Today was the Champions' League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United. For those who don't know, the Champions' League is a competition among elite European Football (or soccer) clubs, which compete in a tournament style until the final game, which was today. It was the first Champions' League final I'd ever seen, as this was the first year I had become more fully aware of the wider world of soccer, both in the United States and abroad. At any rate, Barcelona won the game 3-1, and did so without resorting to diving and play-acting.
While watching the game, I remembered a line from Kenny Moore's biography on Bill Bowerman, in which Bowerman describes in a few words one of the goals of his training methods; in short, he meant to "callous" a runner so that he could race well. The line had been interesting when I read the book last year, but it proved especially interesting today, given the soccer match on television, as well as some reading I've been doing by a doctor named Tim Noakes. Dr. Noakes wrote a long book entitled "The Lore of Running," which is a fascinating and very erudite examination of much of the literature on all aspects of running from the last century. One of the unique things about Noakes' work, for me at least, is his rejection of the usual aerobic/anaerobic explanation of running performance.
The standard model upon which most every running program I've ever studied are based is that the single greatest inhibitor to endurance performace is the ability of the working muscles to take in sufficient oxygen to continue working. I am not a physiologist, nor do I have extensive instruction in the field, so please bear with my rather simplistic explanation, if you will.
The cells in a resting muscle produce energy aerobically, because the amount of oxygen reaching those muscles is sufficient for the cells' oxygen needs. When running easy, this continues to be the case, and it is consequently called "aerobic" running. As one runs faster, the oxygen demands of the muscle become greater, until a point is reached where the oxygen demands of the working muscle cells become too great for the body. It is at this point that running becomes "anaerobic," because the muscles begin producing energy without sufficient oxygen. In some types of cells, the consequence of anaerobic respiration is alcohol. Were human cells to function in this way, it may be that the person who runs too fast for his or her muscles to function aerobically could become progressively more and more drunk; no doubt such an adaption has long been purged from the human gene pool, if it was ever there, by the predators (can you imagine running away from a lion while rapidly becoming more and more drunk?). At any rate, human muscles have a limited capacity to produce energy anaerobically, which is very costly and not very efficient. The orthodox goal of a running program, so I have learned, was to improve both of these systems so that one could run faster over the desired race distance.
Then I read Arthur Lydiard, a famous New Zealand coach who is very important in discussions on distance running training. If you've never heard of him, you won't have trouble finding information (and misinformation) about him. At any rate, his big idea was essentially that of the two ways of producing energy in the human body, the aerobic was the true limiting factor to endurance performance, while the anaerobic was limited, relatively immutable, and only important during the peak races of the year. His training philosophy sought to build up the aerobic capacity as high as possible, then maximize the limited anaerobic capacity just before the big race. The direction of training through most of the year, therefore, became the development of the aerobic capacity to exercise.
Lydiard's system is very logical, though some of his explanations and training schedules can be confusing. He repeatedly writes that he does not like writing training schedules, since everyone is different and should figure out their own, but the schedules he does write are are sub-divided into a number of phases that can be hard to follow sometimes. At any rate, this particular paradigm serves a lot of people today, and has been tremendously influential in the running community and beyond.
Yet Dr. Noakes seems to have a slightly different idea in mind. I'm afraid my lack of physiology will do me even worse in describing it, but I will do my best. Essentially, Dr. Noakes believes that the aerobic/anaerobic model does not adequately explain how the body actually appears to respond to intense exercise. According to the evidence Dr. Noakes examines, it is not the amount of oxygen in the working muscles that determines performance, but rather the amount of oxygen in the heart (and picked up on by the brain), that determines performace. This idea forms one aspect of a complex theory called the Central Governor model, which holds that performance is determined by the brain desire to maintain a sufficiently safe homeostasis for the preserveration of life. In short, the sub-conscious brain governs how hard one is able to push the body in training and competition.
It's an interesting if complex theory, and it brings me back to the point made earlier about Bowerman's training philosophy of "callousing." Dr. Noakes speculates at times that part of the purpose of intense training before competiton is to attempt to "reset" the Central Governor to tolerate greater pain and physiological distress before forcing the body to ease up. These speculations seem similar to Bowerman's thought that certain types of training and racing could help "callous" a person physically and mentally, making them tougher during races, and able to push themselves closer to their true potential ability. To what extent the two ideas are congruent is not entirely clear, but it does seem possible that Bowerman's intuition had picked up on this function of training in a way that the usual aerobic/anaerobic paradigm of his day does not seem to have accounted. It is something to consider.
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