Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #81: Gill1918 Presents Sports Physiologist Shannon Grady “Blood Don't Lie” Powered by Coach O

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#81: Gill1918 Presents Sports Physiologist Shannon Grady “Blood Don't Lie” Powered by Coach O · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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coaches for coaches, powered by Gill Athletics.
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Think of it as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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you grow as a coach. This episode is part of the
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Youth and Beginner Series, brought to you by Coach O.
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In this series, we focus on topics relating to coaching
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youth athletes, coaching beginner athletes of any age,
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and supporting brand new coaches as they find their way.
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With that in mind, let's grow. Did you ever wonder if human
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performance limits are in the mind or if performance setbacks
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are mental? Well, fortunately for all
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athletes and coaches, blood don't lie.
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Hi, this is Shannon Grady, sports physiologist, CEO and
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founder of the Mybaya app and author of The Lactate
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Revolution. Let me start today's episode
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with a short story from about 10 years ago.
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I had the parents of a very talented high school junior
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reached out to me concerned that their son was struggling with
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performances for the last 18 months.
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He was running about mid four 30s for the mile when he had
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already run 415 as a freshman. Now 430 doesn't seem that bad,
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but he had run 415 two years earlier.
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The athlete who worked hard, hammered tons of tempos and
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threshold training, never shield away from hard work, pretty much
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lived and breathed running, was being told that his subpar
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performances were quote a mental weakness.
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When his parents told me this, I had asked if they had any
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physiological data to prove if his performances were mental or
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physical because blood don't lie.
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They looked at me perplexed. This is when I explained that my
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physiological profile test protocol and analysis, which
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offers an in depth insights into an athlete's physiological and
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bioenergetic statics, has a direct correlation with the
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ability to perform at certain levels.
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I explained if we just did this simple test right on the track,
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we can rule out whether his performances declines were
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mental or physical. So a few days later I performed
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this athlete's first physiological profile test,
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which happened to be March of his junior year.
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His testing shockingly indicated that no matter how hard he tried
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or had, or how or no matter how hard he pushed himself or how
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strong mentally he was, he was never going to be able to run a
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sub 430 mile. This is just simply given his
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current physiological and bioenergetic status, he
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essentially only had 50% of the necessary energy he needed to
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run his previous times. So his parents were like, well,
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what do we do from here? So I created a training plan for
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this athlete based on his current physiological profile
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test and within six weeks, without doing anything else, we
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didn't do any mental training, we didn't adjust his sleep, we
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didn't adjust his diet. We simply adjusted his training
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to match his Physiology and within six weeks he was able to
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drop right back down to a 415 mile and by the end of the next
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indoor season, he ended up running a 409, setting a new
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Pennsylvania State record for the indoor season.
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And he literally went from struggling to break 4:30 to
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easily running a sub 410. This simple test was literally a
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game changer. By simply A showing and
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understanding how to apply lactate data can easily turn
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frustration into progress. Further details on this specific
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athlete's journey can be found in my book The Lactate
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Revolution Chapter 10 called Diagnostic Performance
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Monitoring. Think it's mental?
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Fortunately, blood don't lie. Now you may be thinking, how can
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you tell all of this from lactate data?
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Because most of the general population, even sports
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scientists and coaches and athletes, just assume lactate is
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something that builds up and makes your muscles burn, or
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they're just simply looking for their lactate threshold and
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trying to improve upon that. But after this simple lactate
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test, which again I termed the physiological profile test, I
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pointed out that lactate was not the enemy.
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All he lacked was the ability to produce enough lactate across a
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wide enough range to run faster and achieve his performance
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goals. As I mentioned in my previous
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episode, lactate's a unit of energy, and in order to produce
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energy fast enough to run certain times, you're going to
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need lactate across a wide enough spectrum in order to even
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have a chance to run as fast as you're trying to.
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This athlete was training primarily to focus on improving
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his lactate threshold, but pushing that as much as he
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could, when in fact that approach lowered his ability to
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run fast. And when I shifted his training,
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we actually intentionally reduced his quote UN quote
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lactate threshold in order to give him a chance to run fast.
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The spectrum of lactate is, is really important and it's
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something I have termed the physiological range, which is
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simply the difference between your Max maximum lactate and
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your minimum lactate. And your physiological range
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needs to be at a certain point for performance, for optimizing
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performance in any event. And as I said, this athlete was
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had a physiological range that was range that was 50% of what
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he needed in order to run a 430 mile.
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Again, lactate's not the enemy. It's an athlete's best chance of
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success if trained properly. Lactate's simply the human
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energy currency and the ability to produce a certain range of
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lactate. Your physiological range is
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necessary not only for optimizing performance, but also
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maintaining homeostasis, improving metabolism, and
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keeping your hormones balanced. So let me review the basics.
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Lactate isn't a villain, it's often made out to be.
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Lactate is a human energy currency currency.
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And lactate doesn't cause fatigue.
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It's actually a fuel source that's recycled.
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And if you train it properly, you are going to achieve maximum
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performance benefits if you understand how to train lactate
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across the entire spectrum and all the aspects of lactate dye
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damage dynamics which include lactate clearance, lactate
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tolerance, lactate shuttling and lactate production.
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Again, the body needs contribution in pretty much
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every sport and every event across the entire spectrum,
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which again ranges from 0.7 millimoles to 37.
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I mean to sorry, 0.7 millimoles to 32 millimoles per liter in
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order to, to maximize training and performance.
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More detailed on details, sorry, more details on the
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physiological profile tests can be found in chapter 4 of my book
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and also on my website and my Instagram page as I actually
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explain and demonstrate how to perform a simple physiological
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profile test on the track for most track athletes.
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Depending on how fast you are, you're going to either do 400
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meter repeats or 800 meter repeats right on the track.
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And you're going to do a minimum of force 4 stages and a maximum
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of eight stages. And in between each stage,
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you're going to take your heart rate, your lactate, and the
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actual time you ran. And this is going to create a
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lactate profile. You'll start the test pretty
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easy and you'll continue to get faster until you can't go any
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faster. Your lactate profile is simply
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going to show what energy you have available and at what level
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it's operating. I break the lactate spectrum
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into 8 systems from low end energy to Max high end energy
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and these eight systems will all contribute to total work output.
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If any part is missing or operating too too low of a
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level, training can be adjusted to specifically target different
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lactate systems. The the lactate profile, the
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physiological profile test will identify specifically which
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parts of the body which parts of the Physiology need focus for
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training. It's just like taking your car
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to the shop and looking under the hood and see which parts are
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broken in order to fix the fix the car.
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Same thing. The human body is like a
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machine. And if we have, we have 8
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possible parts that are going to contribute to our work output in
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any event. And if we're only training a
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couple of those parts, our total work output is not going to be
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as efficient as if we're maximizing all the parts that
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are needed to contribute to performance.
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I need to mention this because for 99% of the population,
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including sports scientists and coaches, the extent of their
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lactate knowledge is to improve quote UN quote lactate threshold
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or what textbooks generally say is 4 millimoles.
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The other kind of understanding of lactate is to target LT1 and
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LT2. Again, all of the emphasis in
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the general population is, is pretty much training lactate
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between 1:00 and 4:00 millimoles and anything they consider
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anything above 4 millimoles to be quote UN quote anaerobic or
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hard. Well, these are simply just not
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true. These antiquated concepts
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actually take no consideration of the entire lactate spectrum
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or its contribution to performance in all events and
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all sports. Quite frankly, most of the use
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of the application of lactate data to improve lactate
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threshold. Again, one, there's not a single
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lactate threshold. Each lactate system has a
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threshold or what I like to actually more aptly term,
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capacity to do work. Two, spot checking during random
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workouts does not correlate to lactate values on a continuous
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test or like a profile test. When you're when you're spot
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checking, it's pretty much an indication that you're failing
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to take into consideration all aspects of lactate dynamics.
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When you take a random finger finger stick of lactate, you
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need to understand that in order to use that data point, you're
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going to have to conduct that same exact workout over 100
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times and collect the data at the same exact time in order to
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start to make sense of that data point.
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So, for example, A4, if you're, if you're doing a workout and
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you're, for instance, doing, let's say 6 by 5 minutes with a
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minute rest and you randomly collect your lactate and it says
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4. But then you come back a couple
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days later or even later that afternoon and you're doing,
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let's say 16 by 400 with a minute rest and you collect your
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lactate and it says four. Well, unfortunately, those two
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samples of four minimals are not the same thing.
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And I'll get into that further in, in a different discussion as
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we, as we get deeper into lactate dynamics.
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But understanding that the, the, the, the number that comes out
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is has to do with the work interval, the rest interval and
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the total amount of work you've done and understanding which
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parts of lactate dynamics are coming into play.
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When you get that reading, which is actually a net, a net
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reading. It's not, it's not lactate
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production. It takes all the factors of
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lactate dynamics and comes out with a net number.
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And my third main point about training lactate is that doing
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too much work in any system, including threshold, will be
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detrimental to Physiology and performances.
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So one of the biggest things in coaching and training is to know
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how much of what types of workouts are going to yield the
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best responses. So sometimes that means doing
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easy running, sometimes that means doing longer, slower
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intervals, sometimes that means doing shorter, faster intervals,
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and sometimes it means doing all out speed work.
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And there's no right or wrong answer.
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The answer is yes. All of those types of trainings,
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all of those types of workouts are are in fact beneficial to
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some athlete at some point. But knowing when the stimulus or
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the workout is going to create a positive physiological change or
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positive adaptation is the key. So there's no right or wrong
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workout. It's just a matter of using
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physiological data, lactate data, in order to understand and
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make better choices as to which types of workouts are going to
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create a positive adaptation in that athlete, which will
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ultimately yield better performances for high school,
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college and pro track athletes. We actually aim to perform a
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profile test every 10 to 12 weeks pretty much before each
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season. So we'll perform a profile test
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before cross country season, right before indoor track, right
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before outdoor track. And then at, at the end of the
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track season, athletes usually take a two week break.
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They run for a week easy. And then they'll, they'll take a
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lactate test in order to set up their summer training.
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But each time they take a profile test, their training
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targets are updated. Their, their system, their
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lactate system training is, is updated.
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And pretty much it takes the guesswork out of planning the
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daily training load, whether it's the workout type, intensity
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type, and it individualizes the the training for each athlete.
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Even though you might have a A-Team, a cross country team
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working on the same system or the same workouts, but each
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athlete is going to have their individual pace targets down to
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the second in order to ensure that they're targeting that
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lactate, lactate system for them.
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Another great feature of using physiological profile data to to
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steer your training is that it's truly a dynamic periodization
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model, which is which is going to be the key to maximize
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performance in any event. For example, you could have, we
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have the high school cross country season is just kicking
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up and many high school and college teams are doing their
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beginning of the season profile testing.
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Each athlete is racing the same event, but depending on their
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profile, testing results, their path or or which systems they're
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going to target from the beginning of the season to the
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end of the season may be different from their teammates,
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but that's OK. They're all raising the 5K, but
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some may need to focus on different systems or different
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types of workouts in order to get to peak performance even in
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the same event. The important information each
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athlete and coach receives from a physiological profile test
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analysis includes individual heart rate zones, individualized
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training paces, and an individualized system and facing
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plan. Some useful tips for high school
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coaches. At a minimum, it's really good
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to use lactate profile testing to get individualized heart rate
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zones and target training paces. Use those zones and paces at a
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minimum to ensure that your athletes are recovering properly
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and developing at their own rate.
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More often than not, I see many high school kids because they're
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young, they can recover faster. They're not running a ton of
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miles. They often you have, you know,
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your middle of the pack kids who are always trying to keep up
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with the front of the pack kids who may not be quite as
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developed or genetically as talented are.
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They can keep up in the workouts, but it doesn't mean
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they should. So often when we test these kids
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who are pushing themselves to keep up with the, with the front
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of the pack, they can do it. But you'll often see that their,
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their Physiology is not as developed and they're missing a
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lot of parts because they're, they're constantly overworking
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on a day-to-day basis. So they're missing developing.
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And so they're always perplexed when they say, well, I can keep
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up with so and so on our runs and I can keep up with so and so
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in the workouts. But when it comes to race day,
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you know they're beating me by a minute or more.
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And that's simply because the the athlete that's that's in the
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front of the pack is using a lower end energy system to
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perform those workouts than the athlete who's always overworking
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to try to keep up. So the, the physiological
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profile tests can make sure one, we're not missing the mark,
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especially for youth development, especially in that,
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in that high school setting where we've got, we've got a
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wide range of talent. And it's there's a lot of
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guesswork and in order, especially for those kids trying
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to keep up with those, those kids who are maybe more
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developed or more talented, we want them to develop at their
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own rate so they can get to the next level.
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In summary, embracing lactate basics empowers athletes of all
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levels to train smarter, not harder.
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It's the foundation of my system based training approach, which
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has helped Olympians and world champs in numerous sports, but
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now it's available and accessible for everyone.
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For more info, you can check out my book The Lactate Revolution
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on my website to take a deeper dive.
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Or you can also get your own heart rate analysis and lactate
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analysis and training targets through my newly released MY Via
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mobile app, which analyzes and tracks lactate and heart rate
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right from your phone. Let's revolutionize training.
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Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Thanks for joining us for this
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episode in the Youth and beginner series Powered by Coach
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