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Going for Gold
If you want to reach your peak level of performance and be a winner, especially in an endurance sport, you must accomplish five critical tasks:
1. Maximize your aerobic capacity (V02max) so that more energy is available to sustain your exercise;
2. Raise your lactate threshold as high as possible, so that intense efforts can be maintained with a minimum of fatigue;
3. Become more efficient at carrying out the exact activities required in your particular sport, so that less energy is wasted during competition and hard exertions feel less stressful;
4. Fortify yourself psychologically, so that the vicissitudes of training and competing can be handled more easily;
5. Learn how to rest, so that your hard training is perfectly balanced with adequate amounts of recovery.
1) Maximal aerobic capacity:
This is probably the easiest of the five tasks, since just engaging in your sport for expanded periods of time can heighten
V02max. If you're a runner and currently training 60 km per week, you can earn a nice
V02max upgrade simply by expanding your weekly schedule to 75-90 km, without increasing the actual intensity of your
workouts. However, beyond a certain point, increasing your quantity of training no longer boosts
V02max. Once that point is reached, INTENSITY of training becomes the key factor: you'll have to
run at speeds which lift your heart rate to at least 95 per cent of maximal in order to push
V02max as high as possible. To make things more difficult, attaining such high heart rates for brief periods of time won't work. If you're really interested in sending
V02max to the stratosphere, your 'intensity needle' will have to point to 95 percent of maximal heart rate for four-to-five minute stretches several times during selected workouts.
2) Lactate threshold:
Lifting lactate threshold (LT) - the exercise intensity above which lactic acid begins to increase appreciably in your blood - is fairly straightforward. If you fatten up your
V02max, you will usually raise your threshold as well, since LT is often a fixed percentage of aerobic capacity.
However, it is also possible to raise LT independently, which is lucky in those cases where
V02max refuses to budge. Training continuously at about 85-90 percent of maximal heart rate for
20 to 25 minute periods will generally have a profound effect on LT. If you don't own a heart monitor or hate checking your pulse, a good LT-raising intensity is one which feels as though it would be impossible to sustain for longer than 30 minutes during a workout.
3) Efficiency:
The key to improving your efficiency of movement is to recognize that each muscle in your body is composed of collections of individual muscle cells. If you make a particular muscle stronger, then fewer of the individual cells within that muscle will be required to sustain a certain level of effort. In other words, more muscle cells within the strengthened muscle are allowed to rest while you're engaging in your sport, and other muscles which assist your power-boosted muscle are less likely to be called into play. Since you'll need to activate fewer individual muscle cells to
run at 15km per hour your overall energy demand will be lower - you'll be more efficient! As a result, you'll be able to step up to higher than expected intensities of exercise, or else conserve large quantities of precious muscle fuel if you prefer to remain at your traditional work rate.
To get more powerful, and therefore more efficient, you'll need to carry out some training at levels of effort which are actually higher than your usual competitive
pace.
Another way to become more efficient is to improve running
technique. A better running technique for a 400m Hurdler may improve his
Personal Best by 2 or 3 seconds, while having the same level of fitness.
4) Fortify yourself psychologically:
Compared to the physiological requirements of a winning performance, the exact psychological needs of the top-level athlete are less clear, but it is certain that superior performers are able to concentrate almost totally on their bodies during workouts and competitions, blocking out extraneous thoughts and negative information which might impede their performances. The best athletes also tend to be somewhat self-critical, but not overly so, and they often engage in 'positive self-talk', giving themselves encouragement both during exercise and throughout the course of an average day.
Supreme competitors also have the ability to let bad performances roll off their backs; in fact, they tend to regard poor outings as opportunities to learn more about themselves and to make necessary changes in both their physical and mental preparations for competitions. The best athletes also seem to form mental images of themselves moving powerfully and quickly, and they tune in these images before major competitions.
Finally, almost all great athletes have the apparently paradoxical ability to both relax and remain somewhat tense. Their muscles are
ready for maximally powerful efforts during competition, yet within their minds keen fires burn which are ready to ignite almost superhuman physical exertion.
5) Learn how to rest:
Although severe workouts are necessary to get to the top, rest is equally important but is all too often missing from a potentially great athlete's schedule. Attuned to the idea that high-level workouts produce winning performances, the majority of athletes go overboard, pushing themselves to the brink of fatigue and overtraining. Top athletes have learned that optimal training involves exercising and resting; it's not possible to reach supreme performance levels unless fierce exertions are balanced with restoration and recovery.
Even the seemingly fatigue-proof Kenyan runners take two-month respites each year during which they do very little training. As they put it so simply: 'Our bodies need to take a rest, so that we can train hard the rest of the year'. All competitive athletes should have at least one annual six- to eight-week period in which very little training is done, and should avoid the temptation to carry out too many high-intensity workouts during the training year.
True, not every athlete needs to reach the five goals outlined above. Sprinters and throwers, for example, don't require high
V02max levels or lofty lactate thresholds, and they may in fact lose some of their raw muscle power if they focus on
V02max-building training. Sprinters and throwers need to enhance the anaerobic capacities of their muscles, not the aerobic, so the maximum amount of force can be exerted in the shortest possible time. However, for athletes involved in activities which last for more than a couple of minutes, hitting all five targets should lead to the biggest pay-off of all: a winning
performance.
If you want to win more races, lose some fat. The late Dr George Sheehan, a prolific and highly regarded writer on distance running, considered that weight relative to height was THE key factor in distance running success.
The subject of adjusting weight to improve performance is a touchy one. When an article on this appeared in a sports journal it brought an indignant reply from a nutritionist: 'It is dangerous to be
significantly underweight for one's height'.
No man six feet tall and weighing 80kg will ever win the London
Marathon. Why? To answer this we must consult Dr Stillman's height/weight ratio table. He fixes the non-active man's average weight for height with a simple formula. He allocates
110lbs (56.2kg) for the first five feet (1.524m) in height and 5.5lbs (2.296kg) for every inch (0.025m) thereafter. He is harsher with women, giving them 100lbs (45.3kg) for the first five feet and 5lbs (2.268kg) for every inch above this.
Having established the average, he then speculates on the ideal weight for athletic performance, as follows:
Sprinters (100-400m): 2.5% lighter than average (6ft/176lbs - 21/2% = 4lbs)
Hurdlers (100-400m): 6% lighter (or 9lbs)
Middle-distance runners (800m - 10K): 12 % lighter (or 19lbs)
Long-distance runners (10 miles onwards): 15 % lighter (or 25.5lbs).
Matching these figures to reality
How do these figures compare to past record holders? Here is a list of some of them:
Emile Zatopek - 5'81/2' (1.740m)/154lbs (69.8kg): same as the average man
Herb Elliott - 5'101/2' (1.791m)/147lbs (66.6kg): 11 % below average
Kip Keino - 5'9' (1.753m)/146lbs (66.2kg): 9 % below average
Seb Coe - 5'10' (1.778m)/120lbs (54.4kg): over 20 % below average
Steve Cram - 6'11/2' (1.867m)/153lbs (69kg): 15 % below average
Linford Christie - 6'21/2' (1.89m)/170lbs (77kg): 10 % below average
Wendy Sly - 5'51/2' (1.66m)/113lbs (51kg): 11 % below average
Yvonne Murray - 5'7' (1.70m)/111lbs (50kg): 18 % below average
Sally Gunnell - 5'6' (1.67m)/124lbs (56kg): 5 % below average
Ingrid Kristiansen - 5'61/2' (1.68m)/128lbs (58kg): 4 % below average
Tatyana Kazankina - 5'31/2' (1.61m)/110lbs (49kg): 6 % below average
Greta Waitz - 5'61/2' (1.689m)/110lbs (49kg): 17 % below average
There are one or two anomalies in these figures. For instance, Zatopek, who gained three gold medals in the 1952 Olympics (5K, 10K and marathon) weighs the same as the average man of his height. And Ingrid Kristiansen, who ran a marathon in 2:21.6, is just below the average weight for her height. However, note the staggering percentage below the normal for Seb Coe, who broke 12 world records in four years. If we take the average of these 12 world-class athletes, they weigh 10 per cent less than the average person of their height. So we must conclude from this that Drs Sheehan and Stillman had a point to make of considerable importance.
Every athlete has a best racing weight which should be elucidated by trial and error.
It is a long-established fallacy that because one runs every day one cannot be overweight for competition.
If you are in the overweight category, this is the procedure to follow:
1. Don't go without food. Every four hours eat meals that include the Basic Four - skimmed milk, lean meat, fruit, vegetables, whole-grain cereal and bread
2. Avoid the following high-fat-content foods: cooking fat, lard, etc; margarine, butter, bacon, chocolate, pork, cheese, sugar, mutton, cream, excessive alcohol.
3. Eat plenty of fruit, vegetables, fish, veal liver and fat-free beef
4. Do the type of running that burns fat. That is below 80 % of your maximum capacity, which is about 85
% of your maximal heart rate for less than an hour run and around 75 % MHR over this period.
5. Increase your mileage.
6. Avoid mid-meal snacks. If you're desperate, eat fruit.
7. If you are a teenager, ignore all the above advice! You are growing and need all the good food you can get, but that rules out crisps, sweets and takeaways. Learn to cook vegetables and meats.
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