Ignoring Chris Carmicheal Since I’m Not Lance

I’ve been reading Vern Gambetta’s weblog for some time now.

Functional Path Training: Variation: “The human organism is highly adaptable so it must be continually challenged with new stresses and increasingly challenging movement problems to solve.”

As a pioneer in Functional Training, he stresses that conditioning programs- endurance or strength need to be designed as preparation for the activity itself. At first, I thought this meant staying away from weight machines and using medicine balls and agility drills, but I’m beginning to think that the idea has much broader implications.

As I’ve explored some of the websites that favor high intensity interval training for general conditioning (Hillfit, The 20 Minute Fitness Solution, Mark’s Daily Apple) I’ve begun to understand that we may have been damaged by the “Aerobics Revolution” just as we have with low fat dieting.

Mark’s Daily Apple » Blog Archive » A Case Against Cardio (from a former mileage king): “Unfortunately, the popular wisdom of the past 40 years – that we would all be better off doing 45 minutes to an hour a day of intense aerobic activity – has created a generation of overtrained, underfit, immune-compromised exerholics. ”

There’s a strong emphasis on relatively low intensity, extensive training across the fitness literature. It led me for years to take long fitness rides, keeping my heart rate down. In reading Joe Friel and Brian Clarke last year, I began to get some idea of work volume and hard easy training, but in the end, my fitness over a good bit of the year was stagnant, especially when training time was short.

I now think that the problem is that the professional atheletes that these approaches have been developed for can stress themselves with very large volumes at the moderate intensities. I can squeeze in a 3 hour ride on some Sundays, but not all. And I can’t get more than about 10 hours of duration in a week. Once I’m adapted to the 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1 hr training week, I can’t get anywhere since I’m adapted to it. At first I thought that there would be some adaptation since more work could be done during the same time, but I’m now seeing that such gains will be limited.

As a 50 year old who’s been active for years, my limiter is no longer my 2-3 hour endurance at 60-70% of VO2 max. And I would probably gain little developing my 3-5 hour endurance even if I had the time. My limiters are strength and oxygen utilization (VO2 Max). I need to stress those systems to force adaptation and improvement in my ability to hike, run and bicycle.

Returning to Vern Gambetta, cycling through different activities that empahasize different abilities, while maintaining the overall base is likely to be the most efficient and productive means of functional conditioning. I think he presents some of these ideas in a practical way in this article: Rethinking Periodization.

Author: James Vornov

I'm an MD, PhD Neurologist who left a successful academic career on the Faculty of The Johns Hopkins Medical School to develop new treatments in Biotech and Pharma. I became fascinated with how people actually make decisions based on the science of decision theory and emerging understanding of how the brain works to make decisions. My passion now is this deep explanation of what has been the realm of philosophy, psychology and self help but is now understood as brain function. By understanding our brains, I believe we can become happier, more successful people. View all posts by James Vornov