Sunday, March 21, 2010

This is what I am up against.

This is what I am up against.
Muscle mass can be at least partially maintained with strength or endurance training. Mitochondrial density and capillary density can be maintained with vigorous exercise training. Stroke volume can be increased with exercise training, but heart rate declines irrespective of activity level, resulting in an age related decrease in cardiac output and VO2 max. Muscle glycogen content can be increased in older individuals, but the studies that have been conducted to date have used low intensity or short term training programs and have not increased muscle glycogen levels up to those of younger people. Exercise probably enhances the function of the neuromuscular junction, and allows better recruitment of skeletal muscle. Based on the findings presented, our model predicts that sedentary older adults should have dramatically lower short term maximal performance than younger adults. However, an older adult who is trained at the same volume and intensity as a younger adult should be capable of performances similar to his/her younger counterpart. The unalterable decrease in heart rate and consequential reduction in VO2 max may prevent the older individual from training at the same volume and intensity as a younger athlete, and consequently, performance of the older athlete will be limited by the reduction in absolute training volume and intensity. However, the trained older adult should almost certainly have performances superior to those of younger and older sedentary adults, and therefore may have a better ability to cope with the physiological demands of free living.
See Also As good as it gets
In an earlier study, the researchers found that the muscles of octogenarian men also failed to gain strength with the exercise program. Together, the studies show that the muscles of octogenarian men and women are far less responsive to improving with exercise, even compared to people only 10 years younger.

“The message of the study is that exercise is good for octogenarians, just not as good as we thought it would be,” Dr. Trappe said. The study also suggests that it is better to build as much muscle mass as possible earlier in life to ensure more muscle strength in later life. “We should do all we can to educate people to build up the muscle before 80,” he said.


See comments for training zones using a Heart Rate Monitor. I take my Max HR to be 155 or thereabouts.

1 Comments:

At May 3, 2010 at 6:40 PM , Blogger . said...

Rest <50% MHR
This zone is associated with very light training and rest. Sometimes used during a transition phase in your training where you’ll spend time walking or performing other very light cross training exercise. Sometimes referred to as “active recovery”. It’s the zone you generally use when you are stretching or performing other maintenance related activities like pilates and yoga.

Zone REC (Recovery) 50-64%MHR
Sometimes combined with the next zone, this is a zone where you’ll spend your time doing your recovery rides. It feels like you almost aren’t training at all in this zone. It’s a very important zone as it helps flush out your muscles in between intense training sessions. The key to this zone it to ensure that you don’t go too hard because if you do you’ll not be rested enough to go really hard in the harder session of your program.

Zone E1 (Aerobic Endurance) 65-74%MHR
This zone is where you build your aerobic base and is a zone that you’ll spend a lot of time in when you are building your cycling base fitness. This zone is the foundation at the beginning of your season for which you’ll build your strength then speed on throughout the year. This zone builds your aerobic power and enables you to Ride long distances and improves your average speed while riding at an easy pace. This zone is normally associated with social riding. You are able to carry on a normal conversation, and is best done while riding with others as a relaxing pace. It’s also the zone where you’ll warm up and cool down in.

Zone E2. (General Aerobic Endurance) 75-84%MHR
While this is an important zone for training in to build an increase in muscle glycogen storage, you''ll need to be careful spending time in this zone. It’s sometime referred to as “on-man’s land” or “temp riding” as you are riding too fast to build your aerobic base but too slow to develop your V02MAX and lactate threshold. The result of spending too much time in this zone is that you’ll get home feeling tired but not have really improved your fitness. Therefore this zone is not an efficient use of your training time. And… in a lot of cases it’s the zone you’ll be in when riding in medium paced bunch rides. For that reason it’s important to monitor the time spent in this zone. In moderation, it is however a good zone to ease you into interval training and during a specialization period before starting to race. Cyclists that train in this zone a lot end up quickly reaching a plateau in their fitness.

Zone E3. (Anaerobic Threshold Endurance) 85-91%MHR
This zone is where you start to get some real improvements to your fitness. Referred to generally as strength endurance training this zone helps to increase your ability to ride at lactate threshold. It is a very important zone to train in for endurance events and road racing. This is not an easy zone to train in and is associated with interval training where you’ll ride for short durations at an above average intensity. You’ll be breathing hard in this zone and not able to carry on a conversation. Training in this zone helps build tolerance to the muscle burn that you get when riding hard as well as your strength endurance. It’s a critical zone to train in to be able to successfully bridge gaps, Work in breaks, Time Trial and climb long hills.

Zone VO2. (VO2 MAX Boosting) 92-100% MHR
Often referred to as “V02MAX” this is the hardest zone to train in. This is a zone where you will increase your V02MAX and build your heart’s ability to increase its cardio output. It is mainly reserved for short and very intense intervals as it is not a zone that you can spend much time in. However, trained properly, cyclists can ride a short 20 minute Individual time trial almost completely at the bottom of this zone. Holding a conversation is imposable. Use the lower end of this zone for very intense interval training and the higher end for sprint training.

 

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