Optimse Your Training Program - Energy Systems Training

The most important thing you need for training? Check. Mobility, Stability and Flexibility? Check.

Strength Training? Check.

That brings us to Energy Systems Training - which I called aerobic conditioning in yesterday's post.

Energy Systems Training can be broken into 2 parts:

1 - Anaerobic

2 - Aerobic

Anaerobic refers to bouts of intensive activity that are so short, they cannot use oxygen to generate energy. 

Aerobic refers to less intense bouts of activity that can use oxygen to generate energy.

They often thought of as sprints and jogging but it's not quite that simple.

Anaerobic can be broken again into 2 parts:

1 - Alactic

2 - Lactic

Now the difference here is the times that the activity is sustained for. 

Alactic is a duration of 1 - 10 seconds and lactic generally from 10 - 30 seconds. 

Another difference between the two is that alactic bouts of energy will induce the most powerful contractions but fatigue sets in and shuts down these maximal efforts within 10 seconds, hopefully before your performance decreases. 

If you stop within the 10 second range then you'll have only induced a moderate amount of fatigue and with a 3 - 5 minute rest, you should be pretty much ready to go again at a similar level of performance.

Things start to get a bit messy with the lactic work though - very messy if not performed correctly. 

Seeing as though you can only sustain a near-maximal effort for 10 seconds MAXIMUM, you keep pushing the envelope here to the 30 second mark.  

So even though you've ran through all your maximal energy you are still going and now fatigue is building up a rapid rate - and this is what is known as "the burn" and "lactic acid" which is not entirely correct either (read on but a potential future post in it self).

What is interesting is that your performance doesn't decrease because of lactic acid build up directly. 

Lactic acid is actually a defense mechanism to prevent permanent damage to your muscles by reducing it's ability to contract - much like your low back muscles going into spasm to make you all stiff and tight, which will prevent you from moving and potentially causing even more damage. 

Now when you have all this build up of fatigue, unless you rest at least 8 minutes between sets, you next bout of activity will not be as great as the previous one and this continues with each successive bout of exercise.

This means you then run the risk of building up so much fatigue that a great portion of your workout is performed at such a low quality that your building up far more fatigue (that you need to recover from) then actual positive benefits from your training.

Not to mention you then need to somehow make this session even harder the next time around! 

Aerobic activity refers to anything 2 minutes or longer of continuous effort.

So now we have this:

                  - Alactic

                  - Anaerobic

                  - Lactic

and;

                  - Aerobic

Trying not to make this too complicated each of the 3 systems (alactic, lactic and aerobic) can be each broken up into power and capacity components.

Power refers to a one-off, all-out effort of the particular energy system you are targeting for example:

Alactic - a 5 to 10 second sprint trying to get as far as you can

Lactic - a 20 to 30 second sprint trying to get as far as you can

Aerobic - a 2 minute run trying to get as far as you can 

Capacity refers to repeated efforts of the power component with the aim to complete each set as close to as fast as you can complete the power component.

For example, for alactic power you might reach 50 meters in 5 seconds. To build alactic capacity you're training will involve doing 50 meter sprints and aiming to do as many sets as you can at, or as close to 5 seconds as you.

Now with the popularity of interval training it's important to be aware of a few things.

1 - Like I mentioned above, hard intervals with incomplete rest, can result in a lot of fatigue but little quality of training so don't fall into this hole - I'll tell you how not to in a minute!

2 -  You need a mix of both anaerobic and aerobic work to increase just one of them over the long term. They both help each other.

3 - Getting back to interval training - the quality of each successive set will depend on your recovery ability, which is a primary action of the aerobic energy system. If you have a poor aerobic energy system then you'll get 1, maybe 2 quality intervals in and then you'll drop out pretty quickly as you just can't recovery enough in the rest period to go as hard as you want to or as long as you want to, again and again. If you continue on then again you just build up more fatigue each time and not much else, besides an injury risk!

4 - For every set of intervals you do, the more reliance on aerobic metabolism you'll have because you move further away from the power component with each repeated effort you do so again, making sure to include both types of training is crucial.

That's plenty of new stuff for you to ponder in regards to energy systems training so again if you have any questions then please let me know.