Latest / Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes / Intro to Zone 2 Training, Lactate & Metabolic Testing Ep 54

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Intro to Zone 2 Training, Lactate & Metabolic Testing Ep 54 · Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes

• 0:38
  Speaker 0: Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Find your Edge podcast.
• 0:41
  Speaker 0: This episode is a little bit of a shorter one, but I just wanted to throw a little tidbit of information out, because it is a question that we get all the time with athletes who are coming into our lab.
• 0:52
  Speaker 0: And when I say lab, what I mean by that is our exercise physiology testing facility that is home-based in Cary, north Carolina.
• 1:00
  Speaker 0: So when you hear me say lab, that's what I mean.
• 1:03
  Speaker 0: If you go onto theenduranceedgecom and you look under services for metabolic and sweat testing, you can book a metabolic and sweat test at our facility.
• 1:13
  Speaker 0: The majority of people who we have come in are typically anywhere between, I'd say, late 20s to earlier mid-60.
• 1:22
  Speaker 0: And they just want to do something really cool for themselves.
• 1:25
  Speaker 0: Every once in a while we get a professional athlete, but more often than not it's people just like you who just want to do something awesome for themselves, be a little bit more intentional and more scientific about their training.
• 1:38
  Speaker 0: So the biggest question that I've been getting lately is I want to know my zone too.
• 1:43
  Speaker 0: So and I'm guessing that that is mostly relating to some of the other podcasts that you guys are listening to, which is great that we're getting more information and we're trying to understand our physiology better and our metabolism better.
• 1:54
  Speaker 0: So fantastic for that right.
• 1:56
  Speaker 0: We are totally here for it.
• 1:58
  Speaker 0: So most people when they come in, they say this stupid zone two training doesn't work or I don't know if I'm doing this zone two training right.
• 2:08
  Speaker 0: That's what we help them with and we like to do that specific testing between your substrate use and that is based on your VO two or your volume of oxygen.
• 2:19
  Speaker 0: That's why you put the mask on your face, right.
• 2:22
  Speaker 0: Most people, when you say VO2, they assume VO2 max.
• 2:25
  Speaker 0: That is a specific term for the maximum amount of oxygen that you consume to do work.
• 2:30
  Speaker 0: But VO2 is being taken at every point along the process, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 0: So when you are walking or when you're at rest, your VO2 is most likely somewhere around three to four.
• 2:43
  Speaker 0: When you are running at your maximal capacity, we typically see people with VO2 maxes in the 30s to the 60s and every once in a while we get somebody in the 70s.
• 2:54
  Speaker 0: So just so that you have that concept.
• 2:57
  Speaker 0: So VO2, or being aerobic for your zone two, means that you are using fat as an energy source efficiently or as best as you possibly can.
• 3:08
  Speaker 0: There are quite.
• 3:09
  Speaker 0: There are a couple of factors that go into that, but we want to make sure that your zone two training is doing that well.
• 3:15
  Speaker 0: That helps with training your type one muscle fibers, or what you might know as slow twitch muscle fibers, and it also helps with fatigue resistance.
• 3:24
  Speaker 0: Furthermore, you get increased muscle capillarization, so in other words, capillaries which have blood flow are increasing to your muscles.
• 3:33
  Speaker 0: So thereby, where your blood carries oxygen, delivering it to working muscles, and increased mitochondrial enzymes in those type one muscle fibers.
• 3:42
  Speaker 0: So mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cells, and every time I talk about this I always feel like I'm in back in ninth grade biology and thinking like when am I ever going to use this?
• 3:51
  Speaker 0: Well, here we are friends.
• 3:52
  Speaker 0: So when those within the cell, when we can multiply our mitochondria and then also make those mitochondrial enzymes more efficient, voila, we've got tons of energy to be able to help us go for two, three plus hours, depending on what you're training for right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 0: So that's where that is really important.
• 4:11
  Speaker 0: We also use lactate in combination with our VO2.
• 4:14
  Speaker 0: So typically lactate occurs if we're doing a graded exercise test in an exponential format, so it should theoretically be low, and when I say low, it's like under two millimoles, and then once you hit two millimoles you start to have an exponential rise.
• 4:31
  Speaker 0: And then, of course, four millimoles those are kind of our key markers two and four millimoles, which can be referred to as onset of blood, lactate accumulation or OBLA, or lactate threshold or LT, which in the cycling world you might think of as FTP.
• 4:47
  Speaker 0: So there's a lot of different pieces that I'm not going to get into too much Again, so many different podcasts that we could do on this.
• 4:53
  Speaker 0: But this is what we do in order to help people train more effectively and more efficiently.
• 4:58
  Speaker 0: So oftentimes when people come in, they are training at a pace that's way too slow and then they're complaining that it's not working, or they're training at a pace that's way too high and they're just not becoming more efficient.
• 5:10
  Speaker 0: So I at least wanted to just throw that out for you guys to start to think about.
• 5:14
  Speaker 0: There's so many other pieces that go into this, from your genetics to what your training history is, to how you put your training together.
• 5:22
  Speaker 0: But this is one of the pieces of the puzzle to help you train more effectively and efficiently.
• 5:27
  Speaker 0: And, like I said, if you are interested in booking a metabolic test with us, whether it be your VO2 max or your lactate threshold or your body composition test, we've got all kinds of or your resting metabolic rate.
• 5:38
  Speaker 0: Look at all those things that we have.
• 5:39
  Speaker 0: Again, head to theenduranceedgecom and, under services, go to metabolic and sweat testing and you can book there.
• 5:46
  Speaker 0: We are excited that we just brought on another exercise physiologist, so huzzah, and you'll be able to have more opportunities for testing times, including on the weekends.
• 5:56
  Speaker 0: So yeah, baby.
• 5:58
  Speaker 0: Anyhow, happy training.
• 5:59
  Speaker 0: Thanks for listening and we will see you next time.