If Tim Noakes "Central Governor" Model is Correct AND there is NO Lactate Threshold, HOW should this effect my train

There isn't "substantial inneficiency" from re-conversion of lactate as you claim.

Cytosolic lactate/pyruvate concentration is 10/1 at rest rising to 100/1 or more. Why is this? What is the role of lactate production in maintaining cysolic redox?

Lactate is a wonderful fuel. Unfortunately, people like spaniel and Tinman are too stupid to realize this.

I expect the layman not to understand. But people who have studies physiology should know better than to cling to the "lactic acid is bad" dogma.

A lot of fizzyologists are extreme bullshitters, and because there is widespread ignorance (excercise physiology is a bit of a joke science unfortunately) they can get away with it.

sim wrote:

It's more than a phenomenom, it's a fact! Some coaches know how to bring it out in their athletes.

From dictionary.com

Phenomenon:

1. a fact, occurrence, or circumstance observed or observable: to study the phenomena of nature.

2. something that is impressive or extraordinary.

3. a remarkable or exceptional person; prodigy; wonder.

4. Philosophy. a. an appearance or immediate object of awareness in experience.

b. Kantianism. a thing as it appears to and is constructed by the mind, as distinguished from a noumenon, or thing-in-itself.

wellnow wrote:

There isn't "substantial inneficiency" from re-conversion of lactate as you claim.

Look up "LATER" in your dictionary. Think about how that relates to "in the context of the actual effort" or 'during the race' if you will.

Hello Light, i guess we are largely in agreeance.

You are correct in your analysis of how i feel about Noakes. Superfluous, restating and rebranding all fit.

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You take the position that this all comes consciously to the runner from practical experience. While that may be partially or even largely true, the idea that there is sub-concious, automatic, autonomous feedback and control is certainly worth looking at, and largely unexplored. Isn't the idea that we start to feel bad before we really are bad just a different way to say "learn to listen to your body"?

unquote

Of course this is an important area to look at. Part of any process of self-development (and running is one chosen by many), is looking at both your conscious mind and then by elimination, your subconscious mind. If one had the mind for it they could possibly gain conscious control of autonomous processes (Swami someone from India did this in the US in the 60s - 300bpm and 4 degrees warmer on one side of his hand to the other - both by conscious control.)

Falling short of this an individual honestly training themselves to discover their true edge, their true limit, will eventually discover that they have limitations within their own subconscious. These limitations have probably been learned and encoded and forgotten. Often many childhood experiences encode things we later rediscover as adults. Kiinesiology is one science looking at this mind/body divide and how stored emotional content may have a limiting affect upon us.

There are so many science/arts that look at similar things. Feldenkrais is a method of learning to reprogram basic movement patterns. Alexander technique is quite similar in the relearning new movement patterns (or is that unlearning old ones). Pilates teaches one how to restructure the body from within. Jeet Kune Do is an entirely self-contained system for progressively developing oneself in the broadest of terms, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. In fact the origins of most martial arts are grounded in the idea of undoing the spearation of mind and body. Yoga if course. Chinese medicine. Ayurveda. Zen, Buddhism, it goes on surely. I think it is important to explore things instead of just theorise about them. I was a partical crazy that did decathlon so i'm particular about variety and comparison. I explored a lot of different areas of the mind/body spectrum because it is my nature to do so. It is also my nature to analyse my experiences. Damn i even analyse my own way of analysing.

The main problem i have here is my own ego, in that i want to fight every incorrectness or injustice. It isnlt really that personal, it is more on an intellectual plane. It's just that some of you guys are only arguing on the intellectual plane, whereas some of us others are also arguing on an experiential plane.

The main problem that exists with Noakes theory is that it discredits the lactate threshold which, whether precisely correct or not, provides an essential similarity to the experiences of people who train.

Those that train know when they go above a certain intensity for a certain period of time there is a rapid loss of ability to continue. It happens quite suddenly in relation to the overall run. It is the area of fear in many athletes and is the main focus when it comes to training. how to train an individual to deal with that in a better way.

Take the focus away from that for those that lack the ability to analyse themselves when they run (ie the majority of runners) and running performance may well be on a decline.

**just on a sidenote i don't think a comparison is fair between Newton and Noakes. I think Newton's theory remains true on a particular plane of thinking (the 3 dimensional). I don't know if Noakes theory is true on any level.

wellnow wrote:

There isn't "substantial inneficiency" from re-conversion of lactate as you claim.

What else is something which is floating around doing nothing useful. Sure it is waiting you may claim, but why such a long wait for some poor little lactate particles. Surely if it was an even better fuel it would be used more quickly so we wouldn't have to stop.

[quote}

Cytosolic lactate/pyruvate concentration is 10/1 at rest rising to 100/1 or more. Why is this? What is the role of lactate production in maintaining cysolic redox?[/quote]

I don't have a clue what you have just said. Can you re-explain in layman's terms?

Reading in context wrote:

wellnow wrote:

There isn't "substantial inneficiency" from re-conversion of lactate as you claim.

Look up "LATER" in your dictionary. Think about how that relates to "in the context of the actual effort" or 'during the race' if you will.

I'll tell you what, why don't you and all the other "lactic acid is bad" crowd, actually do some research on why lactate is good?

Let me guess, it's because you are afraid to find out that what you have been preaching is wrong?

stop being weird because we all know it is used as a fuel. That is far from the issue. Whether that feeling one gets when they go over that threshold and start to feel pain ,after about 40 seconds of high intensity exercise as one example, is lactate or hydrogen or whatever it is, IS STILL OCCURRING. It isn't fantasy.

wellnow wrote:

Reading in context wrote:

Look up "LATER" in your dictionary. Think about how that relates to "in the context of the actual effort" or 'during the race' if you will.

I'll tell you what, why don't you and all the other "lactic acid is bad" crowd, actually do some research on why lactate is good?

Let me guess, it's because you are afraid to find out that what you have been preaching is wrong?

How old are you?

wellnow wrote:

I'll tell you what, why don't you and all the other "lactic acid is bad" crowd

Strawman argument. We're not saying it's bad (certainly, I'm not). Please argue what we are saying instead of fabricating our stance.

So when Geb sets the marathon world record in a non-tactical paced race, exactly how do conventional physical limitation models explain that he is able to produce from some stored energy reserves, a finishing kick? One would presume that in order to produce a world record performance, the body shouldn't store any extra energy in reserve -- yet most every runner knows that at the end race, he is able to find extra energy that he didn't have before.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Is anyone researching whether such decisions are conscious? Tell me, what guides the conscious thinking? As you are running along, say at 5K race pace in a 10K race, do you consciously decide it's time for your legs to burn just that little bit more, and then consciously adjust the pace accordingly? After 8K, do you consciously decide, based on the amount you sweat during the race, the surrounding humidity and heat, that it's time to feel thirsty, and therefore consciously decide a drink of water would be useful? For that matter, do you consciously decide when to sweat, and how much? When running up a hill, do you consciously assess the grade, and factor that into your pace calculations, in order to control your effort? Perhaps you give too much credit to what is decided consciously. Sure you can try and make conscious decisions about your pace, but if your body doesn't agree with your conscious tactical choice, then you will most certainly, against your conscious will, sub-consciously (unconsciously?) slow down.

That would be the perfect performance, wouldn't it? Use it all up evenly and completely throughout the course and leave not even enough back to kick at the end. WR performance mean you've done better than others have to date, but that doesn't mean the effort was perfect. If it were, it could never be broken.

You will learn effort levels in running, and going up hills, and racing, and pushing, and running easy and running hard. You will learn the effects of these things and the cost associated with each, of going too hard or too easy. What you give is too little credit to simple learning. You may not think that you judge the grade on a hill and calculate pace, but as soon as you look at that hill, all that experience will be called on in a flash and you'll do what you've done countless times before. And sometimes you'll set a pace you know you can't handle, but there's no way you're letting the old guy on your heels pass you on this bloody hill.

Don't try to confuse learning skills with whatever this central governor is supposed to do.

BTW, these two statements are at odds with each other:

"most every runner knows that at the end race, he is able to find extra energy that he didn't have before"

"if your body doesn't agree with your conscious tactical choice, then you will most certainly, against your conscious will, sub-consciously (unconsciously?) slow down"

If I can, I'll try to walk away from our discussion largely in agreement then, because I agree that we largely agree. Unfortunately, I think most of this debate leans towards the theoretical, and the practical implications, if at all, are still to come.

I did like your imagery of magnetic repulsion of some ceilings. The way you described it is pretty much how I understand what Noakes is trying to characterize.

If I understand Noakes correctly (and no one should take that for granted - corrections gladly accepted), I think many misunderstand what he actually says about VO2max and lactate threshold. I think because of this, he gets some undeserved credit/blame and criticism.

My understanding goes like this: Regarding VO2max, Noakes observed that Hill hypothesized a VO2max plateau, but in Hill's works, never actually measured or showed a plateau. When Noakes decided to measure it for himself, he found that some athletes did show a plateau, while many did not. Some did show a plateau, so there must be a reason why (most?) others did not.

But to simply and categorically assert VO2max doesn't exist is not something Noakes concluded, and is frankly absurd. Rewritten, it essentially asserts there is no upper limit to which any human body can consume oxygen. I would be interested to read the study that shows VO2 consumption is unbounded or infinite.

Regarding lactate threshold, Noakes showed that the lactate curve isn't a flat line, joined together by a steep line, with an abrupt, discrete, change in slope at the lactate threshold, but rather a smooth continuous exponential curve. Maybe there are some other arguments like thresholds aren't the same between different runners, or even with the same runner on different days, confounded by general confusion between lactate and lactic acid.

In any case, I think all of this falls far short of directly contradicting or replacing lactate threshold theory. Noakes did not show that a runner's legs do not burn during intense exercise. It is a simple matter to measure blood lactate for easy runs, where accumulation occurs very slowly, and for intense runs, where accumulation is uncontrolled until the point of exhaustion. Somewhere in between, there must be a crossover point, or maybe a crossover zone, that is interesting to structure your training around. Debates about whether boundaries are artificial or dynamic do not invalidate real world experience and results.

In short, I don't think it's Noakes's primary purpose to say VO2max, or lactate thresholds don't exist, just that in real world performances, something else may limit your performance before these physical limits can have their full effect. Training VO2max and lactate threshold may still result in substantial improvements, but this "something else" (in theory) always manages to keep a little in reserve, in the interest of self preservation.

* Side response: I certainly did not compare Noakes to Newton. I used Newton as an example of not rejecting models we know to be inaccurate. Newton's equations are all founded on a wrong assumption (like you, it's all relative man), yet they are widely used, and widely useful, in spite of the known inaccuracies. With Noakes, don't walk away just yet from proven methods, or existing models, but give him time to characterize his internal and external influences on performance, and see if it leads anywhere.

So if I understand you right:

1) Physical models predict a perfect performance, characterized by even splits, but to date, no one has actually ever done a perfect performance, so this amazing prediction you present as fact has never actually been validated in the real world.

2) All simple learning is conscious.

I agree with your description of simply learning skills, but I think a lot of happens both at conscious and subconscious levels, and that a lot of it just happens automatically. Think of all the great athletes who make poor coaches, simply because they can not explain what they do, because it just comes naturally to them. They just do it without thinking.

If so much is happening automatically, on what basis can we discard that something is autonomously reducing our performance based on this same concept of "simple learning".

wellnow wrote:

Reading in context wrote:

Look up "LATER" in your dictionary. Think about how that relates to "in the context of the actual effort" or 'during the race' if you will.

I'll tell you what, why don't you and all the other "lactic acid is bad" crowd, actually do some research on why lactate is good?

Let me guess, it's because you are afraid to find out that what you have been preaching is wrong?

I know this is hard for you, but sit down, TRY to open your brain, and actually think with it for a moment. Two glucose molecules are broken down...one each in a leg muscle cell of two different 5K runners. One is broken down into two pyruvate molecules, which within .5 seconds are transported into a mitochondria an metabolised aerobically and completely to CO2. With 2 seconds of the glucose molecule undergoing the first chemical change, it is fully converted into CO2 and ATP. The ATP is used .02 seconds later in a muscle contraction. Within 2.02 seconds, all of the metabolic potential of the first glucose molecule is realized and put into useful effort.

The second glucose molecule is broken down into lactate. A small amount of ATP is released via glycolysis, but most of the potential energy of the glucose is left tied up as lactate. 2 seconds after being created, these lactate molecules are released into the blood stream where they join an accumulating amount of lactate. 10 minutes later, the runner finishes the 5K and metabolism begins to catch up with effort when he stops. 3 minutes after that (now we're 13:02 after the creation of lactate) the metabolic machinery works through the backed up lactate and turns it back into pyruvate. 2 seconds after this it broken down aerobically to help the runner high-five his competitor (from the other example above) on the guy's new PR. He wishes he would have run one himself, but because he turned too much potential energy into lactate he couldn't use until after the race he couldn't keep up.

If you don't yet grasp the temporal different between direct oxidation of pyruvate, and delayed oxidation after recycling of lactate, I don't understand why you are even bothering to debate this.

Not necessarily. Here's a practical example of what I meant. In my first marathon, I predicted a target marathon time from my half-marathon time. I was on target for 23K, but then started degrading until my splits were about 90 seconds slower. Then at 41K, I was able to speed up, and at 42K, I managed to reach my target pace for the finish, and a little faster for the last 200m.My body made me pay for my bad conscious choice of pace selection, yet I was still able to draw on reserve energy at the end.

I have a theory too wrote:

BTW, these two statements are at odds with each other:

"most every runner knows that at the end race, he is able to find extra energy that he didn't have before"

"if your body doesn't agree with your conscious tactical choice, then you will most certainly, against your conscious will, sub-consciously (unconsciously?) slow down"

Since you decided to declare that the physical model would have it all used up evenly, I was actually mocking you on it. But it's a bit nonsensical to think a person runs faster at the end because some central governor kicks in. It's also why I posted that you had two statements at odds with each other on this very reasoning.

The problem here, you're just muddling up concepts. It's plain stupid to say that, when it's warm you automatically and unintentionally adjust to optimal pace. Christ, people can't find optimal pace when conditions are perfect let alone crappy. You adjust pace because you know you're going to die in the heat. But you can't seem to realize that 'thinking' is more than just you're inner monologue going to work.

We already know about learning, and we know it's highly complex and deep rooted to the point we don't, and probably never will, completely understand it. The question is, on what basis do you decide it's some pre-wired governor that's at work.

The Light wrote:

Not necessarily. Here's a practical example of what I meant. In my first marathon, I predicted a target marathon time from my half-marathon time. I was on target for 23K, but then started degrading until my splits were about 90 seconds slower. Then at 41K, I was able to speed up, and at 42K, I managed to reach my target pace for the finish, and a little faster for the last 200m.

My body made me pay for my bad conscious choice of pace selection, yet I was still able to draw on reserve energy at the end.

And I've died at the end of races with no reserve and no kick.

Sorry, but all you did was realize the end was close and you could afford to pay the price after you crossed the line.

Questions for Dr Noakes?