then this would be a result of biomechanical changes, as in different muscles being recruited at different loads over different ranges of movement. If this is the case then other changes, such as to pedalling style or systems which alter the pattern of force application and muscle recruitment may change efficiency too, although not necessarily for the better. But if there is a correlation, then efficiency improvements may be possible if ones current position and pattern of force recruitment are less than ideal.

Originally Posted by rmur17

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Originally Posted by Urkiola2

Good questions!.
I was talking about the general idea of VO2max and LT. VO2max has been proven to plateau during cyclists or any endurance athlete´s carrere even if they keep improving their prtformance for a long time without changing his VO2max. About LT, it is a general parameters used worldwide. Honestely and modestely, I don´t believe in a "threshold for lactate" or LT (please don´t get mad at me). 1st there are many deffinitions about AT and LT and there is no concordance among scientific community. In my opinion if any accumulation point exists could be a MLSS (Maximal lactate Steady State) over time. That is the lactate rate of production and oxidation, then accumulation that a cycist can handle over time. We can translate these parametrs to watts as most labs do, althogh this is in my opinion not correct.

About what you mentioned about a fixed lactate concentration vs a power...I hope I will tell you in a few months more about this since I am finishin writing a paper on this with some cool results and will hope to be admitted before the spring.

Originally Posted by john979

I also have problems with the "LT" concept and generally avoid its use. Certainly Coyle did not find any strong correlation to lactate levels and hour power, just a slight postive one.

Originally Posted by acoggan

With all due respect, I think you need to go re-read Ed's paper: the correlation between power at LT and "hour power" was >0.9.

(Reading between the lines a bit, it also appears to me that you don't fully understand the LT concept, the essential essence of which is widely accepted in the field of exercise physiology.)

Originally Posted by 11ring

More specifically, through what mechanism/ biological adaptions does efficiency increase in response to training? What contributes to differing efficiencies in different athletes at similar work levels ???