When you lift heavy things or do explosive plyometrics, you maximally recruit all of your muscle fibers. Strength training works your muscles in ways that are simply not possible by running or cycling. There is conclusive evidence that strength training will improve your economy. Different sport-specific workouts will continue to help you refine your fitness, but the gym is also an extremely time-effective way to break that plateau, especially if you have not done much strength training before. These experienced athletes must seek new training methods to continually improve. Everyone has a VO2 max ceiling that is genetically predetermined, and after years of consistent training, most athletes have reached this ceiling. However, those that have been training for many years have likely refined their technique such that their economy will not be improved much more just by training on the road.Īdditionally, a seasoned veteran has most likely “tapped out” their VO2 max. This is especially true for those just getting started - it isn’t hard to delineate a novice runner or cyclist from an experienced one just by their form. You can improve your economy simply by practicing your sport. The better your muscles are able to coordinate movements, the better you will be able to use oxygen to maintain your power/velocity. The result is that your relative effort for the given power is lower, resulting in a threshold increase without any change to your VO2 max.Įconomy can be improved by teaching your muscles to work together in the most, well, economic way possible. If you improve your economy, you may do 300w at 67% VO2 max. Here’s another way to look at it: you do threshold intervals at 300w at 70% of your VO2 max. This was elegantly shown in a study by Costill and Winrow when two runners with the exact same VO2 max had a 13-minute difference in their marathon PR. The athlete with the lower VO2 value at a given power/velocity will be the more successful athlete, because a lower VO2 value means a lower energy cost and less fatigue. Why Economy is ImportantĮconomy is your ability to sustain a given velocity or power output with a certain VO2 value. For this reason, economy has been shown to be a very important metric for performance. If everyone on the start line has been training for many years and has similar VO2 max values, what really sets them apart? What has become clear is that it is not just how much oxygen you can consume, but how effectively you can use that oxygen during exercise. This notion is most relevant for experienced endurance athletes. However, more recent research has shown that VO2 max is not the most accurate predictor of performance. Of course, it is true that a Tour de France winner must have an exceptionally high VO2 max. Since that time, VO2 max has been enshrined as the most important metric for performance in many people’s eyes. More Than Just VO2 maxĮarly research in endurance performance found that the fastest runners had the highest VO2 max values relative to bodyweight. Outlined below are just a few of the reasons why you definitely should go to the gym year-round. As a coach, I always want to explain the ‘why’ to my athletes before prescribing anything. Despite much evidence supporting the profound benefits of strength training for endurance athletes, year-round strength training is not commonplace in many athlete’s programs.
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