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Why can some people push themselves harder and for more time than others can when it comes to cardio training?
By Christina | May 1, 2008
This question came up recently after a Spin class. We have new bikes at the gym I teach for which calculate your heart rate, speed at which you are pedaling or rpm, distance traveled and the gear or resistance you have on the bike. This makes for some fun, friendly competition between the few participants who really get a rush out of pushing hard and winning.
What I do is call a gear and have everyone ride with the same intensity for the same amount of time. At the end of the “race” we see who went the furthest. Now one might think this race should be won by a guy almost every time since they are the stronger gender but to date I don’t think we have had a male winner. You might surmise this female dominance is because we have no guys in our classes but the truth is we have two really competitive women. If you read my blogs you know one of the women I am writing about is named Ryan, the other Morela.
These two are pretty easy going, well Ryan is but I digress. These two turn into machines when I call the race song is on. You can see it in their eyes, their faces and the intensity at which they are pedaling, it’s actually fun to watch which is what I do. So, why are these two riders so much stronger than the others? They are not any bigger, they don’t train on the bikes more than other people but they so out distance the other riders that I decided to do a little research on the topic.
Cardiovascular endurance is defined as the efficiency with which you are able to get oxygen to the working muscles while removing metabolic wastes during training. In other words, cardiovascular endurance is how well you can keep your “oxygen debt” (how much oxygen you owe to your heart and muscles) down during a cardio workout. Cardio training activities, like biking, are ways to improve your cardiovascular endurance. Obviously, they have endurance but I felt lactic acid and how their bodies break it down was also a factor so I looked into the lactate threshold.
Lactate threshold is the level of physical performance at which the muscles produce more lactic acid than can be removed. At rest and under steady-state exercise conditions, there is a balance between blood lactate production and blood lactate removal. The lactate threshold refers to the intensity of exercise at which there is an abrupt increase in blood lactate levels. This point is the beginning of the end of high intensity exercise. When the lactate threshold is passed power output drops, suffering increases and you are forced to slow down. Lactate threshold represents the highest steady-state exercising intensity anyone can maintain for prolonged periods of time. This makes sense now - us regular folk are hitting our lactate threshold earlier than these two and so are having to back off while they continue to battle it out.
Well I won’t keep you guessing, Ryan wins eveytime but Morela puts up a really good fight!
Topics: Exercise, General, que-ans |
