Starts around 12:45: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OqnWg33n7o
80% he stays at 110-135 HR and the rest is zone 3 (sub 3.0 mmol). NO threshold (at least at altitude).
Obviously he does way more volume than most humans can handle, but interesting to hear that arguably the greatest endurance athlete currently alive basically follows the same framework/philosophy as the Norwegian method.
I put together a one-year review of the TymeWear VitalPro strap, which measures ventilation, and most of the video is dedicated to making the argument that it is more accurate for intensity control compared to lactate meters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C22uVSE9ruE
TLDR Version:
1. Both lactate and ventilation are highly correlated markers of metabolism and have been used by physiologists for decades to assess thresholds and intensity domains. The primary flaw with lactate meters is their inability to measure lactate continuously, which opens the door for inaccuracies.
2. Many athletes use lactate meters for a ceiling test – where they obtain their LT1/LT2 from a ramp test and then target mmol concentration levels relative to those thresholds during their subsequent workouts. One problem with this, is that ramp tests can only estimate thresholds, which physiologically speaking, delineate the domains where there is a shift in metabolic stability. This is why the gold standard to determine an athlete’s LT2 is the MLSS test, which requires multiple 30m trials to determine the fastest speed where the athlete’s lactate readings do not increase by more than 1mmol/L over minutes 10-30.
3. Even if an athlete has completed an MLSS test, it only indicates his LT2 on that day for that workout. The reality is that thresholds can change on a daily or even hourly basis. This means that an athlete’s LT1/LT2 on a given day may not be his LT1/LT2 on a different day even if his fitness hasn’t changed.
4. You can roughly assess metabolic stability within a given workout with lactate by assessing whether there is a drift between readings, but athletes may only perform 2-3 lactate tests during an interval workout and the accuracy of each reading can be negatively impacted by various factors such as contamination, user error, device error, changes in blood volume etc.
5. Because the VitalPro measures ventilation continuously, you can estimate metabolic stability within each workout independent of any prior ramp test (so long as it is at a constant pace). This is possible for even shorter intervals (6m) since the initial amplitude of the drift can predict whether the athlete would eventually be able to reach a steady state later on.
6. The Vitalpro can also assess relative intensity within the moderate domain more accurately because regardless of the domain, CO2 increases with ATP turnover, which must then be expelled out via higher ventilation. Because of this, you can use the Vitalpro to assess fatigue/muscle damage during easy runs/warmups which will appear as higher ventilation than normal at the same pace. Since lactate meters only measure lactate concentration and not the actual amount of lactate being produced by the working muscle, some or all of the lactate being produced on easier runs may be consumed by other muscle fibers or organs before reaching the fingertip or earlobe.
Full disclosure: I'm not sponsored by and have no affiliation with TymeWear.
Edit: For those that are still skeptical, it's understandable. The claims I am making may contradict the beliefs some of you have held as indisputable truth for a long time - reinforced by your favorite coaches, athletes and influencers. My suggestion would be to do your own research - not by watching youtube videos or IG reels, but by reading reputable physiology textbooks and research papers.
And the proof is in the pudding. You can see 100% of my runs here: https://vtcheck.com/founder-dashboard
For example, below is the data from my 3x10 ST session today: Interval 1: 140.5 L/min VE and 1.17 L/min drift; Interval 2: 151.3 L/m VE and 1.02L/min drift; Interval 3: 150.1 L/min VE and 0 L/min drift.
This is the prototypical picture of a heavy domain run. Lower VE and higher drift in the first interval and then steady VE and diminishing drift for the last 2 intervals as my aerobic system warmed up and an equilibrium is achieved. Note that the difference in VE between the 2nd and 3rd intervals is 1.2 L/min, which is 0.027% of the span between my VT1 and VT2. To put that in perspective, if your LT1 and LT2 were 2mmol and 4mmol, respectively, this would represent a proportional differnece of 0.055 mmols. The standard error for the best lactate meters is something like +/- .1-.3mmols when the lactate concentration hasn't actually changed.
I challenge any lactate user to argue that their meter can deliver this level of detail and precision.
https://citiusmag.com/articles/femke-broeders-bol-800m-training-laurent-meuwly-interview
"CITIUS MAG: You've obviously seen the tweet I posted when Femke said, in one of the interviews in the mixed zone yesterday, that her long-run pace is 5:30 per kilometer and her threshold pace is around 4:20 on a good day. There are all these people who are distance runners training for their own marathons saying, "Oh, I can do that" — and obviously they cannot run 1:54 for 800 meters.
It might be good for you to explain how that all works together, because she's a very different athlete to any typical distance runner who might be an 800m/1500m type or a 15:00 5000m type. So how does that all work together in the training?
Laurent Meuwly: Yeah, first of all, those numbers are right. I also read that people were questioning whether it was LT1 or LT2. No, it's LT2. And when she runs 7, 8 — sometimes, very rarely, 10 — kilometers, it's around 5:30, even 5:45 per kilometer. For us it was really important to follow the physiological component. So, we did tests. We trained with zones. Because it was really important that this aerobic part would not lead to overtraining and then get in the way of other qualities."
Obviously coming from the 400m her anaerobic system is going to be dominant, but thought it was quite interesting that even for the 800, she focuses on doing subthreshold work at such a "slow pace". Shows how important the aerobic system is even at relatively short distances.
I'm wondering if endurance runners need to do any speed work at all unless they are competing for championships where the difference between 1st and 10th place is like 1 second.
In Marius Bakken's book and interviews, he frequently discusses muscle tone/state as the best way to assess daily condition, but notes that there is no easy, objective way to measure it. For those that are interested in this subject, I think I have discovered a method to reliably track it (indirectly) - by measuring minute ventilation during exercise.
I first started using minute ventilation back in September as a method to control intensity. And although on most days, my ventilation values are consistent at the same pace, occassionally, my ventilation will spike well above normal levels. At first I dismissed this as random noise, but then I started noticing a pattern - these spikes were often correlated to days where my condition was impaired, such as after a hard workout or a heavy squat day.
For example, attached are two graphs plotting my runs from 4/1-8/1. The top graph plots each of these runs by pace (x-axis) and ventilation (y-axis). The bottom graph plots the same runs by date (x-axis) and deviation from my "average" ventilation values at their respective paces (y-axis) - where red bars indicate runs above my average and green bars indicate runs below my average.
The red circled areas highlight two periods where I experienced a cluster of very high ventilation values (the faint blue shaded area near the center line is 1 standard of deviation from my average), which coincide with the time where my condition was at its worst - the first period was during my double threshold experiment, and the second period was during my week long "vacation" which involved carrying around an 8mo old for miles every day at places like disneyland turning my legs into lead.
Given this pattern, I decided to research why this was happening, and it turns out there is a physiological basis for ventilation significantly increasing when your muscles are damaged, even when lactate concentrations remain normal - When your muscles are damaged, they can't contract with the same amount of force as they ordinarily do. When your muscles can't contract with ordinary force, due to the size principle, they must recruit additional fast-twitch fibers to produce the same amount of power. And when your body recruits a greater percentage of fast twitch fibers for the same power output, it increases your relative CO2 production (which correlates to ventilation) due to 3 primary factors:
(1) Fast twitch fibers are less efficient from an oxygen utilization standpoint compared to slow twitch fibers, meaning they require more ATP/oxygen to produce the same amount of power, which increases CO2.
(2) Fast twitch fibers highly prefer glucose over fat relative to slow twitch fibers and oxidizing glucose produces more CO2 compared to fat.
(3) Fast twitch fibers generally have fewer and smaller mitochondria compared to slow twitch fibers which causes them to be more prone to producing energy through anaerobic glycolysis, resulting in more H+ accumulation, which generates more CO2.
So why can't lactate be used to reliably assess muscle state? For two main reasons: (a) Lactate doesn't cleanly track metabolic CO2 production (#1 and 2 above) because fat oxidation doesn't produce lactate and glucose oxidation only produces a small net amount. (b) Although lactate does track H+ accumulation (#3 above), in the moderate domain, by the time an athlete takes a lactate concentration sample in the ear or finger, most/all of that excess H+/lactate is recylced in the body.
It is true that your lactate concentrations should also be higher than normal in the heavy/severe domains when your muscles are impaired, but due to how lactate concentration is measured, you won't know this until the middle or end of your workout. And personally, I do not alter any of my workouts based on poor condition - I power through them, with the sole exception being when I cross my VT2. But I do heavily modulate the duration/pace of virtually all of my cooldowns and easy runs based on my present condition.
Having tracked over 1,000 runs using ventilation, I now use it exclusively to assess condition/fatigue, where I previously used a number of different tools such as whoop, garmin, strava, intervalsicu etc. The issue with these sorts of algorithmic fatigue trackers is that they primarily rely on external metrics, which is like trying to manage one's diabetes by counting macros. In contrast, tracking ventilation is like using a glucose monitor because it tells you what is happening internally at that given moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v12hneEx9iU
Thanks to everyone that has tried the app out and provided feedback. We've made significant improvements since launch, which will be summarized in the next few user guide videos.
TLDR: VTCheck is a suite of apps that provides insights into your condition, fitness and workout intensity by applying statistical modeling to 4 internal load parameters based on ventilation (if you own a Tymewear Vitalpro) or heart rate - all of which are based on physiological studies (https://vtcheck.com/science).
For those following the NSM or the traditional Norwegian Method, the app extrapolates baseline targets for each of these parameters at each prescribed pace based on a regression analysis applied to your last 30 days of workouts.These targets can be used in real time to adjust your workouts on the fly and to also help with structuring your programming. More details on how to do that in the next couple videos.
