#61 - Volume versus intensity with Dr David Bishop

Hello and welcome to inside exercise I'm emergence Professor Glenn McConnell from Victoria University in Australia and I'm also currently a Danish diabetes and endocrine Academy visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen the idea behind inside exercise is to bring to you the absolute World experts in exercise research and what I want you to do is to get your information from the research experts rather than from Influences indeed today I'm bringing to you Professor David Bishop from Victoria University in Melbourne Australia he's an expert on exercise physiology but specifically on mitochondrial function and volume in response

to exercise training so here's some very interesting results that there can be a dissociation between mitochondrial function and mitochondrial volume with different types of training so very high intensity training tends to increase the Mitochondrial function more than the volume while more prolonged sort of low intensity exercise increases the mitochondrial volume more than the mitochondrial function so we talked about this what what are some of the potential mechanisms and how athletes can potentially use this to their advantage by doing a mixture of training I found it very interesting I think you will too so stick around

hi David thanks For coming on inside exercise how you doing but no really well Glenn and um yeah good to see you yeah it's funny to see like there's so uh I mean some people probably know so others wouldn't but um you know but we both started off research leaders at Victoria University in The Institute for Sport exercise and active living you were the sports research leader as the exercise research leader Remco polman The active living so uh yeah that was 2010 so we were hanging around a lot for quite a while there I can

remember the um the AC DC coming out of your office late at night where we should where we used to share it we had a off you know when before we went to the open plan office we had the the entire officers are right next to each other so I think yeah after about six o'clock ACDC used to come out every now and again that's funny that's before I got onto the Swedish do medal okay well I'm pleased about that yeah yeah um all right so it's great to have you on and it's been a

lot of um you know a lot of questions on Twitter a lot of a lot of likes and retweets and all that so that's great so what I want to talk to you about is you know the old the old uh I don't know if it's an Old Chestnut but you know is it best to to exercise uh you know intensity or duration in terms of sort of mitochondrial function And volume and things like that and this is a great follow-up well I'm hoping to be a great follow-up I'm sure it will be um on

the podcast I've had so I have had Andy Coggin on saying you know is there anything special about zone two and uh which you know spoiled it uh he says no um and then um you know Stephen seller with polarized training and all that uh and even Michael Joyner Um talking about endurance training methods and saying things like all roads lead to Rome you know so no matter what you do you sort of end up the same point I know you've had a look at those a couple of those podcasts so what do you think

and um yeah what do you think yeah great and I and I know that you know we were speaking of ass I know that you know I'm assuming there'll be some You know exercise people as well as scientists and a mix of the two so I think you know one of the tricky things in the field and you've touched on it before is this all the different terminology out there so that might be a good place to to start so when where so the way and I know a lot of people do this and the

way we do it so normally what I'll do is I'll have the Zone one which is before The first metabolic threshold then zone two is between the first and the second metabolic threshold and then zone three is above the above the second metabolic threshold and I think you mentioned this on one of the early podcasts I've seen up to seven zones so yeah sometimes you go to zone two okay that's zone four and this guy and zone three with this person Etc so it's probably good to to get that out of the way And I

think the the other thing that will be good just to to dive into a little bit is that um yeah most of my research is on at the moment is on mitochondrial adaptations to different types of training so I think you know I've got a pretty I've got some I think you know reasonably firm ideas on the best type of training to to alter the mitochondria but there's more to being an endurance athlete than than just mitochondria so I think I'd just add That caveat that I can you know probably give some ideas on the

best ways to develop your mitochondria but that's not necessarily going to be the best way to develop endurance performance exactly and another thing is um you know when we first talked about what are we going to call the topic and I like I like the way you made it really simple you know is it intensity or um volume um you know I I think I suggested you know oh what's best you know for dot dot Dot and and you said well it depends on you know where you're at what you're training for whatever so do

you want to just flesh that out a little bit so if someone says to you oh what should I be doing um you know intensity or duration they're just the things to consider you know like what stage you know what are you training for for a start for example yeah yeah now as I said so I think the important thing is to know what we're Talking about and when we actually got a paper on that at the moment we're writing at the moment is like I said make sure they're on the same page when we're

talking about um intensity and then exactly as you said it you know it depends on what adaptations you're you're looking to to to get what um we've seen and I think is maybe consistent with some of the literature out there and some of the other talks You had is that the the volume of training seems and what I mean by volume volume is I guess the the total exercise exposure so it's a combination of intensity and and duration so to give maybe an example like you could you know walk at eight kilometers an hour it's

quite slow but eight kilometers an hour for two or three hours and that would be the same volume as running at 16 kilometers per hour for For an hour so to speak so that the volume is intensity times uh times the duration with respect to the mitochondria so what we've seen is there seems to be that the the volume of training is important to develop the mitochondrial content so you can think about that by as in how much mitochondria you have and what we've seen is that quite like relatively low intensity high volume you get

good adaptations in the Mitochondrial content and they probably ex they'll exceed the the changes in the mitochondrial function and so when I'm saying function I'm talking about the the ability of the mitochondria to take substrates and oxygen and to produce ATP or energy and then at the Other Extreme so if you have very high intensity so talking about you know like classic Sprint interval training 30 seconds all out that seems to be really effective at Developing the mitochondrial function but less effective at developing mitochondrial content and in the middle so between the two metabolic thresholds

and classically a lot of high intensity interval training or in between the two thresholds what we find that we get a little bit of a mix there is that there's a combination of increasing in the mitochondrial content and also an increase in the Mitochondrial function oh that's interesting I guess I didn't quite realize that so you know I had Mardi cabaler on and I'm not sure if we talked much about function I guess we talk more about content but you know the idea was you know if you did the the high intensity intermittent training so

the head training compared to the continue the classic sort of studies hit versus continuous it seemed like you got similar increases in like citrate Synthase which you know is a marker of mitochondrial volume but I guess we didn't really think that much about function and that's interesting that you get this dissociation I somehow somehow missed that um so you're saying with the Sprint interval training so they're really full-on like you know um the Sprint end of the hit so you know really short stuff You're actually getting greater increases in mitochondrial function but not necessarily volume

and then with the lower intensity you're getting more volume but not necessarily as much of an increased function now how does that work because I guess I've tend I'm a bit as you know I did some mitochondrial function stuff we even did some together yeah um I guess I was always a little bit on the periphery there I was tending To think they were sort of going hand in hand and I guess they kind of did in the stuff I did so anyway why don't you just kind of explain that what's going on there yeah

I know you'll get to it later and I saw as one of your Twitter is one of the Twitter Twitter questions as well so I think that is like the the classic view is that the way that you increase mitochondrial function is by having more mitochondria so that there's like almost like a One-to-one relationship there that if you if you increase um yeah if you double your mitochondrial content you're going to double your mitochondrial function and I guess what we've seen is that you can disassociate those things to a certain extent and yeah we're not

the first to show that there's other you know when we went back and saw our findings and went back to the literature others have have shown That or that as well and so as I said what we've seen is with the with the lower volumes of or the lower intensities the increase in content tends to be greater than the increase in function and with the very high intensities the Sprint interval training the increase in function is proportionally greater than the increase in content yeah yeah and and why do you think that is I'd like to

see how Hydro I was going to get to this later on but you know I know you've done stuck with hydrogen ions affecting mitochondria you know high acidity so high hydrogen ions kind of messing up the mitochondria potentially is it something to do with that or honestly you know I know that you know most a lot of the discussion we're going to talk more of like some maybe some practical implications but as uh you know uh University Egghead that's a I'm Really interested really interested in that question is what is it that's that's causing these

disproportional increases in function and and we don't know when we when we look down at the like at the the protein level as well so we're doing some proteomics we see the same thing that the the fold changes in at the mitochondrial proteins is seems to relate to the total volume of training so that seems to increase and be related to the mitochondrial Biogenesis and the content there but for reasons that I I don't know and you know maybe someone listening will give us some Clues but with the very high intensity exercise we're getting improvements

in function that are disproportionately greater than the increase in the content of mitochondrial proteins and also in the total the total amount of mitochondria and I wonder again with the there was a Twitter question I haven't I've got to scroll down my notes here to see who it was um they were saying it's part of this maybe noise or the way you're normalizing the mighty so I I do tend to get back mechanistics of people that just want to know what's your bottom line and what should I do you know on the on the running

track this afternoon I do as you know get quite fired up about mechanisms and things it's part of It maybe the the way you're normalizing things so you know the the old classic about you know do you divide your mitochondrial function by your citrate synthase activity or mitochondrial DNA and I actually had Russ heppel just spoke with him and uh he had he had another it was a calcium related protein he was dividing by this part of it the noise or is it real and the other thing well okay and the other thing I just

worried I forget is your Measuring mitochondrial function at rest you know like a resting muscle that's that's maybe it's been exercised but it's just sitting there how does that relate to you know um Dynamic so if you're looking at you know um you know muscle resonant um MRI yeah so if you're looking at the turnover there where it's sort of dynamic you know does that you know what I mean do They fit yeah I think it's a really good question and I mean because a lot of the time as you as you know where you're

doing indirect measures and and making assumptions and yeah when you think about the you know the mitochondria consists of and nobody really knows exactly but something like that 1400 different proteins so using one protein or enzyme citrate synthase as uh you know as a proxy for Changes in mitochondrial content you know is possibly a little bit simplistic but we have seen um we've seen it and also um in in other studies is I guess when you do a more direct measure of mitochondrial content which is using tem which is the electron micrograph so you're taking

images of the of the mitochondria and being able to estimate volume you see there also that you see a a Relationship between so the greater the increases in the exercise the greater the increase in exercise volume the greater the increase in in mitochondrial content so I think it's probably not just a a measurement issue and we've also tried with the with the proteomics we've tried to take the average of something like six or seven hundred mitochondrial proteins and we still see the same sort of relationships I think yeah it doesn't really matter how you How

you measure it we're still seeing the similar relationship between exercise volume and changes in mitochondrial content all right great yeah so I'm kind of drilling down on this because partly as I said I I was unaware of this somehow so sorry if I haven't read your because you had a classic review you know where you looked at with cesarea exactly yeah yeah which is the lead author yep yeah so I looked at the you know the volume Versus the uh intensity and you know correlations and things and it was yeah but I just didn't pick

up on this dissociation so I'm just going to keep going on it sorry yeah the other thing was like I touched on it always frustrated me because I wanted to know what effect does exercise having on mitochondrial function but you you know you do the exercise you take the biopsy and then you know you tweet teas out the fibers and then you and then you Put them in there it's like Hang on we're sort of two hours later and everything's sort of getting washed away you know from the metabolites and things and and then you

look at the function uh I wonder if well that's kind of a separate issue I've often wondered about wondered about can you get an idea what's actually happening in the muscle by I don't know changing you know what's in the medium so you know you maybe put some lactate in there and some you know Some creatine and try and mimic that but yeah I just wonder um how much is what you measure in the monochondrial function you know sort of perfectly related and and does it does it correlate very well with the the MRI stuff

so you know so for people that don't know you know when you get in this this core you know maybe you've done your knee for example that they'll do an MRI and they could you see The knee function but you can also look at these um labeled phosphorus and get an idea of what's happening to metabolism so people get in there and do calf contractions and then look at the resynthesis of the creating phosphate and that gives you an idea of the mitochondrial function yeah correlate well there are some studies showing some correlations but but

I think also I mean I've never done the NMR work so it's Tricky to to comment on that but I think to your point or maybe you know in some respects it's a little bit closer but I mean as you said there you're still not looking at the mitochondria while you're Contracting like you said you're looking at the you're looking at the phosphor creating recovery kinetic so that's occurring during the recovery so yeah it's maybe um a little bit closer than um you know When you're taking muscle out of the you know muscle bites you're

taking the muscle out and then measuring it but I think it's also quite indirect because I guess you know we know that phospho-created and resynthesis is uh is an aerobic process and I guess the Assumption there is that the rate of the phosphocretion resynthesis is directly proportional to the mitochondrial function I don't know if anyone's actually I Drilled down in that assumption I agree it actually reminds me of you know the classic thing where oh you want to see how fit you are so you look at your recovery of a heart rate you know and

you think hang on a minute that's you know what's happening during the exercise is very different to like how quickly your heart rate goes down when you stop you know and all the variables involved with that it's sort of a similar thing and but do they correlate Though I mean I know you haven't done it but if you look at the mitochondrial function you know in your aura boros and all that stuff um does it correlate you know with the the MRI or the NMR stuff or yeah sort of in the different camps and they're

not really looking at both um there are I haven't looked at that literature for a while but there are a Couple of studies I think that have done that have done both and yeah they seem to correlate maybe not you know maybe not definitely not perfectly but okay enough of a correlation to suggest that they're measuring something similar all right cool so so what do we do what do we take away it's taken me a while to get some people probably like okay what can I do like you know tomorrow afternoon or whatever Um and

we talked off air about you know morning or afternoon you know and and I want to talk about that a bit later about you know how it's you can get caught up on oh should I be exercise in the morning in the afternoon or should I do it should I be trying to increase my mitochondrial function or my mitochondrial volume and so what would you actually say you know to people so I guess it gets to the point that you said earlier which is there's more to Performance than mitochondrial function and and volume but yeah

maybe just explain that a bit because it's probably a bit hard to get your head around yeah and I think you know having you know listened to some of the the podcasts which I enjoyed the previous ones I think it does fit in with um you know polarized or the pyramidal type Training you know nobody does one type of train or I don't think anyone does unless they're doing studies in their you know in fact size science studies but you know most people will do a a mixture of of training types of training and you

know Michael Joyner talked about it as well you know the the different ways and if I if I was to take a sort of a mitocentric view it kind of makes sense to me like I always imagine it like the Nutrition you know the nutrition pyramid where like you wouldn't just eat proteins or just eat carbohydrates and I think it's the same thing like you've I don't think you would just do Zone one or zone two or zone three and if we do take a Mito Centric view I think what we've seen is that those

the different volumes and intensities have different mitochondrial adaptations so I think hitting those different zones Makes sense to me to get different adaptations that when you put it together will improve the endurance performance that's true so putting it together then with what you said earlier so during the the really high intensity stuff you'll get a greater Improvement in your mitochondrial function and doing the long slow sort of stuff you'll get a better improve a bit greater increase in your mitochondrial uh volume so you're Saying if you do both which makes sense uh then you get

both now I'm assuming people have actually looked at that so have they compared no I guess it's hard to compare because you how do you match the you know intensity in that body but have people done that so they've done the really high intensity it really uh long stuff and then a combination and look and seeing that you actually get you know your best bang for the buck by Doing the mixture I don't think anyone I haven't really seen and you know most studies you know just because you're trying to control things like they they

tend you know the classic stuff and we've done this where you might have three or four training sessions a week where it's you know all moderate intensity in one group and then the other groups doing all high intensity and you know Marty gabala's work as well and then you're sort of Comparing the the two but we're actually because I keep getting this question where we're doing that study at the moment and so what we've you know we've done previously we've done and so we've got this data that we can then compare as well we we've

done moderate intensity we've done high intensity interval training and we've done Sprint interval training and at the moment we've got to you know almost finishing a big training study where we've got people doing all Of that in a week so they're doing a couple of moderate intensity training sessions a high intensity training session and a Sprint interval training session so hopefully because it's all done and out so we've got other groups so it's all done in our lab with the same measures Etc we'll be able to compare eight weeks of moderate intensity training eight weeks

of hit eight weeks of Sprint interval training And eight weeks of um mixing it together and seeing if you know that does make sense that you're getting the kind of the the the different adaptations from the different types of training and if you put that together does that give us a you know an optimal adaptation in terms of the mitochondria there you go so this will this will be good for um I mean I know it's kind of short term compared to the you know Training for years and years but this would be good for

the you mentioned Michael Joyner so if people haven't seen that one I just thought it was a classic where he's got you know you talk about all roads lead to Rome but he actually said all roads lead to Tokyo because the Tokyo 5000 in 1964. you know I think the winner was just doing intervals pretty much twice a day every day and the second I can't remember second or third was doing like long slow distance and The third was doing a mixture so it'd be interesting to see that and it also makes me think I

guess about how the markers that you measure and I saw you mentioned you had a there was a point Counterpoint thing and you and you mentioned this and I was really happy to see it that the markers you've measured don't necessarily relate to outcomes so you know classic one as we mentioned earlier you mentioned protein so Um muscle protein synthesis you know you might have uh you know you have this protein or that protein and this timing or that timing and you get a greater protein synthesis rate but it doesn't necessarily result in more muscle

down the track and the same with I have to admit and put my hand up and say I used to do this and it probably is going to make sense because I was a bit ignorant earlier you know you could have measure pgc1 Alpha which is you know the Master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis and if it was higher or lower or whatever you'd say oh okay so therefore mitochondria but you can't assume that do you want to just fish that out a little bit um no exactly can you assume these things yeah and I think

yeah I can't remember if it was Ben Benjamin Miller who mentioned it as well but I think you know even um you know and hopefully this isn't too technical But you know then yeah the pgc1 alpha is a classic because it's uh you know as you said the master regulator of mitochondrial biogenes and if you go to you know spiegelman's classic studies he's doing The Knockout of the protein and you know talking about the effects on mitochondrial biogenesis but then you do studies where they might do a single exercise session and they're changing the MRNA

of it And then assuming I mean you can't even assume that the changes in the MRNA are are reflective of the change in the protein which they used to always assume that but yeah you can and the time yeah a lot of it gets sort of used interchangeably so I think it and it's really hard for people who aren't you know experts in the in the field but I think it's a really good point we just need to be really careful what we what we measure and I think you know one of The things I

try and do with my students is not to not to use like the global terms like say oh we saw an increase in mitochondrial biogenesis okay we saw an increase in what did you actually measure yeah so instead of yeah sometimes you can use and it's probably for simplistically say the paper doesn't end up being 100 pages long but I think yeah we need to be really precise with with what we're Measuring and what it actually means that's true I was just thinking in my own defense putting myself down there I realized that we did

actually try and do that because it would measure pg-1 Alpha message and protein but then you'd would also measure cytochromoxidase um um message protein and activity you know so you're trying to get a bit more but I guess the next step then is to actually say well what's happening to the Performance so in that study where you're doing the four different groups I'm assuming you'd be looking at you know the P you know the second line and the mitochondrial function but I'm assuming also maybe not you'll be looking at you know is there performance improved

more is there vo to Max Etc yeah we'll be looking at thresholds and and um the VO2 max and I guess in some ways as you'd know The um we normally have a performance measure but also I guess that you know the VO2 max test itself is in some respects a performance to measure you can look at in terms of on how long they're able to to continue the test so yeah that's what we try and do is kind of yeah signaling to mRNA to protein to the enzyme function the mitochondrial function and then the

performance and yeah and I think you know some of you know bring up some of your Work to related to this but I think you know the the cool stuff you did with the amp activity and the and the phosphate mpk because I think that's a classic as well where people go we saw an increase in ampk activity and you're going well not really you saw an increase in phosphorylation which is not a bad proxy of ampk of ampk activity so I think yeah as scientists we just need to be a little bit um careful

in being very specific about what we're measuring Exactly right now I'm glad you actually mentioned just then VO2 max lactate threshold Etc because that was actually something I was thinking about So when you say there's more to the mitochondria is it worth just talking a little bit so people understand that and again I think Michael Joyner was heavily involved in this saying okay what determines your running performance it's your vo to Max it's your lactate threshold is she running Economy now I'm wondering how each of those is affected by the mitochondria it's a bit of

a tricky one because you know we know for example that it seems like vo to Max is more you know oxygen delivery cardiac out but and there may be like a almost like an excess mitochondria um you know some of those old studies would sort of say ah um you know the mitochondria is more related to Performance than vo to Max And all that sort of stuff I wonder if you can just sort of talk around that um yeah and I think that makes Center we've got some data and I think others do as well

we haven't actually published some of this but I think you know what I always say is to people yeah you've only got one heart so that if you're running or doing arm cranking or whatever you're doing you're going to be using your hard and Stressing your heart and getting those adaptations which are important for for VO2 max but the lactate threshold is mostly a peripheral adaptation so that's reflecting happening in the muscles so like if you yeah so if I um if I was run training I'd see an increase in the VO2 max if I

did an arm cranking type task but if I did run training I'm not going to see an increase in my lactate threshold measure doing an arm crank so the the lactate Thresholds it's pretty much not 100 but mostly confined to the actual muscles that are are being trained and I think a large part of that does reflect the the mitochondrion we have seen correlations between the between the lactate threshold and different measures of mitochondrial function and I think you know as you mentioned like some of Eddie coils really cool work showing that you know the

lactate threshold is quite an important Determinant of performance so I think that might be the that might be where the mitochondria is coming into the the performance equation yeah I think it makes perfect sense because the classic I think it's show guard 1988 show they looked at a Tour de France cyclists across the whole season and their vo to Max was basically didn't change I think it was only that's the other thing could be worth talking about we can't go through everything the vo2x I think was only 71 or 72 or something it wasn't even

overly high but during the year uh what changed you know like with you know uh the pre-season and during the Tour de France and whatever was there mitochondrial enzymes change like 200 or 300 up and down so X but it's the lactate threshold and the mitochondrial sort of function that's that's uh and volume that would be affecting that are you hearing me all right it just says I'm unstable there's yeah there's a little pause there but now we're back okay all right yeah so that fits there wasn't really a question in there but um I

think that's where Eddie Coyle's got that really nice I can't remember the exact bit when you know where he took um a bunch of sites I mean the 80s I can't remember the exact year now but you know I had the cyclists that had similarly High VO2 max but then he separated them into a low Lactate threshold and a high lactate threshold group and the high levels yeah they're both on that yeah and so and he showed quite clearly you know the the high lactate threshold group outperformed The the low lactate threshold group when they

had the same VO2 max so yeah yeah they're chewed through their glycogen quicker and all that I just I just I just thought a funny thing is I've had Eddie Coyle and Andy cognon that were I hate this it wasn't because I always saw cognit coil corn on Coggin and just because he said oh yeah he was on that I didn't know who was the student because I hadn't met them and Eddie was not very happy about that so Andy was a student and he was the uh supervisor all right so I'm thinking about we're

getting through fair but hopefully people are staying with us I keep thinking about being practical and what this means for people so what does this mean for people So far do you think and we'll do a takeaway message at the end yeah we can do one in the middle in the end but I think the um I said and sort of tying into I think it's some consistent messages coming out that yeah in terms of you know developing mitochondrial content then I think the you know I'm fairly convinced that the the volume of training is

really important and so I think that fits in nicely with Stephen You know what Stephen was saying and I think he made a good point you know some people's talking about polarized or whether it's pyramidal yeah I think that's a different discussion but either one whether you're going polarized or pyramidal I think that there's an argument that that a large volume of training is an important component of um of endurance training and as I said right at the Beginning it's not going to be the only reason but that does tie in with a large volume

of training seems to be important to develop your mitochondrial content yes indeed now there was a question on Twitter about someone saying Okay well why not do both you know why not just do a high volume and high intensity and um and I guess you know you start thinking about over training but it reminds me of That remember that study you did when I you know when when I was still on Deck I'm sort of you know I'm still a Emeritus Professor there but I don't come in very often um where you tried to actually

over train people and and see you know assuming it would mess up their mitochondria and you couldn't it was actually really you know you doubled the training and everything and they just got better Yeah and I think that was some of Cheers those chairs right on that I think there's a couple of things there I think um I think there are a couple of things are going on there so I think one thing is that there's kind of this argument about you know whether it's uh an over training or an energy deficit that leads to

some of these problems and so one of the things that we did in that that study is that we made sure they got at Least 10 grams and most of them got more 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram per day so they were training really hard but we were we wanted to avoid that you know energy deficit and also a decrease in their muscle glycogen so that may be contributed and I think also you know what we've they were like you know moderately trained I think you know 45 50 mils per kg per VO2 max

it seems you know from my reading like the overtraining seemed to be like an accumulation of fatigue and so I think that those participants they didn't have the you know the the training background to be over training but like I said I mean we tried super hard we had them doing high intensity interval training twice a day so morning and afternoon seven days a week for around about three weeks and we were thinking we'd stop After two weeks when they over train but yeah they just kept getting better and better and so we just pulled

the pin at three weeks but we saw you know and the guys you know the old guys in the study they were absolutely wrecked I mean they'd sleep in the lab between training sessions so it was yeah it was full on but yeah we couldn't over train them and we had massive increases in their their mitochondrial content and their and their mitochondrial function Mostly because you know it was high intensity interval training but that also meant they did a really high a very high volume of training as well yeah I wonder if it's almost like

a fight or flight thing that you know your body just responds well first of all it's amazing what the body can actually adapt to right so you know we we tend to think that that was surprising wasn't it that they could actually so the body can respond but maybe it's almost like a Final flight thing where you can keep it up for three weeks or something but then you know you get sick or you know something would happen yeah no no one was asking for us to continue the study at the at the end of

that three weeks fair enough now the other thing I think about I guess is um actually it's a bit selfish because I'm thinking about myself and it's going to sound like I'm showing off a bit but I just wonder if People need to think about um whether they should tailor their training based on their physiology so basically when I was a distance Runner my VO2 max was like 78 or something but nice you know it was higher than these like Tour de France they're on the bike I was running but the point is I wasn't

you know it wasn't like I was uh you know world record holder or something you know my I think it kept showing even some of these guys they're like 71 72 What I'm getting at is should I then this is a practical thing if I was back there now should I go oh okay I've got a vo to Max of 78 so I shouldn't worry about doing sort of VO to Max train type training I should really you know work on intensity or you know or do you know what I mean like like should should

people tailor their results to their physiology or it almost sounds silly in a way I mean obviously you should but I never Thought like that for some reason I didn't go oh I might be able to Max at 78 therefore I shouldn't worry about maybe as much volume for example no good man and I think that's where um yeah there is a there is a place for some of this physiological testing and I've seen that as well where you know I've seen athletes do a lot of high intensity training and they have really good VO2

max but they can have quite a low you Know relatively low lactate threshold exactly and I think that's because uh that's they're missing some of that that training volume by just focusing on on intensity so I think that you know comes back to the the same thing you know it's not volume versus in intensity but yeah if um I think if there is too much behind oh yeah if there's too much high intensity or too much volume you're probably not going to be getting the optimal adaptations and I think in in Your instance in knowing

that you've got the VO2 max running economy and that and the lactate threshold yeah it's going to be hard to increase your VO2 max much above that so that looking at training to try and increase the lactate threshold or the economy would be if you can find a time machine that's what I'd be um telling exactly yeah young Glenn McConnell yes I'm still pretty young but done oh I feel like I am and now I look in the Mirror um so it's interesting as David costell who did my masters with and who he was on

also on the podcast he used to say if you've got 70 mils per kilogram that's that's enough and you don't have to worry about you know like like you can basically be you know he used to talk this is how long ago it was talking about like people like Frank Shorter and things like this you know winning Boston marathons and things at 70. you can do Whatever you need to do at 70. and then it's other things you need to work on I guess yeah I don't know if there's a magic I don't know what

the magic number is but I think I think VO2 max seems to be like your entry ticket right you're probably not going to win too many Olympic marathons you know with a 45 or you know mils per kg VO2 max even if you're lactate Thresholds you know 95 or whatever exactly you can get it up to but you need to be held to have uh yeah have that high and I think the VO2 max is also that's going to you know that limits how high you can put your lactate threshold as well exactly and I

remember the classic um again it's in the kind of old days but Steve Prefontaine had a viewed to maximum like 83 and Frank short had a vo To Max of 72 but they were both about the same speed because Steve Prefontaine couldn't hold as high lactate threshold and Frank Shorter is right near his sphere automatic sort of thing now that brings me to another point that sorry people that I just don't know who asked what questions I haven't scored on my phone but this thing about um how it seems like if you've got a high

vo to Max you don't have a high Running economy you know that sort of concept where they seem to to Interchange there do you have any idea what's going on is that something mysterious going on in the mitochondria or is it um I haven't seen too much link and they they could be related but I think it actually goes to a little bit to the you know to the previous I mean I think there's two things that I think that might have been I remember it was but um I think Greg Atkinson made a really

good point about the being careful of spurious correlations and one what that for people don't may not be aware but if you've got what's on your x-axis and your y-axis to have got the same unit so if you've got VO2 max in mils per kilogram that's true and and economy in mils per kilogram on the the axis that there's a good chance of just going to be they're going to appear correlated by chance so I think that's part of it But the other part is I think that um yeah if economy is related to to

mitochondria then that's going the volume of training is going to be really important and whereas you know if the VO2 max is being is more associated with the intensity then that would make sense to me that if you spent too much time focusing on high intensity and boosting your VO2 max you might not have the volume of low to Modded intensity training to to develop the the running economy yeah it's interesting how you said it it may just be a spurious sort of correlation because I know it was actually uh baz born I think it

is that sent the Tweet um now he was quoting a paper that said that that maybe what it is is that you when you have a high oxygen consumption you have a lot of reactive oxygen species and they can mess up the Mitochondrial function and maybe make you less efficient or something but then Russ hepple who you know is on the left will be on the last uh the next well will be on before just before you he put made the point which is correct that the reactive oxygen species are not really produced by the

mitochondria during exercise looks like it's been produced you know more in adph oxidase on the you know the the um the muscle membrane for example so you know they Don't necessarily fit anyway so so I guess I guess that's the jewelry maybe still out on that but I don't know it's I haven't really looked into it to be honest yeah and I think the um I said I mean I think a lot of lots of things are cut to me kind of coming to together but to me that I think that does come back to

the you know whatever the magic if there is a magic percentage but that at least for Endurance athletes I think a lot of this does support the the importance of the The Vault of getting a high volume of training actually it reminds me now so when I had Andy Jones on he mentioned um because we talked about how does how did chuggy run under two hours and he had done a whole bunch of he had done a study with a whole bunch of the paces and kimchogi and looked at their video to Max like that

threshold and running economy and it did seem like they didn't All sort of you know what you want ideally obviously is you know Javier to Max a high lactate threshold and a high running economy but he did he felt sort of found he wouldn't tell me which one it was out here but he found that that no one really had you know the right they didn't go but then again it doesn't mean one's inhibiting the other or whatever um and I remember with um yeah he had that Andy had that paper with um with Paula

as well so the um the British female marathon runner and I think yeah best performed Paula Radcliffe yeah so her her best performances her VO2 max was a little bit lower than her wasn't wasn't her Peak but it corresponded when her lactate threshold was was at its highest so I think yeah I think it yeah I mean it makes sense with anything isn't it that it's really hard to develop everything to to its maximum and I think That the type of training that best develops your VO2 max is probably going to be different to the

to the type of training that best develops your lactate threshold or your or your economy it's kind of interesting it reminds me a bit of the you know the max heart rate so some people may not realize but endurance athletes tend to have a lower max heart rate now you tend to think you know ethics everything's bigger and Better but um but you know this range so imagine if you have and again if you've got someone that's got a really low resting heart rate that indicates they've got a very big stroke volume at rest then

they probably don't have a high max heart rate but you know if you have both if you have a low resting heart rate and a high maximum heart rate then obviously you can get a huge cardiac output but do you do you tend to Find that is that the people that have low I don't know if you've looked at it but you know it kind of makes sense that if you've got a low resting you've probably got a low maxed as well because you're just shifting so much blood per beat but you couldn't sort of

go up to 205 beats per minute yeah we don't I mean we don't look at that much in the research but it definitely you know when I was in previous life you know working more with Athletes you definitely yeah we used to do physiological tests on them regularly you'd see that during a season that the max heart rate would you know it would drop would drop as a as a um as they started increasing the amount of training yeah and and I'm sure they're resting heart rate would have gone down as well because you know

that's the kind of indicator of how you're going with training quite often now I wanted to get back to your hydrogen ion stuff so the Stuff you were doing um when I was there well it's kind of weird because I'm still there I'm Emeritus Professor but when I was you know coming in every day um so that was interesting and I found it a bit surprising actually so I think you were finding that if you had high hydrogen ions so you're giving ammonium why don't you tell us um versus sodium bicarbonate yeah do you know

well there's probably a Few things going on there so it was interesting I was working with this um coach and um she just said to me one day she said that um lactic acid destroys the mitochondria I'm going never heard about but but and it's interesting you know this discussion you know sometimes coaches say the you know write things for the wrong reasons and sometimes the wrong things as well but so we looked at then We've we've done a bunch of um so I couldn't find anything any evidence to support that but we've done a

few studies where we've given sodium bicarbonate during training we did some with rats and also with um with humans and what we found was that even when people do exactly that so doing well two groups doing exactly the same amount of training the the group that's taken sodium Bicarbonate we've seen better endurance adaptation so in the humans we've seen better increases in lactate threshold and performance but without any differences in VO2 max and in um in rats we've seen greater improvements in in mitochondrial function so I guess we're working on this idea that potentially by

I don't know exactly how it's working but there's something about the the sodium bicarbonate that might be promoting adaptations to training Especially specifically in the mitochondria and initially we probably thought it might have been something to do with the hydrogen ions because I guess that's what you know sodium bicarbonate is you know most famous for is buffering the hydrogen ions but what you also see with um sodium bicarbonate it allows more lactate allows a greater glycolysis and more lactate and you know George Brooks has Done some interesting stuff showing that lactate it can be also

like a molecular signal so we don't know exactly the mechanisms but it could be that the yeah it could even be that the greater lactate during training might be contributed into the to the greater mitochondrial adaptations so even though we tend to think you know I mean people are thinking it a bit less now but you know this lactate is a bad e and it's messing things up I guess we've Known for quite a while that lactate's important that you know it can go into the blood and be taken up by the liver and converted

to glucose and be taken up by adjacent muscle fibers and oxidized and all sorts of things but you're saying that with the bicarbonate you're able to actually produce have more anaerobic glycolysis producing more lactate and that may actually have a beneficial effect yeah and I think it's the it's kind of The um classic kind of guilt by association because people talk about lactic acid and really what's happening during exercise is that you've got both lactate and the acid the hydrogen ions being produced and so the the the sodium bicarbonate is helping to buffer the hydrogen

ions so the sodium bicarbonate gets into the blood lowers The ph and that acts like a bit of a sink and that drags the the hydrogen ions out of the muscle into the blood where it combines with the bicarbonate and then you get carbon dioxide and gets breathed off so not only is it removing the hydrogen ions but it's also allowing greater anaerobic glycolysis to occur in the muscle as well so it's difficult to tease out you know what might be the Where the benefits might be coming from okay that's interesting work um yeah now

the other thing I've thought about is when we talk about um you know all roads leading to Rome and if you do you know high intensity mainly high intensity or mainly low intensity the thing that I tend to think about is what about specificity so you know if so I know that um Michael Jordan was was essentially saying I think that if if you did you Know mainly just low intensity or mainly high intensity you'd end up with similar adaptations and I think you've sort of nuanced that a little bit there with with what we've

been talking about um but you know what about the specificity so surely to goodness even if you have the same viewer to Max somehow the same lactate threshold the same economy isn't it important you know the old specificity that we always talk about no Training you know at race pace for example or you know trying to actually think if you're an 800 meter Runner versus 1500 meter Runner with it's a 10K Runner sometimes you could almost be forgiven for thinking they could all do the same thing you know because they end up with the same

similar vo to Max and similar this and some of that but surely the the specificity has to come into it I think there's an element of that and You know I think yeah the the caveat is you know most most of my stuff is you know in the laboratory and I'm not working day to day with with athletes but I think sometimes the you know the the specificity is overrated and what I mean by by that is you know I look at um you know the the approach I generally take is what is the physiology

that's required for that particular athlete and then what is the training that I need to do To develop the perform to develop the physiology that's going to give me the ultimate performance and yeah I remember when I um I was working with rowers and and kayakers you know so something like you know rowers yeah might be around about eight minutes flat out and you know they almost fall out of the boat at the end of it because it's you know it's you know it's pretty hard to go all out for Eight minutes but very little

of their training is at that intensity you know most of their training is at a much lower um much lower intensity and I think that's because that's what needs to be done to get the adaptations that are needed to to to um to to perform their Sport and I think the same thing here is to me it doesn't make uh a lot of sense for example like If you're a marathon runner to do lots of running at marathon pace because I think that's yeah there's an argument for doing it every now and again but I

don't think necessarily doing your event is going to give you the adaptations that are going to allow you to excel at your event if that makes sense and yeah and I think a classic you know a really good example is also um yeah I think it's funny because in like In running and things like that or cycling and those sorts of events it's kind of there's this idea that you need to be really specific but if you think about like resistance training you know sprinters like for example trying to improve your power you know lift

you know whatever doing a squat with a few hundred kilos with a few hundred kilos it's not even remotely similar to what you or even you know Um a lot of the other you know the the cleans or any of those sorts of things but it's very different to you know what you're going to do in your actual event but the the point of that training is to develop your muscle and your strengthen your power that's going to allow you to run fast and I think it's the same thing with a lot of a lot

of the the endurance adaptations I mean obviously you know if you're talking about 800 or 1500 that's Tactical and so you need to do races to improve that but I honestly I think I've said this maybe I'm going around in circles but I I think the the argument for doing most of your training at race Pace I I don't think there's really any good evidence oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you wouldn't suggest that I guess I was thinking more um okay I'll tell you what I was thinking so when I was a distance Runner I

would Do my intervals and it feels like there's been a bit of a move away from this but you know I do my intervals just slightly faster than my race Pace you know so um you know don't have to give I always give an example of much slower than I was so it doesn't sound like I'm sure did you say you're a five you're five minutes per K Runner yeah you know I'd I'd suggest people do their intervals I Don't know four four minutes 40 per K you know not not crazy you know because I

remember I'd go down and do interval training some people would be just tearing around the track doing their 400s smashing me and I'd be doing you know slower slightly faster than race pace and then a short recovery that that that's the sort of thing I mean you know rather than because these people would kill themselves in training And then you get to the race on the weekend and be the opposite you know I beat them sort of thing and so I guess the point there was you do some of your training you know so like

easy day Monday and it was Tuesday long run you know Wednesday whatever and but you're not just tearing around the track like a collude so I guess this is what I'm getting at when I did my undergrad it was always like if you're doing your nibbles you do sort of Like you know one to three so the working of all one and then three to five for the recovery if you're like you know a sprinter or something and then if you're an endurance type you do one to one and I remember even you would know

the name you know the Australian Steve monaghetti he would do one to half you know so if he did if you ran three minutes it is interval then you do a minute and a half Recovery and and to me that make makes sense but it feels nowadays with more and more sort of sprintable training high intensity animal training that's a lot of that's sort of gone out the window I don't know if the textbooks have been updated or not but you know you know what I mean like remember it used to be really sort of

structured and it's like I know you're training for a five or tenk you do one to one or one to half You're training for this you do one to two whatever it seems like it's almost like the old Rosy Rome thing you mix it up and you'll end up getting there anyway yeah and I think I think we've definitely you know I've seen exactly what you're talking about you know when I was working with um with with kayak athletes so you quite often see at the like the the beginning of the Season you know we'd

be trying to do some you know Maybe some training just below or just above the lactate threshold but you'd see sometimes like the the athletes who weren't as fit would try and keep up with the fitter athletes and so they weren't training it there they're programmed intensity and the beginning of the Season they'd be fine you know they think they're smashing it I'm keeping you up with uh I'm keeping up with all the the better athletes but You know when you got to the end of the season inevitably the better athletes but who are training

at their intensity would get larger improvements than the athletes who weren't as fit but who are trying to keep up with the better athletes if that that makes sense so so I think yeah it comes back I think it's about training I said I think it's about trying to train the physiology that you need to perform in that event and you Know some of the examples you've seen like we've seen like a two to one for the intervals works really well for developing muscle buffer capacity whereas we'll use more like a a one-to-one when we're

trying to to develop the mitochondrial adaptations for example so I think you know probably you know what you're describing is not necessarily wrong is that but people were doing those different interval ratios to get different adaptations Which might be more or less important depending on the the actual performance outcome that that was desired that's true yep okay now do you need to go or do you do uh I've got another five or ten minutes mate yeah if you want to wrap it up yeah cool okay good man okay so Angelo uh this is quite interesting

he said yeah at um European College of sports science he kept trying to ask you this question you're running around an important 10 directions at once so we Can ask it now well I've got you pinned down um he said if if he understands your your talk correctly you presented data showing that high intensity exercise elicits autophagy of mitochondria which is also called mitophagy so maybe you can explain what that is and essentially the biogenesis of new and improved mitochondria do you think this is a key mechanism in explaining exercise related improvements in metabolic disease

Yeah I'm not sure about metabolic disease but so that I was presenting I can't remember if you were around but those Javier bote as some of his PhD data and yeah Hudson he had some really cool findings which we're trying to write up at the moment but basically we compared um low to moderate intensity continuous exercise so we did that for about 90 to 120 Minutes with Sprint interval exercise so classic 30 seconds all out And repeating that four to six times and we took some muscle biopsies directly after the first training session and we

we did some of this transmission electron microscopy where we can get really precise images of the mitochondria and what we saw was that only after the Sprint interval training we saw around about 15 to 20 percent of the mitochondria were damaged and some of them quite severely damaged Like you just see you know you know the Classic Bean shaped mitochondria with the with the Christine and we saw someone they were just completely Hollow they just had the outer membrane and there was absolutely no no Christie so it was just after the the four Sprint intervals

and I know that you know some people kind of breaking out going on those sprinting or training is damaging your your Mitochondria but yeah most exercises are stress and the whole point of exercise is to stress and then you adapt to the stress so that it doesn't become as stressful next time that that you do it and so we also did a bunch of other measures showing that this mitochondrial stress response was being activated with Sprint interval training so what we what we think is that when you're doing this very high intensity Exercise is that

it's speeding up the natural recycling so mitochondria are continually being built up and broken down over time and we think it might be speeding it speeding it up and I was talking on another podcast and the presenter came work would be great to me out with the old in with the new so we actually think that one of the benefits of this really high intensity so Sprint interval training is That you're getting mitochondria that are maybe on their way out and you're sort of kicking them out the door a little bit quicker and they're getting

replaced with better newer better functioning mitochondria and so we think that might be why we're getting this disproportionate Improvement in mitochondrial function with the very high intensity training okay so that fits with that well that's interesting okay that's good all right now just Early you said there may be value in people having tests and it was one of my questions is you could you know sometimes when you look at Twitter and things people are saying oh you know you've got to know your your your your um Zone one your zone two and you've got to

know your maximum fat fat oxidation you've got to know your vo to Max you've got to know your lactate threshold you've got to know your economy now I Can imagine some people maybe with maybe a few too many dollars hanging around but other people you know scraping together whatever dollars they have to go and have all these tests and things done what do you think about that should people be running out to sort of get their exact physiology or or should we think about hang on the Kenyans used to do pretty well back in the

70s and 80s in the Ethiopians without all these Tests that's sort of it's a bit of a leading question I think I've given you my opinion yeah yeah but I think it's like everything I don't think there's a a ride or a wrong but I think you know like I said especially if um yeah if we go with the idea that the you know the volume of training is important you probably don't need it I mean there's not a precise intensity there you know there's a there's quite a You know there's going to be a

range of when you're in that that moderate in intensity training I think um when you're getting into the other zones that that can be value and I think sometimes also you know like you were saying being able to monitor your adaptations and be able to see okay this this season I did this type of training I got really good improvements in vi2 Max but my lactate threshold Didn't change or or vice versa so I think it's also being able to to to Monitor and and see how your training if it is progressing how you want

and I think also I mean a lot of these things you know depending on you know finances like you can get a pretty good idea even you know by running around uh a field you know there's a lot to protect precise tests for a lactate threshold or Maxwell Lactate steady state but I think most runners or cyclists know that intensity where it's hard but if you go a little bit quicker you're not going to be going much longer so exactly and you don't need to be training you know at the point one k or an

hour you know it's not that precise but yeah if even if you did that sort of try and you know exercise yourself you'll be able to know okay my lactate threshold is around about 15k's an hour 16ks an hour whatever it whatever it might be and that that could help you to know okay this is where I need to I want to stay below the lactate threshold if I want to do some intervals above the lactate threshold it may help just to guide that type of training yeah and you get a bit of feel the

more training you've done and it is it fair to say that you know quite a lot of people just aren't doing enough training you know and that maybe they're thinking Oh I can get this sort of you know boost by by if I know exactly what my active threshold is in my zone you know my what zone this isn't it when really they could just be training more maybe in more consistently and for longer you know like putting years and years together rather than sort of this tinkering around the edges is it fair comment yeah

I think that's pretty fair and I think you know there's quite often you know You can you know a lot of people will buy new equipment try some different nutrition and or go and get some expensive tests and I mean I think you're spot on you know maybe the starting point is you know getting the increasing the increasing the volume of training and the the consistency of training and having uh you know having a regular a regular habit they're probably that's where I'd be making the chains before I Start um getting the wallet out and

along the same lines I mean into on Twitter Nanette asked you know do we complicate training zones and intensity and I guess that was a lot of the discussion with Andy Coggin and and Steven sealer and and uh and uh oh I've certainly forgotten somewhere um you know do we need to worry about oh you know This is is this saying two or Zone because there's a lot of stuff on Twitter about it you can almost think you know if you're not in zone two the world's going to come to an end or your mitochondria

is going to blow up or or something or you'll never be able to burn fat again you know because as soon as you go to intense it inhibits fat oxidation and you know so Andy spoke quite a lot about that he doesn't really believe that you Know that he did a study ego and you know during the one exercise you you go intense and you use more carbohydrate less fat and then it goes down again when you drop you know and then up again it's not like as soon as you go intense you know your

fat you won't burn your fat yeah and and I think you know it probably relates a little bit to your previous point I think it's um yeah taking the long term picture so I think One you know sometimes you know you know people talk about this just in terms of the next training session but where I actually think it's more useful is where yeah you can get to the end of the season or the end of the year and go look this year I did most of my training in zone one on you know I

did this percentage in zone two or zone three and I had my worst result or my best result and that then helps you to to modify it for that for the for The next season so I think you know using it as a guide and also as a way of evaluating either a training block or or a training season I I think there is um is value I think you know if you think about the um the the markers so the metabolic thresholds which Define those training intensities I think there's I mean there's definitely differences

in metabolism That are happening in those zones and I think that's presumably some differences in in signaling and and adaptation so but I do think there are different adaptations that will occur in in those different different training zones and it can be used as a guide and yeah individuals can then then adjust it based on their results okay just sort of stop to sum up I guess I'm wondering uh I'd like to do a takeaway messages thing at the end but But just even before that to sum up and I guess it is sort of

take away messages um are you I get the feeling you are almost like an 80 20 sort of guy maybe not you know the exact percentages but you know you feel like you're doing your 80 uh low intensity so you're getting your volume yeah and then you might be doing your your 20 High getting your your more function and then as you've said also there's more to life than the mitochondria but other things Will sort of flow from that so is it fair to say that you you are sort of in that camp perhaps I

think yeah the volume is definitely important and I think the um yeah one of the things that we didn't touch on really but I think also like the um yeah a bit like saying like the the VO2 max I think that you can't dissociate volume and intensity completely and I think you Know to give an extreme example like if if you walked eight hours at a really slow pace exactly like like you could get a pretty good volume of training out of that exactly but I don't think you're going to get great adaptations out of

that sort of training so I think there's definitely uh uh don't say threshold but there isn't I think there is a yeah I guess it's like Medicines as well where you have like a minimum effective dose I think there is a there is a minimum effective intensity and I mentioned Javier's study and we did we did a lot of we did a very high volume of training just below the first metabolic Threshold at about 85 90 of the metabolic threshold and we saw some pretty good improvements but not as great as what we've seen when

We've done training above the first above the first metabolic threshold so in zone two so I tend to think that that's probably where I'd be if I that's where I would be doing my volume training is in the zone two so above the first metabolic threshold the low low zoned because I mean these things are so wide that's why as you say there are seven I think even when someone had eight um Andy coglin I think it's seven but You know at least seven years wide thing right so I think it's a low low zone

two is that what you're saying so if you're when you say motorbike first metabolic threshold you're talking about the first lactate threshold you yeah I say metabolic threshold just because you know some people will use ventilation as you know use the first ventilatory threshold or foot but yeah the first first lactate threshold the same thing so where I guess where there's a first Change in metabolism so yeah that can be where you start to get the accum an increase in lactate above resting can be where there's an inflection in ventilation as well so but that

point where there's a a a clear change in in metabolism so first metabolic threshold first lactate threshold yeah yeah bottom of zone two that seems to be you know somewhere in zone two I think that's probably where I would be doing my my volume training and then like you said Earlier still adding in some high intensity interval training so that's going to be you know above the second lactate threshold or second metabolic threshold and I think also you know there's an argument and going back to your previous Point even though it's not very specific also

having some Sprint interval training yeah there's not you know apart from like me like a well maybe a 300 meter Runner or something yeah not too many events where You go all out for for 30 seconds but we've seen some very specific mitochondrial adaptations with with that type of that type of thing as well and it's interesting also there's Andy bringing up Andy Coggin again um I remember years and years ago he was a top time trialist and he used to do 30 second Sprints and this is before Marty gabala had and I know even

before Marty gabala there was people that were doing the really high intensity stuff And I was like what are you doing and or even like 10 seconds and he said it was more for like sort of neuromuscular adaptation you know and I guess teaching yourself to really Sprint he was a cyclist and obviously they have different needs that we'd be sort of focusing on on running but um yeah it's interesting it's sort of come full circle in a way that that you know I don't think he was thinking about the mitochondria back then it was

more Explosive power maybe neuromuscular you know sending messages to the muscles to contract and you know even strength you know like almost like a specific strength training but um yeah it's interesting you're finding the mitochondrial function can be improved with her yeah and I think that you know maybe that does sort of bring us to the the take-home message I think you know one of the things I you know I'd say quite often is that Yeah I'd be looking at you know what is the physiology that's needed and yeah other we're physiologists so that's what

we focus on but there's there's other things as well but yeah in this case what's the physiology that I need to perform at my best and then designing the training that's going to develop that physiology rather than necessarily thinking you Know how am I going to you know do specific training and you see that sometimes you know you're talking about the the Twitter sphere Etc you know people put a lot of effort into trying to do training that really closely replicates what they're doing on the on the in their event or on the the sporting

field and yeah I'm not convinced that that's the that's the best way to go That's interesting and yeah it comes back back to the physiology because I remember teaching people about carbohydrate use during exercise carbohydrate loading carbohydrate ingestion and you'd say okay so do you think glycogen low carbohydrate loading to increase your glycogen is going to improve a 30 second Sprint or three minute effort and that oh and I said well just think about it are you going to use up all your glycogen that time no Well it probably doesn't then you know and same

with it's carbohydrate ingestion gonna improved performance well your glucose levels stay fine for about the first hour of exercise whether you drink carbohydrate heart so therefore it's probably later when it starts to drop that it's going to have the Improvement so you just come back to the physiology right and then it helps to inform what you're going to do yeah and I don't know if it's a little Bit off topic but I remember you know when I was first started teaching a there used to be this idea that you needed to train dehydrated to improve

your ability to run because you're going to be dehydrated and yeah I mean it took yeah maybe it's superficially it kind of makes sense but then then all the research came out and said no well you need to you know yeah you Need to hydrate you need to improve increase your plasma volume training fully hydrated you're going to get better adaptations out of out of training so I think I said it's a little bit um maybe off topic but I think that's a good example of you know training exactly as you're competing isn't going to

necessarily lead to the the best adaptations that's true well thank you very much for going much longer than I think your Watch is going slow or something down there um maybe it's down I can make down under jokes because I'm in Copenhagen um but can we just do some quick um takeaway messages from this chat if that's okay yeah sure so I think um in I said respect uh I would say that the number one is what we're just saying there about you know train your physiology so have a look at the event that or

what You're interested in doing what's the physiology that's required for you to excel at that event and then design your training to Target that that physiology in terms of mitochondria maybe all roads don't lead to Tokyo so we have seen that the the mitochondria respond to different types of training so the sort of moderate intensity high volume training we tend to see disproportionate increases in mitochondrial content compared to the Mitochondrial respiration high intensity interval training we see a a more of a proportional so that the increase in mitochondrial respiration is quite similar to the the

increase in mitochondrial content and then when you go the very high intensity so let's bring interval training we'll see that the increases in mitochondrial function are disproportionate to the increases in in mitochondria and I think when that comes down to the I guess supporting the Periodization pyramidal training putting it all together yeah I think that's why yeah and I don't have the magic the the Magic Mix there but that's where I think getting the high volume of training but also introducing some high intensity interval training and sprinting or training is probably going to lead to

the best mitochondrial adaptations okay and I meant to ask you this earlier but how much are we talking about is it 10 so you know when you say that really high intensity you get more disproportionate function versus volume Etc are we talking about sort of 10 we're talking about 50 I mean how much how much are we talking about differences there like in terms of not matching up yeah I don't know if I've got the exact number so what we what we do is and you'd be familiar some of this where we measure we measure

changes in Mitochondrial respiration and we can we'll report those values but then we can also we'll divide by the changes in mitochondrial content so we have like a um mitochondrial respiration per mitochondria it's not exactly per mitochondria but per um amount of mitochondria and we're not the only ones but what you can see is with the high volume moderate intensity training you'll see a decrease in the Mitochondrial respiration per mitochondria yes whereas when we look at the spring oil training we'll see a an increase there so yeah I'll have to put that on my homework

and that's fine yeah 10 or 20 that I'd say it's a tricky it's a tricky one because I had this conversation with someone else and it's something I've always thought about is you know when you divide something out you can kind of Miss so you know you talked about ambk uh phosphorylation and things earlier we have these sort of conversations so I'll just I'll just try and explain to you so just say you you you're you do an endurance training study and the person's left ventricle increases double for example but they've also had a doubling

of their citrate synthase so they mitochondrial and but then when you divide it out you go oh there's no real change You know because you if you talk about mitochondrial per milligram of heart for example you divide it out and you go oh there's no change it's like well hang on a minute surely it's good to have double the left ventricle volume and within that left ventricle to have double the mitochondria as well but when you divide it out you lose it so I'm sure you've had these sort of thoughts about you know Um and

it fits again with the a Fleming dealer found that people with diabetes have um less mitochondrial function it's just because they have left less mitochondria there's the same function per mitochondria so that that's sort of dividing out business you could kind of lose your message and I think that's where I mean I think that's right where you need to be you know just be really clear with the the Message because I think you know ultimately you know if you think about in in terms of training you want to have the greatest mitochondrial function probably per

per the amount of muscle so like you your body doesn't really care if it's per mitochondria it's ultimately you want the yeah maybe a bit like VO2 max as well you know what you're looking for is uh yeah you could go and yeah you go And lose some lose some body fat and improve your improve your VO2 max in terms of mils per kg but on the bike it's probably not going to help you help your performance so I think ultimately what you want to be able to the you know the amount of energy that

you can produce per per milligram of muscle is going to be that the decisive Factor but I think it's still interesting that um the different types of training Do affect mitochondrial content and mitochondrial function differently interesting and I've learned that sounds like I should have uh knew that beforehand okay well thanks a lot for your time looks like you've gone over time as well it's been great to chat I'll have to start coming into Victoria University more often when I'm actually back to the country as well and I'll come and see you yeah great awesome

it's really good to chat mate and um well Done on the podcast I think it's been good to listen to oh great thank you very much okay see you next time I hope you enjoyed this podcast and please like subscribe pass it on to your friends and colleagues check out the other podcasts thanks again