Posted by Cris (24.66.94.140) on January 19, 2004 at 10:57:00:
Hello all, I’ve been away from the forum for a while, just catching up now. As usual, good discussion with critical thought. I’ll provide my thoughts/ opinions on a few of the posts I’ve read.
Where is oxygen delivery limited? To answer this question completely we require several studies where oxygen molecules are tagged and followed through the system from inspiration onwards. Without these studies, much of our conclusions will be based on some fact + some speculative extrapolation.
Until we can see more biochemistry live in action (imaging technology not good enough yet) all we have is “third party” observation so to speak. We can measure power output with heart rate and lactate in different conditions, and see where we get the most power. We then can “speculate” what happened with biochemistry, but for sure we know that a measured action caused a measured response, and if the response is favorable, then we do it again, if not then we stop. Then we keep track of our speculation and see if it is consistent against new tests. If so, then we might decide to keep our speculation and interpret it as f a c t. And for the time being we may keep this idea. But, tomorrow we may be reminded that it was only speculation when we discover something new.
It is interesting that unused oxygen is still found in venous blood (some oxygen still in blood after it passes through the muscle). And it is interesting that Co2 can pool in the lower lobes of the lungs, and also interesting that hyperventilation causes hypoxia leading to dizziness. It seems that the most important thing is the type of training we can control. The rest is good discussion, and I’m sure in time when we can see images of what is happening, the answers will surprise us all.
Basketball dribbling while stationary cycling. I don’t see an advantage here, as often the dribble rhythm is coordinated with foot rhythm, and specifically to weight transfer in the feet on a solid surface, and not pedals in a fixed plane, even if the pedals are independently articulated. Also, the trained basketball player is likely to be a good dribbler and does need to find other places to practice dribbling outside of specific dribbling drills and games. For the new basketball player or the poor dribbler, they often have trouble with “palming” the ball, bouncing the ball off the foot, and have trouble with cross over dribbling, non of which are addressed with dribbling while on a bicycle.
While observing the kinetic chain in dribbling, it can be seen that foot to foot weight transfer, arm and shoulder motions, and torso motions are integrated in a way that could only be made worse by dribbling and cycling, or at least dribbling while cycling would not train this kinetic chain, thus improving dribbling while cycling, but not dribbling while upright on a basketball court. Much dribbling is done with a lateral transition between a wide and low, and a narrow and high stance, often with the dribbling crossing between the legs. Of course this is impossible on a bike. For dribbling in one place while the feet are moving up and down, well I’ve never seen this in the amateur or pro basketball players I have coached, so I have trouble thinking of a good reason to practice this.
Individual adaptation. I think it is fair to say that in terms of the type of biological adaptation between individuals doing the same activity, the response between people should always be the same, with rare exceptions. The d e g r e e of response will vary from one person to the next though. So all persons doing bench press will engage their pectoral and triceps muscles and get better at doing the bench press (I am assuming good training and not overtraining in this example). But no individual will have NO stimulus to pecs but somehow stimulus to big toe muscle while doing bench press.
10 people doing the same exercise at the same relative intensity for each individual will all have a stimulus to the same kinetic chain and the same metabolic pathways. But each person, because of individual genetic variance will adapt to a different degree, so when it comes time to measure the supercompensation from the training, some people will have similar degree of improvement, some will have less and some will have more, but none are likely to have an adoption not related to the stimulus.
In terms of asking whether 10 people lifting 100 pounds 10 ten times having the same adaptation because the stimulus is the same; in this case the stimulus is not the same, only the weight and reps. Sometimes we confuse external stimulus load variables as the single determinant in prediction of response to training. In fact, the current degree of training (how fit the person is) plays an equal if not greater roll in deciding what a stimulus is or isn’t for one or more individuals. So lifting 100 pounds might be a one rep max for some, impossible to lift for others, and an easy 20 reps for others. The better question is; what is the variability of response to people lifting their individual 1 rep max, 10 rep max, and 20 rep max? Any combination of load and reps can be used, so long as the stimulus is corrected for each individuals current fitness, otherwise the question is arbitrary. For cycling, running, rowing etc, we know that 200 watts may be over some peoples lactate threshold, while it is well under other peoples lactate threshold, so the response to 200 watts is dependant on the current measured physiological state (fitness) of the individual.
So again our deciding factor comes down to measuring each individuals response to training, and keeping what makes us faster and discarding that which makes us slower or causes no improvement.
As long as we measure with the best tools we have, like Lactate, glucose, power, Vo2, and such, then we can have something to say, if we don’t measure these things, then all we have is speculation which is a starting point, but not a finishing point.
Interesting that can we talk about the Krebs cycle with confidence, but no person has ever seen the Krebs cycle live, in action, from beginning to end. Again, we don’t have the imaging technology to look at this. But we have very good measurements and knowledge to interpret what is most likely happening in the Krebs cycle, but still, I am sure that when we do develop the technology to look at the Krebs cycle, we will find we had some things right, some things wrong, and some things we never thought about. The Krebs cycle is a theory, a good one that we have managed to largely substantiate because the theory stands up to prediction under many different circumstances. The real fact is, no person has ever seen every detail from beginning to end, live, in the Krebs cycle. We should remember that we’ve been wrong before: earth is flat; it was though when cars we’re invented that humans would not physically tolerate speeds greater than 30 mph, it was thought we would fall apart. Lets always be ready to be wrong, but also balance this with defending what may be right with critical measurements and critical thoughts.