A Conundrum of Sorts...

Co-nun-drum (n): a) a question or problem having only a conjectural answer b) an intricate or difficult problem.

First of all, I’m no biology major. Realizing that, I am going to stay away from scientific terms, partly because they confuse me. What I know, or think I know is based on what I have read, heard, or experienced. Even then, I’m not sure if what I know is correct or if it fits together on the scientific level. Confused yet? Me too, and I haven’t even gotten to what this is all about.

Where do I begin?

Moving heavy weight is hard. When I use the word heavy, I am speaking relative to whoever is lifting it. What looks heavy to me can be chump change to others. Anyways… when we are moving heavy weight there is only so much we can do until we reach failure and drop the weight on our face. At this point our muscles have been taxed to the limit and we need to rest them before they can do more.

In short, when moving heavy weight, the major limiting factor at play is strength.

Next…

Moving a low amount of weight (again, relative to whoever is moving it) at a fast pace is also hard. There is only so much we can do before we fall over in pain and/or exhaustion and start to cry. At this point, we usually stop or slow down until the pain subsides and we can do more.

To summarize, when moving low amounts of weight at a fast pace, the major limiting factor that comes into play is endurance.

Still with me?

This is where the conundrum begins.

If we are training to lift heavy weight the answer is relatively clear. Train for strength.

If we are training to run long distances, a similar approach applies. Train for endurance.

But what happens when we want to move medium/heavy weights at a quick/fast pace, or even low amounts of weight at an extremely fast pace? And if that is our goal, how do we train for it?

With these types of goals in mind, there are not one, but two limiting factors that come into play. These are strength and endurance.

An Example:

Let’s take two athletes and assign them numerical values for their levels of strength and endurance (10 being high, 1 being low):

Note: All other levels of fitness (Power, speed, agility, ect…) are the same for each athlete.

Athlete A has a numerical strength value of 8, and an endurance value of 6.

Athlete B has a numerical strength value of 8 and an endurance level of 10.

If we put both athletes on a bench and asked them to go for a one rep max bench press, their weights would be almost identical. However, if we scaled the weight back to 60% of their one rep max and asked them to go for max repetitions, Athlete B would be able to perform far more repetitions then Athlete A.

Why is this?

In a one rep max, both athletes have a high enough endurance level that it just doesn’t come into play. In other words, they don’t come close to reaching their endurance threshold.

At 60% max weight for max reps, Athlete A reaches his endurance threshold before he comes to his strength threshold, and is forced to stop. Athlete B however, is able to continue on and perform reps until he reaches his strength threshold.

Another example:

Same two athletes:

Athlete A has a numerical strength value of 8, and an endurance value of 6.

Athlete B has a numerical strength value of 8 and an endurance level of 10.

This time they are running a single 40m dash.

Since all other areas of fitness are the same, both athletes run the 40m in the same time. The reason being is that at such a short distance, endurance doesn’t come into play. Both athletes come nowhere near their threshold.

If however, Athlete A had an endurance level of 2 or 3, he may reach this threshold in this short of distance and he would lose the race.

Now, let’s move out the distance and make it a 400m run. Assuming they are going all out from the start, both Athletes will be tied for the first leg of the race. At some point, Athlete A will start to hit his endurance threshold and Athlete B will take the lead. Later on in the race, they might both hit their strength threshold, but this will be a moot point as Athlete B will already be ahead.

Of note, if Athlete B had a slightly lower level strength/power/speed then Athlete A ,this might even itself out by the end, with Athlete A taking an early lead and Athlete B coming back at the end.

Enough with the examples…

In short, the conundrum is that training across multiple fitness domains is a difficult task. If you are training for a specific movement, or event, this is made a little easier.

For example (I lied)

If you are running the 100m it is optimal to maintain a point where your strength and endurance levels max out at the same time. If you have 100 hours to train and you devote 99 of them to training strength, you are probably going to die after 25m. Similarly, if you train 1 hour to strength and 99 to endurance, you might be able to run 100m without breaking a sweat, but you won’t be breaking any world records. For this event, training 60 hours to strength/power, and 40 hours to endurance might be optimal.

That example is pretty specific. But what if you are training for the 1600m also? The optimal training breakdown for that event might be 20 strength/power and 80 to endurance, which is by no means optimal for your 100m efforts.

The optimal solution would be to train 40 hours to strength/power and 60 hours to endurance. Sadly, this probably wouldn’t lead to any personal bests in either event.

For most sports, such as football, soccer, baseball, or even CrossFit, you don’t have the leisure to pinpoint a single optimal breakdown. When one play in football might require you to stop a 230 pound freight train from head on, another might require you to chase down a 175 pound gazelle. In this case, the best for one, screws you for the other.

The way I see it, which isn’t all that clear, is that the only way to find that optimal training point would be to take the optimal split between every possible activity, assign it a value for how often it might occur relative to other scenarios, and then come up with an optimal training split. If you are a super nerd, then you might even find a way to factor in at what levels an activity would switch from “success” to “failure.” This, obviously, is more than I care to tackle.

Thus we find ourselves at our conjectural answer to the conundrum at hand…

Con-jec-ture (n): a proposition (as in mathematics) before it has been proved or disproved.

Answer:

Fudge it. Pick an optimal split that you think is right and train for it. At the same time, test yourself in whatever you are doing to see if you are improving and what is holding you back from improving more. If you continually find yourself reaching a strength threshold before an endurance threshold, then train strength. If the opposite is true, well then do the opposite.

Reasons this Answer sucks:

Training multiple fitness domains at once is almost never optimal to achieving a high level in one single domain. In fact, excelling in one specific fitness domain will often result in going backwards in another. As a result, going forward in two domains is slower.

Some would make a case that given a set period of time; you should specialize in training one, and then switch to the other, rather than do both at once.

For most, this isn’t an option given the short periods of training times between major events or when sport seasons take place. For Olympic athletes who have longer periods of time between events, specializing might work better, or it might not.

In Closing:

I think I started this post wanting to talk about lactic acid thresholds, but got a little sidetracked. Oh well. Maybe I’ll ramble on about that next time.

-dunkie