Durability in Ultrarunning with Michele Zanini, PhD | KoopCast #239 - KoopCast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe CoopCast.
As always, I am your host,coach Jason Coop, and on this
episode of the podcast weexplore further the concept of
durability as it applies toultra running.
Durability is one of theseemerging physiological concepts

(00:28):
that describes how our maximumperformances, like a time trial,
or our maximum physiology, likeVO2max, deteriorate after some
sort of fatiguing event, let'ssay, a two-hour run or a 50
kilometer or 50 kilometers ofrunning.
Coaches and physiologists alikeare appreciating more and more
the importance of durability inultra running, and it has the

(00:51):
opportunity to be one of, if notthe most important variables
that could correlate withperformance and, as it turns out
, it's also something that wecan specifically train for Now.
With that as a backdrop, on thepodcast today is Mikel Zanini,
who is the head of strength andconditioning, as well as a
physiologist for the ItalianTriathlon Federation, as well as

(01:12):
a PhD candidate at LoughboroughUniversity.
He has flushed out or at leasthe's trying to flush out this
concept of durability throughhis academic endeavors as well
as his work with athletes.
Also on the podcast today, wewill hear from coaches Adam
Ferdinandson, fredSabatore-Pastor, as well as our
strength and conditioning expert, sarah Scazzaro, on how we can

(01:35):
use different traininginterventions, including
potentially strength training,to enhance durability.
Okay, with that out of the way,I am getting right out of the
way.
Here's my conversation withMikel Zanini all about
durability in ultra running.
Appreciate you joining me today, but kind of before we get into

(01:57):
things, the listeners willalways already have heard an
intro on you, but can you kindof go over just a little bit of
your background and what yourarea of research focuses on.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, sure, thanks for the invite, really
appreciated it and I'm alistener to the podcast as well,
so excited to be involved.
So my background from myresearch perspective and but
perspective comes from running.
I was a runner and then starteddoing a degree in comes from
running.
I was a runner and then starteddoing a degree in sports and
exercise science and theneventually got more and more
involved into the physiologyside of it, trying to understand

(02:32):
how training occurs and how canwe enhance performance by
training and monitoring itthrough physiological testing.
I've been involved in practicewith high performing athletes,
mainly at the start of myjourney as an intern in Kenya
with Claudio Berardelli, andthen went back a few years later

(02:54):
and worked with Renato Canovaon the strength and conditioning
side of it.
So his philosophy and approachon training and endurance reform
has really shaped how I see theapplied physiology research
that I currently do.
And then on the back in 2020, Ican.

(03:27):
We try to delay fatigue orenhance durability via training
interventions, and we focused onstrength training as a
potential strategy for that.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
One of the things that I've kind of just in the
background research that I'vedone, that I've really come to
appreciate about your work, isthat it's directly applicable to
what you can do from a trainingperspective, because you have
both the performance side andthen also the intervention side
of things as well kind ofmarried up together, so to speak

(03:57):
, meaning if we know that thesecertain physiological parameters
are important for performance,that's always one thing, but
it's an entirely different thingto say how do we actually
improve those things?
And that's what you know.
Coaches and physiologists andathletes all alike are trying to
chase around right, trying toimprove the variables that

(04:17):
matter the most in the variablesthat may not matter as much,
might be something that theyfocus on at some other point in
the year, or maybe not evenfocus on at all.
And I think there's just a lotof practical elements of a lot
of the research that you're,that you've done, that we're
going to start to that, we'regoing to start to weed through
yeah, I think that is the maindriver for me to do research, at

(04:39):
least in the applied physiologyside of it other other areas
which I'm interested in.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
But if you speak about this, then the final goal
is how can I find a way to getbetter?
So that brings me back to aconversation I had with one of
the athletes I was training withwhen I was doing my master
thesis.
So it was a thesis about theuse of foot-pot power meter
stride and basically the use offoot power meter stride and

(05:05):
basically the reliability ofthat.
And it was these elite 400meter athletes that she did the
olympic championship, olympicgames, her world championship
center and etc.
And the question when Iexplained what we were doing was
okay, so will that make mefaster?
So that is is one of the pointsin my research experience that

(05:28):
made me focus more and moretowards the applicability of
what I do and making sure thatwhat we research, we investigate
, can have then a translation tothe practice that has done with
athletes from a physiologicalperspective and then, in fact,
on training eventually, if wewant to measure that yeah,
because it always has to drivedown to what can the athlete

(05:50):
actually do to improve?

Speaker 1 (05:52):
and sometimes that gets lost in research and
pedantic arguments and thenuance of things and you
absolutely need a lot of thatand you need a lot of that very.
You need a lot of thatspecificity in order to really
understand things.
But at the end of the day,athletes just want to know what
do I do?
Do I strength train or do I not?
Right?
Sometimes it's very binary likethat do I do intervals or do I

(06:14):
not?
Do I do high intensityintervals or do I not do high?
intensity intervals.
Sometimes it can be, you know,kind of boiled down to something
that that really is that simple.
So we're going to.
We're going to first talk abouta paper that you wrote about
durability.
I'll direct the listeners totwo previous podcasts that I did
on this very same topic withNick Berger and Ed Marinder.

(06:35):
There'll be some links to theshow notes in there.
But I've considered this.
Out of all of of physiologicalphenomenon that we studied, I
consider this one of the newerones and one that we don't have
the best, like working,definition of, if you were to
describe it to people, and alsothe best definition of how to

(06:57):
actually measure these types ofthings.
And so, since you're at, youknow, you're at the leading edge
of this, being kind of likeearly to the game to it, just to
refresh the listeners who mighthave not listened to those
podcasts, or it's been a whilesince they have listened to
those podcasts, just describe itin your own mind or in your own
words, what durability is.
And then, why is it actuallyimportant?

(07:18):
Going back to that originaltheme that we were talking about
, why is it actually importantfor endurance athletes to pay
attention to?
Yeah, sure, why is it actuallyimportant for endurance?

Speaker 3 (07:23):
athletes to pay attention to.
Yeah, sure, I think from ameta-terminology perspective
there's a lot of debate or twoterms that are used at the
moment related to physiologicalchanges occurring during
prolonged exercise.
So that would be the way thatwe would describe durability, so
a change in speed, power outputor physiological determinants

(07:47):
due to accumulated fatigueduring a continuous part of
exercise.
Now, that is one of thedefinitions, and then, if you
look at papers recentlypublished by Andy Jones, for
example, he defines the same asphysiological resilience.
So at the moment we have thesetwo terms, that they may mean

(08:08):
something slightly different,but it's not that clear.
So I think at the moment theycan be kind of used
interchangeably.
We will hopefully eventuallycome up to a more clear
definition of that and we areactually currently working with
Ed Mounder, andy Johnson and afew other people on to
developing a terminology whichcan be used in the future for

(08:29):
that.
But yes, a simple way todescribe it is any changes in
performance outcomes orphysiological outcomes that
occur due to fatigue duringplonal exercise.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
And from a practical standpoint, what would that
actually look like?
How would an athlete see thatif they're running a marathon or
an ultra marathon?
What would they actually noticein the data that they can just
acquire through their GPS watch?

Speaker 3 (08:53):
For example, from running.
It's quite easy to see a heartrate lift as you continue doing
exercise.
That is due to many factors,but let's leave the underpinning
of it to the side for a moment.
What you usually see is asteady speed and an increase of
heart rate.
So that means that yourphysiological demands are

(09:14):
increasing at the same speed andtherefore there is a decoupling
between heart rate and speed.
It can occur on the other wayaround, so you maintain the same
heart rate and the speeddecreases, but the effect is the
same you have a decouplebetween physiology and
performance or speed, which willeventually cause you to either

(09:36):
slow down or cessate theexercise altogether.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
And one of the paper that we're about to discuss that
you, that you're an author onit tried to get to the answer of
does this actually matter?
Which I always like to start,which I always honestly like to
start with whenever we start toread research.
We have a research newsletter,the group of which we're going
to meet with just after thiscall, in fact and one of the

(10:01):
things that we're constantlyasking ourselves is does this
actually matter?
Like, do if we see animprovement in X?
Is that meaningful in some wayfrom a training or racing
perspective?
And many times that's not thecase, or it's at least unknown.
And so you're trying to get aheart, you're trying to get at
the heart of this with some ofyour, some of the research that
we're going to talk about inthis next paper.

(10:22):
Can you just describe generallywhat you were looking at, who
the subjects are and things likethat, and then we can start to
get to what the actual findingswere.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, sure.
So the paper you've beenmentioning.
We wanted to look into howeconomy run.
Economy specifically changesdue to continuous exercise.
Now, to me specificity is very,very important.
So we do have the element ofintensity which needs to be
appropriate.
We wanted to specificallytarget the demands of a marathon

(10:53):
, so the speed was targeted tobe closely resembling that that
would be normally for highlytrained athletes in the heavy
intensity domain.
So between the first and secondthreshold we can get into some
of the details if needed.
I think if we say in zone twoor zone three, depending on the

(11:13):
three or five zone model, thatmakes it quite clear.
And we wanted to have aduration which at least could
have been meaningful to providesome information, could have
been meaningful to provide someinformation.
So 90 minutes was a okaycompromise between okay, we have
a duration which is relativelylong and we don't risk to have

(11:35):
50% of our participants droppingout because the duration is too
long.
So if we were to do two hoursand a half and that intensity
would have been very hard formost athletes and probably the
power of the study would be muchlower and that would have
consequences from a statisticalperspective and result

(11:55):
perspective.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Really, yeah, and I appreciate the number of
athletes that you actually putthrough this.
So 50 or north of 50, 51 malerunners, correct?

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, 44.
They finished in 44, not 51.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, and some of them quite good.
So 31 minute 10K was kind ofthe good group and then the less
good group.
I mean they're still very goodrunners.
The 41 minute 10K would be thecomparison group.
So when you took the run firstoff, describe the testing
protocol a little bit more.
And then what did you actuallyfind?

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, so what we did was initially having this 44.
Well, the study was the designof the study and the protocol
was the same for everyone.
So we just got them to do theinitial step test to measure
threshold on its mux, and thenon a separate day, we thought
them coming at 8 am, sostandardized time of the day,

(12:46):
diet and exercise prior to thetest, and then it runs for 90
minutes where we collected therunning economy and other and
other data every 15 minutes.
They were running on a treadmillat a speed which was
corresponding to the firstthreshold.
It was roughly 80% beauty marksfor the athletes.

(13:06):
I don't remember on top of myhead the speed, but it can be
found on the paper and wemeasured the changes in energy
costs and oxygen costs, whichare two ways of measuring
running economy, between timepoints, so 15, 30, 45, and so
forth minutes until 19 minutesinto the trial and then from

(13:29):
there we divided the groupsbased on 10K performance, as
officers were running below 33minutes 10 kilometers and
between 45 and 38 minutes 10kilometers.
So that left five minutes gapin between, which we deemed to
be appropriate to have a cleardivide between the groups and

(13:50):
compare the changes in oxygenand energy costs between groups.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
So, before we go on, the fact that you're looking at
both oxygen cost, energy costand energy cost, I think is
something worth discussing,especially because we are
talking about something that'sin a relatively high performance
setting.
Most of the listeners will kindof think potato between those
two, kind of between those twovariables, but can you describe
a little bit more in detail asto why, or actually like how,

(14:17):
they're different and what's thesignificance of those
differences in this context?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yes, yeah, it is very much a physiologist kind of
speaker.
So what we have in thedescription or the use of
running economy is it can beexpressed as oxygen or energy.
So the difference is, withoxygen we have an integrated
view of the changes in oxygendemands and substrate

(14:43):
utilization which is given byRER, whereas with energy that
change in RER is alreadyincluded in the measure.
So what we've seen, which oneof my supervisors saw a few
years ago with Andy Shaw, whichis now the senior physiologist
of British athletics, was thatthere was a difference in the

(15:05):
accuracy of the measure ofrunning economy between oxygen
and energy cost seem to be abetter way to express running
economy, a more accurate,appropriate way to express the
underlying metabolic demands ofthe body, because it's sensible
to changes in speed, which isnot the case for oxygen cost.
So what we wanted to look intofrom a research perspective in

(15:31):
our case was is it the same ifwe express durability as energy
cost or oxygen cost?
And if there's any difference,to what extent is this different
relevant for applied setting?

Speaker 1 (15:45):
From a practical point of view once again, kind
of drilling it back down to thelisteners.
Why would somebody see a driftin one and not the other?
Or why would somebody see alarger drift in one versus the
other?

Speaker 3 (15:59):
It would mainly be due to changes in substrate
utilization.
So if you have a change in areabecause you're depleting
glycogen, you will have a higherreliance on fat, which requires
more energy.
So you'd see high drifting inoxygen cost compared to energy
cost because there's thisdifference in accounting or not

(16:19):
accounting for substrateutilization.
Now what we found was thatactually with these specific
settings, differences were sominor that they are kind of
irrelevant.
There was a difference of 0.1%between the two, which I think
it was kind of unexpected.
Although the changes insubstrate utilization in our

(16:41):
study was very limited.
We do have data for otherstudies that have been done in
the past on the marathon and inthat case they have a difference
which reached about 2%.
So from the start to the end ofa marathon the participant
athletes would change by maybe15% for oxygen cost and 13% for

(17:04):
energy cost.
Just slightly larger difference.
But I would say that overallthere's a quite minor influence
of the unit used to describe aneconomy between energy and
oxygen cost to be worried aboutfrom a practical perspective.
Would it be a reasonableassumption to say, as the
duration of the event goes up,the potential for those to kind

(17:38):
of deviate from one another orseparate from one another would
go up.
Is that a reasonable assumptionthat people are kind of teasing
high performing?
Maybe sub-2 hours 30, sub-2hours 20 in a male athlete the
respiratory exchange ratio wouldbe around 1 for the whole
duration of the race.
But that doesn't really matterbecause there's no drop in RER
and no change in the substrateutilization, whereas for trail

(17:59):
runners or ultra-distancerunners it will probably matter
much more because of their highreliance on fat due to the lower
intensity of the exercise.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, Okay, I think that's a good distinguishing
point because we're always inultra marathon world.
This has been a theme that wecome back to.
Almost every podcast is.
In many cases, we're takingresearch that was done in a
marathon setting, just becauseit's more, it's just more
prevalently studied, and we'retrying to expand the

(18:31):
interpretation of that into alonger event, and sometimes that
expansion holds true andsometimes that expansion does
not hold true, and that's partof you know, the person who's
interpreting the study or theintervention or whatever to
actually kind of figure out, uh,but that's neither here nor
there.
Okay, so what did you find out?
You have good runners and youhad kind of more.
I keep describing them as lessgood runners.

(18:52):
I can't remember exactly howthe paper described them, but
how did they actually differ interms of the things that you
were measuring?

Speaker 3 (18:58):
What we found was basically, as you would expect
intuitively, that the highperforming runners had a lower
drift in economy, so they had abetter running economy
durability compared to the lowerperforming athletes.
So we define them as high orlow performing based on that 10k

(19:18):
performance.
I don't remember the exactnumbers, could be something like
4.5 versus 2.2, 2.3% changefrom 15 minutes to 90 minutes.
It's basically like a 50%difference in the upward
drifting economy between theartists that perform around 31

(19:38):
minutes in 10K versus theartists that perform about 41
minutes in 10K.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
And so what comes first here in your estimation?
Let's put kind of more of apractitioner's hat on right.
Are the better runners moredurable because they're better
runners, or is the greaterdurability enable them somehow
to become better runners?
Or is that not even the rightway to to think about it?
Because that's the final partof the interpretation on these
is.
A lot of times you start to seethese physiological phenomenon

(20:07):
differ from one group to thenext, and you always have to
decide where the chicken and theegg come and where, in what
order they actually could, andwhat act, what order they
actually like, come in.
So, in your mind's eye, sinceyou've been studying this, what
do you have to say to that?
What is causing any of thisphenomenon to actually be
different between these twogroups?

Speaker 3 (20:25):
yeah, it's a.
It's a good question.
I don't have a defined answerand I would say it's a bit of
both, which is hiding away fromme.
It's tricky because what youwould need to answer the
question would be anintervention study in, in my
opinion, or a very longlongitudinal study looking at

(20:47):
that.
So if you do an interventionand you get athletes doing a
specific type of exercise for anX amount of months, then you
can see the effect of it.
If we just take a sectioncross-section study and compare
athletes from differentbackgrounds, performance level,
whatever variable we want youcan only say well, this is how

(21:08):
the groups differ, but youcannot say why.
If I think about someworld-class athletes and their
durability, some of the casestudies that have been brought
forward recently, there's oneabout two pro cyclists, the
winner of the 2016 Giro d'Italiaand the 2017 Giro Rosa, which

(21:30):
they demonstrated how theirdurability this being a decrease
in maximum mean powerthroughout a stage was far
higher than any other measuretaken before from other athletes
, even from world tour cyclists.
They didn't change theirmaximal mean power output up to

(21:51):
about 80% into the stage.
That's one.
And then, very recently, MagnusDietle, world-class Ironman
triathlete, was measured and hisphysiological changes during a
simulated Ironman were trackedevery, I think, about 30 minutes
.
And here again, from an economyperspective, he only changed by

(22:15):
1.52% after the Ironman,whereas there were no
differences in cyclingefficiency.
So that, to me, says well, ifyou are a world-class athlete,
you need to have good durability.
Now the question you made is dowe need to train for that and
that is what makes theperformance better or is it

(22:37):
something that the athletealready has and it can't really
be developed?
I would say you can train it,and I say that because if you
take anybody that is justrunning five, 10K races, let's
say you can measure theireconomy, you can measure their
view to max and you can measuretheir threshold and you should
be able to pretty well estimatetheir marathon performance.

(23:02):
However, if you ask them to doa marathon, they're not going to
be able to finish it becausethey never experienced that
exposure to volume, runningdistance and et cetera.
To me, that is one of thefactors that fits into the
puzzle and gets developedthrough long runs, through long
exercise, through specific typeof training sessions that we all

(23:26):
know improve marathonperformance, but up to now,
physiologically, we couldn'treally explain why.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, and I mean, here's where I kind of come back
to it.
So, first off, to kind of expandon what I had originally asked
you in terms of, just in termsof what you know, what comes
first, the chicken or the egg?
I'll go back to the previouspodcasts that I did with Ed
Marinder and Nick Berger, andthey both believe, after after

(23:54):
studying this phenomenon, thatit is a little bit of both.
First, it's a natural byproductof training and probably the
biggest hammer that you have inall of endurance physiology is
just volume.
So the runners and the athleteswith just a higher amount of
volume who have been training athigh volumes for a longer
period of time, decades, and notjust years, they tend to

(24:18):
demonstrate better durability asa byproduct of all of that, of
the cumulative amount of all ofthat work over over many years
so that's the first kind ofcomponent of it is that we see
more experienced runners thathave been training at high
volumes for long periods of timehave better durability and
there's kind of no shortcut tothat right, that's just, you

(24:39):
know, you just have to be in thegame for that long.
And second thing, that they thisis more of a postulation than
what they actually see in casestudies and things like that,
because it's harder to actuallytease out and this goes to your
idea of an intervention study isthat is there a way to
deliberately focus on thisphysiological aspect?
The analogy that I always get,that I always give, is we know

(25:02):
how to push on the VO two maxbutton pretty well by now.
There have been any number,hundreds and hundreds of studies
that have analyzed volume andinterval programs and the
duration of the interval and howlong do you have to be under a
certain type of load and whatthe combination of work to
recovery can be and things likethat.
And there's a reason whyeverybody's like quote unquote

(25:23):
VO2 max workouts are all roughlythe same, because it's the
combination of all of thatresearch over many years that
have kind of given us some bestpractices.
And sure coaches get in thesestupid debates about is a one
minute interval better or twominute interval better or
whatever kind of small likedeviation, and there's some
value to that, but by and largethey're 90% the same.
But then they come back to okay, are there actually

(25:47):
interventions that we can do?
And the resounding answer fromthem and I'd like to hear your
comment on this as well is wekind of don't know.
But it makes sense that if youconcentrated some portion of
harder work or the workload in afatigued state, regardless of
how you created that fatigue,whether it's a 90-minute run,

(26:07):
which would be the example ofthe research that you just went
through, or a three-hour run ora set of intervals or whatever
if you kind of created somefatiguing state and then did
something deliberate in afatigued state, that might
enhance this component ofdurability, just like we can
enhance VO2 max development withspecific protocols and
intervals and interventions andthings like that, with specific

(26:29):
protocols and intervals andinterventions and things like
that.
Okay, let's take a quick breakin the action and hear from
coaches Adam Ferdinandson andFred Sabatore-Pastore on how we
might be able to program fordurability in ultramarathon
training.
Okay, coach Adam, so what doyou think about this overall
concept of durability.
What do you think about thisoverall concept of durability
and maybe give us a practicalexample of how you would

(26:53):
accentuate it with an athletethat you're coaching?

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah.
So durability is something thatI think about every day when
I'm programming schedules forathletes and when we think about
what we're going to do over thenext months or years, and even
though it's a newer buzzword inthis space, it's something that
we've all had a more intuitivesense about for a long time.
You want to run a hundred miles.
It helps to slow down less somesort of a concept like that.

(27:17):
So to program it honestly withmost of my athletes I probably
don't do anything where, like aworkout where this is the
durability workout or somethinglike that, there's a time and a
place for that.
I think it's somewhat advanced,I would call it so.
It's not something I deployoften.
One of our number one toolsthat we're always going to have

(27:38):
is training volume.
It's one of the reasons maybewe do training camps or leverage
other ways to make things alittle bit more dense, stack
closely together or harder, butnumber one tool is volume.
So you will spoil some of thelater tidbits.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
I'm always reminded, from a programming perspective,
probably one of the oldestworkouts that a lot of marathon
runners will recognize, andthat's the progression run.
So a run that gets faster overtime to the point where you're
doing the most intense part ofthe run, at the point of most
fatigue and there may be somecomponent of that accentuates
durability.
And I think what a lot ofrunners need to kind of like

(28:16):
reconcile in their head is areyou building your overall
capacity or are you buildingsomething like very specific?
So if you're building overallcapacity, you would typically
want to do the hardest parts ofa run when you're the freshest
possible, because that's goingto give you the best outcome for
that.
But if you wanted to build morequote unquote durability, in a
way you could shift some of thathard work towards the end of

(28:40):
the run.
And I do this with a number ofmy elite athletes where we'll
program tempo and steady statemainly those two workouts, so
threshold or slightly easierthan threshold closer towards
the end of the run as opposed tothe beginning, knowing that we
either have to reduce the volumeof intensity because they're
pre-fatigued, or just set theexpectations differently in

(29:01):
terms of how fast they can runor the intensity that they can
maintain for those specific runs.
I wouldn't say that it's aworkout that I deploy a lot Like
.
Maybe it's 10% of the actuallike in.
It's maybe like 10% of thetotal amount of time that we're
spending at any one particularintensity we'll do in a fatigued

(29:24):
state.
So I hope that like sets thecontext for how like quote
unquote important it is because,adam, as you mentioned, there
are other ways that you canactually accentuate it, kind of
going along in parallel.
This is a relatively newerconcept.
To actually like, test for andwe test for it for two reasons
is one to see if we can actuallyimprove it with certain
interventions and the secondthing is to actually seem if

(29:45):
it's actually, or to actuallymake sense of.
Is it actually meaningful?
We think it's meaningful forperformance, actually make sense
of is it actually meaningful?
We think it's meaningful forperformance.
But a lot of times we have totest people's different
durabilities and see if they'rebetter or worse athletes.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
And, fred, I was hoping that you could, you know,
kind of shed some light on thatconcept, since you've got a lot
of experience in this area yeah, and then for this testing side
of durability, a lot of theresearch has been done with
sports in which it is veryimportant to perform at a very
high intensity towards the end,like road cycling.
Road cycling is probably theone in which it has been done
the most and you want to do thefinal climb going very fast,

(30:19):
compared to trail and ultrarunning, in which you may be
pushing at the end but theintensity at the end is usually
actually can be slower than atthe beginning because of the
accumulated heavy right.
So then in those types ofsports, the typical test is to
do go as hard as you can forlike 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes at
the end of the workout.

(30:39):
That is something that we canstill deploy in 12 running, but
doing that hard test at the end.
So, for example, wherever youdo like, if you have a heel
client that you use for testing,doing it at the end of the
workout as hard as you can.
That could be one thing.
However, one thing that I tendto use a lot is more like when
going by rp.
So like an athlete is supposedto be keeping the same rp, they

(31:01):
run a loop and the first climbthey repeat at the end so they
may go out for three hours.
They like warm up, do the firstclimb, then they go, they run
and then at the end they repeatthat same climb.
They've always still been doingit with the same RP, all that.
And then we check like what isthe change in the different
variables that we can see Firstof all time of the climb, right,
like did they run more on thefirst time and then walk more

(31:24):
the second time, and then likewas the car rate different?
We can check like first of alltime, which would be performance
, and then what are the thingsthat are influencing?

Speaker 1 (31:33):
that time.
Yeah, and a lot of people whoare familiar with, like the
grand tour stage race cycling,they can see the way that this
actually plays out in a racewhere the entire peloton can
make it up the first climb.
Maybe 80 percent of the pelotoncan make it up the second climb
.
60 percent of the peloton makesup third climb, and then you're
left with the leaders at theultimate or the penultimate
climb and that's usually wherethe kind of the more decisive

(31:54):
moves are made, especially atthe really tough mountain stages
.
And in the research world, whatthey've tried to do is kind of
recreate that in a morerealistic scenario by doing
either a fixed amount of worklet's say it's a thousand
kilojoules of work or somethinglike that or a fixed amount of
time at a certain intensity, andthen do some sort of
performance test afterwards.
So you're testing theperformance test in this fatigue

(32:17):
state after a certain amount ofwork or a certain amount or a
certain task, as opposed to that, that same type of performance,
uh in an unfatigued state, andseeing what the actual
difference is.
Performance uh in an unfatiguedstate, and seeing what the
actual difference is, and I kindof want to get your take on,

(32:37):
like both of those elements,both this volume element and
also the specific interventionthat may or may not get teased
out in the next several years.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, I agree, and, as we were mentioning before, I
think intuitively, every coachthat does training for marathon
or longer running events knowsthat you know that you need your
long runs to improve yourmarathon.
Now I think what we're tryingto do is try to understand why,

(33:02):
what occurs in the body and howyour physiology changes during
exercise, and then the the nextstep from here onwards is can we
try to improve that?
To me, specificity is veryimportant and I come from the
methodology of Canova, which isvery much onto specificity.
You have to do your long runsand you have to do it long

(33:24):
enough and fast enough.
So that is the key, in myopinion, to have a very good
performance in the marathon,even at the very first attempt.
And then, if you blend it backto the durability I think that
is one of the key aspects.
There will be probablyprotocols or ideas on specific

(33:47):
training that can be done tooptimize durability enhancements
, but at the moment I would saythat including your long runs
often enough will make adifference.
That is one of the other studieswe did.
It's not published yet, butwhat we did was exactly the same
as the protocol we described,and we had two groups one that

(34:09):
had the inclusion of long runsin the training program defined
as, I think, runs longer than 90minutes at least three times a
month, and then the other groupdidn't have any long runs
defined as no.
I think they had to run lessthan 70 minutes continuously in
the previous six months.
What we found here again wasthe group that did long runs

(34:33):
only increased their energy cost, oxygen cost, so the running
economy durability, by 3% in the90 minutes and the other group
increased by 6%.
So again, this is not anintervention study.
It may be due to a lot offactors, but that is one other
step pointing towards.

(34:54):
We need volume, we needcontinuous running to develop
durability, and that is clearlylinked to the best practice of
development of long distancerunners to the best practice of
development of long distancerunners.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
There's this contingent of athletes and
coaches that want to use a lowervolume approach when training
for a variety of reasons.
They either want to focus moreon intensity, they want to, they
are injury adverse, right, orthey might be more susceptible
to injury and volume being oneof the kind of like catalysts
for injuries potentially amongstcertain athletes and things
like that.
And there's a whole like likehost of motivations and I've
always thought that there'spower in doing that because you

(35:38):
know, we should all be advocatesof a variety of intensities for
any endurance athletes.
But one of the things thatyou're missing with those low
volume approaches is this veryspecific I'm going a certain
duration and I'm developingparts of my physiology that I
can't otherwise develop unlessthe duration is of a certain

(35:58):
distance.
The question is, what does thatneed to be?
And is there a dose dependentresponse for increasing that
duration past two hours, threehours, four hours or five hours,
or does it not matter after acertain point?
Or does it not matter after acertain point?
And this is a debate that we'vegotten into in the ultra
marathon world and I don't thinkthat there's a lot of things

(36:20):
that we can point to, to give usbest practices or things like
that, other than a lot of thesecase studies that we see with
people for that have beentraining for many years with a
very high volume.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
They just tend to exude this quality more so than
other athletes yeah, I mean Ican't comment much on this, but
if you look at the trainingpractice of the best elite
runners or elite enduranceathletes in general, they all
have very high training volumes.
Now, from a running perspective,the main limitation is probably

(36:51):
the occurrence of injuries dueto the continuous load on joint
bones and the eccentric damagethat you get from running,
particularly in trail running.
If you speak about downhillrunning and how that affects
those parameters, did you lookat other sports?
Triathlon is an example whichis very clear.

(37:13):
You have elite triathletes thatthey sometimes train more than
35, more than even 40 hours perweek.
There's been a case study onthe training habits or training
background of ChristianBlumenfeld just published a
couple of months ago, and thehighest weekly mileage he had or
highest weekly duration he hadacross the three disciplines was

(37:36):
over 40 hours.
And it's the same for many ofthe elite athletes.
I worked with the ItalianTravel Federation.
We top up 32, 33, 34 hours perweek regularly with the best
performing athletes.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
And I do think that perspective that we particularly
see in triathlon, because theyhave three sports and they're
not, as they seem to be at leastless injury susceptible because
of that sport distribution andyou can do a lot of volume from
a cycling perspective and kindof get away with it a little bit
more.
But I do think that looking atthose volumes in that context,

(38:13):
drilling it back to what I, theathletes that I work with for a
living, which are ultra marathonathletes, I do think that
there's a valuable lesson inthere in terms of how much
volume can potentially betolerated by an athlete, and in
most cases it's greater thanwhat a lot of people think.
A lot of people look at 10, 12,you know, 14 hours per week,
especially for an elite athlete,and they look at it as a lot.

(38:36):
And then when we look at theseother sports triathlon in
particular, and then alsocycling to a large extent as
well, we see athletes in this 25to 30 or even, as you mentioned
, 40 hour category that areremarkably successful.
And then you also kind of seethe corollary of what's the
floor that you need to have tobe able to train at in order to

(38:59):
be remotely competitive, meaningwhat is the hourly commitment
that is absolutely required inorder to compete at the highest
level.
We also see very high amountsof that as well, not only just
looking at the peak volume, butlooking at like kind of the
minimum viable amount of timethat's necessary to be
competitive.

(39:21):
Okay, let's explore this topic alittle bit further with CTS
coach Fred Sabatore-Pastor.
So, fred, I want to talk alittle bit about how volume
becomes extremely important whenwe talk about how we can
accentuate an athlete'sdurability.
In the earlier interjectionwith Coach Adam, he mentioned

(39:41):
that this is one of the thingsthat we can actually press on
the most from a trainingperspective to enhance
durability, as opposed to comingup with some sort of fancy
convoluted progression run orsomething like that.
And this is something that theresearch has actually teased out
a little bit, and I waswondering if you could comment
on that a little bit further interms of what role volume
actually plays in an athletebeing more or less durable.

Speaker 5 (40:03):
Yeah, I think it is one of those things in which the
research has been pointing tothat direction, most of this of
this research again being donewith cyclists or in cycling.
But then when they have seenwhat are the training variables
that correspond to betterdurability with these athletes
usually like under 23 andprofessional cyclists what they

(40:24):
see is that training volume itis the main thing, the thing
that is going to improvedurability the most, or like the
thing that correlates best withdurability.
It's a correlation, but fromthis correlation and our
experience as coaches, we areseeing that inference as well
that athletes that are runningthe higher but a weekly volume

(40:45):
and also the higher accumulatedvolume over like the previous
period not just like week byweek, but like accumulated, not
just like for the peak weeks,right, but like for an
accumulated number of weeks theathletes are accumulating the
biggest volume are the ones thatcan sustain intensity better
towards the end of races, andthat seems to be also the case
with, like, marathon runners.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
I'm glad you mentioned the overall umbrella
because a lot of times we tendto put the focus on what is the
longest long run or the longesttraining blocks or what are the
biggest two or three runs thatan athlete would have.
But what typically produces thebest adaptations is the amount
of volume that you can do overlong periods of time and there's

(41:28):
really great and I'm going tolink some of these up in the
show notes now that I'm thinkingabout it amount of volume that
you can do over long periods oftime and there's all there's
really great and I got to linksome of these up in the show
notes now that I'm thinkingabout it.
There's some really great casestudies on endurance athletes
where they have a very richhistory of training.
This is at the elite and theOlympic level and what they've
seen is with those particularathletes, when they just
increase their low intensityvolume towards the ends, toward

(41:51):
the end of their career, theycan actually see that career
either either elongated and orthey actually perform better.
They're not doing anything else.
From an interval perspective,it's the same, it's the exact
same person, but just byincreasing that low intensity
volume they tend to haveperformance benefits really
across the board, and so it'ssomething that we have to focus
on a lot from a coachingperspective, because there

(42:13):
becomes this double edged swordwith it, where we know it's a
potent stimulus for improvement,but we also know that it can be
too much for a lot of athletes.
You can't do an unlimitedamount of it because of the
injury susceptibility.
But make no mistake, it's kindof like the best hammer that you
have in your toolbox.
If you have like all thesethings that you can do, you can

(42:35):
always count on doing a littlebit more volume to reap
improvements across the boardand, more specifically, with
their ability.
I was wondering if you can kindof like comment on that
component of as well, just tokind of like add the perspective
.
We're not just looking at thesuper highest people.
They do have very high volumes.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
I think if you're limited in time, you can try to
find strategies to optimize yourtraining.
I think training load is a goodmetric from a weekly
perspective to look at.
So if you don't have the timein the week, then you can try to
download the sessions harder.

(43:31):
Although we know very well thatthe distribution between low,
medium and high intensity let'scall it that way it has to be
primarily low intensity, alittle bit of medium intensity,
a little bit of high intensity,which can be equally distributed
or not.
And speaking about 70, 80, 78,90 percent of low intensity, I

(43:52):
wouldn't be able to tell youwhat is the minimum volume that
you need to to perform well in arace.
If I give you a simple exampleof an athlete that I've been
working with for a long time,it's a eight grouper, master, 45
years old athlete and he justdid his first marathon last week
.
He ran three, two hours 32 andhis training volume was about

(44:15):
100 kilometers per week.
I think it is hard to run twohours 30 if you don't train at
least 100 kilometers a week,although it very much depends on
your engine.
If you are super talented let'ssay you are, I don't know like
a kipchoge type of athlete andyou've never trained.

(44:36):
You will probably still performvery well in the marathon just
because of your biology.
But across the board, if yousay 100 kilometers a week, I
think you can break the twohours 30.
Maybe you can break the twohours 25.
Then you probably need morevolume.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
I mean once again.
I think people will resonatewith that.
You know you're talking 60,I'll convert to miles right 62,
65 miles.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
No, that's okay, it's totally okay.
But I think people will kind ofresonate with that like minimum
viable product.
You know the everyday runnersout there that have job, kids,
they play a lot of differentroles in life and things like
that.
They can't train 20 hours aweek, just from a time
availability standpoint.
They can't train 200 kilometersa week, 160 miles a week, just
from a time, you know, just froma time availability, time

(45:23):
availability standpoint.
But they, but they.
But for the elite athletes outthere and I go through this
whenever I take on a new, when Itake on a new athlete, I kind
of drill down to how much timeavailability do you have, like
do you have a minimum amount inorder to kind of kind of succeed
, especially if you're kind ofright on the cusp?

(45:43):
Because there is there, thereis a certain amount that
required is not quite the rightword, but there is a certain
amount that is absolutelybeneficial to have.
A minimum amount that isabsolutely more beneficial to
have, that is not trivial, thatyou have to be able to dedicate
to in one way or another,whether it's time dedication or

(46:04):
effort dedication or all of theabove.
I kind of want to pivot alittle bit to some research that
you did that was presented atthe ECSS conference, and correct
me if I'm wrong, but this isunpublished, or at least it's
yet to be published.
Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yes, it's under review, so hopefully it will be
out soon.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
Okay, perfect.
So we're like peeling back thecurtain a little bit on this and
you can divulge as much or aslittle as you want to.
I know that there might be somerestriction on this, but it has
to do with strength trainingand endurance performance, which
is another topic that we kindof keep coming back to and also
kind of dovetails into thiselement of durability, maybe
directly, maybe tangentially.

(46:47):
So can you go over some of thatresearch, since it's, you know,
part of your thesis, issomething that you're obviously
intimately involved in, and thenwe can try to come up with some
take-homes with both that andthen on the durability piece as
well.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, so I mean, if we speak about strength training
, you know broad perspectiverelated to endurance, sports and
running.
Initially, we know, at leastfrom a scientific perspective,
that strength training tends toimprove endurance performance
and is mainly due to an improvedeconomy.
So, again, energy cost, oxygencost or cycling efficiency, if

(47:21):
you speak about cycling,together with alterations that
they seem to potentially makeyou more durable as well.
So you have an enhanced muscletendon stiffness, which could be
useful in a front exercise typeof type of exercise, and then
we have an increased musclestrength, meaning that for the

(47:44):
same load, same velocity, samespeed, we would usually have a
lesser, or we would expect tohave a lesser, activation of
muscle fibers because you have ahigher force produced by each
muscle fascicle and thereforethat should reduce the load on

(48:04):
the number of fibers that you'reusing for the same speed.
If you get these from a freshperspective to a fatigue
perspective, what you'd hope tosee is that there's a delay in
lesser efficient type two fibersand that should carry on
advantages from a fatigueperformance perspective.
So that was the initial idea andreason why we wanted to look

(48:29):
into the effect of strengthtraining onto durability in
running.
So what we did was again a90-minute trial, slightly more
intense than what we did withthe first study.
So a bit more into the heavyintensity domain, I think 10%
above the about 10% deltabetween lactate threshold one

(48:49):
and two and we measured itbefore and after 10 weeks of
strength training done twice aweek where we did heavy strength
and biometrics and then wemeasured it.
We measured the changes ineconomy throughout again every
15 minutes and the change infollowing it.
So high intensity performancefollowing 90 minutes of running

(49:12):
done before and after thetraining intervention.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Can you describe the strength training that they were
actually going through?

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, so we had two plyometrics exercises.
We do have, I think, the kindof sample table that is
available online.
I put it on my Twitter when wepresented the study and, if you
have it, feel free to share iton your platforms as well.
It's no secret, and we did itpurposely to make it readily
available for runners that wouldjust want to implement it.

(49:41):
So the reasoning was we want touse it in an ecologically valid
way, that everybody can use itin our gym or at home if they
have some bubbles and weights.
We had two plyometric exercises, one horizontal and one
vertical, to improve muscletendon stiffness, and then we
had three maximum strengthexercises a single leg press, a

(50:04):
squat, which was a half squat inmost of the of the protocol,
and then an isometric seatedcalf race, and that was done
mainly to improve the forcegenerated, the capacity to
generate force in an isometricperspective due to the behavior
of the calf muscle to be actingmainly isometrically when you

(50:27):
run it.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
So you used the term ecologically viable.
I'm going to colloquialize that.
To me it was simple, meaningathletes who had a reasonable
strength training setup, or evenno strength training setup,
could do something like this.
And I guess another way to putit is I could put this in front
of one of my strength trainingprofessionals and they would go
oh yeah, this is really simpleprogramming.

(50:48):
It's going to be remarkablyeffective, but we can make it
more effective by just addingthis, that and the other.
You were taking a really, Iguess, very simplistic approach
with what you were actuallyprescribing for athletes, and
I'll wire up that table in theshow notes for anybody that
actually wanted to look at theprotocol that you were taking
athletes through.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Yeah, that was the idea Keep it simple.
And I wouldn't necessarilyimplement it like that myself,
because I want to have it moreindividualized.
But we wanted to keep theexercises as simple as possible
and not change them throughoutthe 10 weeks intervention,
because otherwise we would havespent one, two, three weeks

(51:28):
without at least learning themovement, instead of spending
the time getting stronger.
So we had a 10-week durationconstraint, which is not the
problem usually with an athletethat wants to implement it
regularly from today,consistently, throughout the
next season, for example.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, perfectly reasonable timeframe to deliver
that strength training program.
So what did you find at the endof the day?

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Yeah, so what we found was we deliver that
strength training program.
So what did you find at the endof the day?
Yeah, so what we found was wehad the strength training group
and we had the control group.
So the difference was thestrength training group
implemented strength on top ofrunning.
The control group just keptrunning the same as before.
They were matched forperformance over 10K.
Again, I think.
Performance-wise, the averagewas about 39 minutes between

(52:13):
groups.
So decent runners, not elite orsub-elite, but still nice
performance level, which is notthat easy to find in the
literature.
And what we found was thestrength training improved
running economy durability, bothwithin the group so the group

(52:34):
that did strength training had abetter durability before, after
compared to before and alsobetween groups.
So we measured the changebetween and after the groups and
only the group that did thestrength training improved
substantially, whereas the otherdidn't.
Likewise, for time toexhaustion, that was a
performance trial.

(52:55):
At the end the athletes thatdid strength training improved
by 35%, whereas the athletesthat didn't do the strength
training worsened by 8%.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
And people are going to think about that and you were
probably just getting into this, so I'm sorry if I'm stomping
on it a little bit People aregoing to think about this 35%
improvement and go oh my God,that's kind of unbelievable.
But I think it might beimportant to describe how a time
to exhaustion test kind ofexaggerates those improvements
and why you actually use that inresearch.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yes, that was going to be my next point.
It is very different than usinga time to exhaustion from a
time trial.
Time to exhaustion is how longcan you sustain the effort for
the intensity for, whereas timetrial is how quickly can you
cover a given distance or howmuch speed can you put in a

(53:45):
given time.
So they are very differentvariables.
If you have an increase in timeto exertion by, let's say, 35%,
as we did, that could probablytranslate into improved time
trial performance.
So let's say a one kilometerperformance of 5% to 10%, 5% to
7%.
So it is very much in line withprevious research done in other

(54:08):
sports.
They found similar results inelite cyclists after 11 weeks of
strength training and improvedby about 7% peak power output or
main power output over fiveminutes trial.
So pretty much in line withwhat they found in elite
cyclists.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
And this is in line with a lot of the other strength
training research that isactually out there strength
training research that isactually out there.
One of the things that alwayscomes up that I want to kind of
get your perspective on iswhenever you do a strength
training intervention study,where strength training is laid
on top of either what theathletes are already doing or a

(54:44):
standardized training protocolthat both groups are doing, what
a lot of people will say and Ikind of I look at some of the,
some of the strength trainingresearch with this eye as well
is just listen.
Group two, the strength traininggroup, is just doing more total
physical work and usually whenwe come down to training, just
as sort of volume conversationkind of alluded to earlier

(55:06):
usually just more work resultsin more adaptation, even if it's
not specific or well-programmedor whatever.
That's kind of like the bighammer is just the volume of
work and I was wondering if wecan just get like your
perspective on that, meaning ifwe just layer this on, is it the
layer of extra work that ispotentially producing some of

(55:26):
the adaptation, or if we couldsomehow and there's been some
research on this where you tryto equate for the effort, or for
the kilojoules, or for theworkload or whatever.
How does it actually?
Is it a more effective or moreefficient form of activity to
actually improve an athlete?

Speaker 3 (55:43):
yes, it's a very valid point and very practical.
Everybody that walks inpractical settings would have
that perspective and I totallyagree.
Actually, we are working on amanuscript that tries to bring
forward the limitation of a lotof research, adding
interventions and then notmatching or not acknowledging

(56:05):
the fact that training load isnot matched between the training
group and the control group.
I think there is an importantcomponent there from a training
volume perspective which it ishard to address Because if you
were to increase equally therunning volume from the control
group, you may well incur highlyincreased risk of injuries

(56:33):
occurring in, highly increasedrisk of injuries because of the
sudden increase of one hour 30of running per week in assets
that are running maybe fivehours per week.
So it's probably like 25percent more volume all of a
sudden.
So from a from a practicalperspective it is quite tricky
managing that.
There are a couple of studiesthat match the training volume
between control and training andit still found an improved

(56:56):
performance and economy in thetraining group.
But there is a confounder there.
Due to the volume that differsbetween the groups, the
adaptations will be different.
So I would still expect somepositive effects from the
strength training because you'reworking on capacities that are

(57:17):
not developed in running.
As we said, increase the forcefrom a single fiber perspective,
increase the stiffness, allthese factors that are relevant
from a metabolic perspective,which they don't usually get
developed if you just do twoextra easy runs during the week.

(57:38):
From the other, on the otherhand, if you have these two
other short runs each week, youmay get better, in your likely
treasure, for example.
So they target differentsystems and I think striking the
balance is important.
So when I work with athletes,if they have more than three
times per week, then they willhave a strength session.

(58:00):
If they only can train threetimes, then it's just running
and then the second session canbe added.
If they have maybe six, sevensessions per week, it'll be
maybe five and two.
So that is a very practicalperspective on the topic which
may be helpful for the listeners.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Okay, let's take another quick break in the
action and bring in CTS coachSarah Scazzaro specifically to
talk about how we canincorporate strength training.
Okay, so I wanted to expand onthis concept of how strength
training can actually affectdurability, because I know a lot
of athletes have questionsabout it and we've talked in

(58:43):
that.
We've talked previously in thispodcast about how volume can
affect durability, how specificworkouts like progression runs
can affect durability, and so Iwanted to get your perspective
on this, sarah, from how do youactually program things like
this from a strength trainingperspective and how do you just
view this overall in terms ofhow it can be integrated into an
athlete's program?

Speaker 4 (59:03):
Yeah.
So when it comes to strengthtraining and durability, first
and foremost, we're not going tobe doing anything in the gym to
specifically try to likeovercome something that you
could be, you should be doing inyour actual run training,
meaning we're not going to do abunch of step-ups to try to get
you as a better mountain climber.
But what I focus on with myathletes is not only the volume

(59:24):
of their strength training, thespecificity of the exercises,
but I also like to lean onthings like plyometrics and
isometrics for muscle and tendonstiffness, which I think can be
really valuable.
With the durability of ultrarunners, especially in longer
distances, it packs a lot ofpunch, especially isometrics,
for a lot less risk and a lotless volume necessary.
So there's a great exchange ofdurability there.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
And just to like make sure that everybody understands
what you're talking about, what, like what would the exercises
and the it's going to use setrep combination but the time
under tension actually look likein those with that programming?

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
so, like a plyometrics, you can do
something as simple as I know as, like low scale is like pogo
hops, pogos, and then you can goall the way up to like depth
box jumps and things like that.
I think that people startingwith something very simple like
an assisted plyo or pogo jumps,two sets of 20 seconds with 20
second rest, could be veryeffective.
When you're talking aboutisometrics, I like to do things

(01:00:21):
called overcoming isometrics,which are the push or pull.
So you're actually doing like amid thigh rack pull, something
like that.
So you're actually resistingthe weight.
You're not just holding a wallsquat, which is fine, but when
you're doing something like anovercoming isometric, you're not
going to be holding for verylong we're talking one to 10
seconds at times and you'regoing to be doing maybe five to

(01:00:42):
six max of those, with rest inbetween.
So it doesn't take a lot andyou're not doing a lot of joint
movement.
Hence it's an isometric.
In that case, there's not nojoint movement really, but
you're really going to beputting a good stress on the
tendons and the muscles, withlow risk in terms of skill and
or overuse.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
So I want to bring coach Adam in once again from,
like, the programming side ofthings because, Adam, you kind
of work in the capacity whereyou're working with athletes
that are integrating strengthtraining into their programming
as well, as you're trying tohelp orchestrate the strength
training at the same time.
It's a little bit of a weirdposition for an endurance coach
to be in and I was wondering toget a little bit more insight

(01:01:24):
into just more off your workflowwhen you're trying to organize
the run training, the strengthtraining, what the strength
training load is going to belike.
How does that just generallypan out for you when you're
doing this with athletes?

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Yeah Well, the first thing that I do with my athletes
is that I really want to setthe priority level and make that
pretty clear and that kind ofdictates how we're going to
bring strength training into theprogram.
So a lot of people will finish arace, my legs blew up at the
end, my quads were dead andtherefore they are not strong

(01:01:55):
enough and I need to increasethe strength, and while Mikkel's
research is compelling thatstrength training is a way to
address that, as we've kind ofalluded to before, there's other
bigger priorities.
So I want to make sure thatwe're doing everything we can to
get those bigger priorities andthen we can layer in the
strength training and to diveinto that a little bit.

(01:02:16):
The first goal is always tomake sure that the strength work
doesn't interfere with the runwork, or at least very minimally
so, and then you can get thebenefits, hopefully, from both
programs and you're getting yourdurability from a lot of great
run volume and training.
You're also getting a littlebit from the great strength work
you're doing as well, and theycan live in harmony I kind of

(01:02:38):
want to get the.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
I want to get the live in harmony piece and give
sarah the final word on this,because we talk about this a lot
in terms of how to integratestrength training and run
training at the same time sothat one doesn't compromise the
other.
Can you really quicklysynopsize that for us, sarah?
Is there a potential compromiseand how do you actually view

(01:03:00):
trying to navigate it?

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
Absolutely.
If the strength training isimpairing an athlete's ability
to do the primary focus, whichis the run training meaning
they're constantly fatigued,having dead legs, don't have the
time for it then it's not goingto work.
So that means we need to look athow often are we doing it.
We may need to shorten theduration and we may need to take
away a day.
So, for instance, a lot offolks come to me and they're
like I want to do three days aweek of strength.

(01:03:23):
I want to do four to five daysa week of strength Great in the
early season.
But as we progress and asvolume increases, we're probably
going to have to start takingsome of that strength off the
table so that you're notconstantly in a fatigue state.
And that might mean reducingfrom four days a week to two
days a week, or from three daysa week to two, possibly even to
one as we get closer to an event.

(01:03:44):
Um, we can still focus on themain lifts, we can still focus
on some great volume there, butjust feathering in like how much
strength training is or is noteither enhancing or taking away
from the run programming.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
Yeah, and then the other practical perspective,
especially for a lot of theregular athletes out there.
They're normally addingstrength training on top of what
they are doing, without regardto load management.
For right or for wrong, that'sa topic for another day.
Whether you take off some runload, management if you're going
to add strength training andthings like that.

(01:04:19):
But from a practical perspective, when most normal athletes want
to deploy a strength trainingprogram, they don't change their
running programming.
They run five days per week andthey're going to train two
times per week in the evening orthe opposite time of day that
they normally run.
They're like literally doing itin the way that you've set up.
The research design is is youhave the group that's normally
training and then the group thathas the parallel training with

(01:04:41):
the addition, or the wholeaddition, of adding a strength
training component to it.
That's not everybody, butthat's a lot of people, just in
practice.
So it becomes something thatthat is to use an earlier word
that we went through.
It becomes ecologically validbecause it's what's actually
happening out in the field yeah,I didn't think about it so far
I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
Yeah, I don't have that broad experience.
You probably have much largerexperience because of the volume
of offices you work with, evenfrom an elite perspective.
That is usually what happens.
If you can squeeze in a coupleof strength sessions, you just
do that.
You're not going to take awayrunning or swimming or cycling
volume for it.
You may maybe consider toreduce maybe the run from one

(01:05:24):
hour to 45 minutes and then havethe strength session afterwards
, but you don't just remove thatrun altogether.
That's my experience.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
For the coaches out there and the strength training
professionals out there that arecringing a little bit.
Just to reemphasize, we're notadvocating for actually doing
that, because certainly ifyou're training at a very high
volume or close to your maximumvolume, adding in any sort of
additional stress, needs to comewith some sort of load
management strategy.
It doesn't matter whether it'sstrength training stress or even

(01:05:54):
stress for heat traininginterventions that we do quite
often, or even altitude.
You need to have some sort ofcounterbalancing in the total
amount of workload that you'redoing.
We're not advocating for justlayering it on, we're just
saying that it happens to be.
That ends up practically whatends up happening with a lot of
athletes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Very good point.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Yeah, I appreciate your perspective here.
We're going to let you go.
This has been reallyfascinating.
I'm going to queue up all ofthe things that we discussed,
including the Twitter threadsthat you put together.
You're a good Twitter follower,or good Twitter follow, with a
lot of this stuff.
I'll link those up in the shownotes so the listeners can go
dig into those if they do chooseso.

(01:06:32):
But where can people find moreabout you and learn a little bit
more about the work that you'redoing?

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
yeah, as you mentioned, I think the twitter
would be the place.
My art should still be mickzanini, m-i-c-z-a-n-i-n-i, and
they double.
And then any research that Ipublish will be on ResearchGate
as well under my name.
So Michele Zanini I don't thinkthere's that many, so it should

(01:06:57):
be easy to find.
Not particularly active onsocial media, but, as you said,
I tend to post anything that Ifind interesting on X slash
Twitter every now and then.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Michele, thank you for the research this year and
thank you for coming on thepodcast.
It's been really insightful forme.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
Thank you Really appreciate it and thanks for the
possible questions.
Really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Great folks.
There you have it.
Much thanks to Mikel Zanini, aswell as CTS coaches Aden
Ferdinandson, FredSabatore-Pastor and Sarah
Scazzaro, for coming on thepodcast today, helping us unwind
this concept of durability justa little bit further.
I do think that in the future,this is going to be something
that we continue to lean on inorder to evaluate potential

(01:07:45):
athletic performance, as well assomething that we can train for
in ultra running.
As always, this podcast isbrought to you without any
sponsors or endorsements of anykind, and that's so that we can
bring you the absolute bestunfiltered and unbiased
information.
If you want to support thispodcast, the best way to do it
is to first, you can share itwith your friends and your
training partners and, second,you can subscribe to Research

(01:08:07):
Essentials for Ultra Running,our research newsletter, where
we look at topics just like thisand we unpack them just a
little bit further with ourcrack team of physiologists and
coaches to explain these thingsin much greater detail.
If you're a coach, you're apractitioner or you're an
athlete that wants just a littlebit more information that is
available in these podcasts,check out that newsletter,

(01:08:28):
Research Essentials for UltraRunning and you're sure to get
your fix of ultra marathonscience content.
That is it for today, folks,and, as always, we will see you
out on the trails.

All Episodes

Durability in Ultrarunning with Michele Zanini, PhD | KoopCast #239

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Durability in Ultrarunning with Michele Zanini, PhD | KoopCast #239