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

I have a theory too wrote:

Timothy Noakes wrote:

Eventually the point will be reached at which the CG will need to act since the physiological reserves no longer exist to allow that same pace to be maintained to the finish.

Which physiological reserves are these?

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Muscle glycogen for one. Also the body is much hotter at this time than at the start. Then there is the "stress" caused by repetitive eccentric loading of the anti-gravity muscles which might produce effects that we don't yet understand. Liver glycogen content would also be lower especially if the athlete was not ingesting much carbohydrate. Blood CO2 content is also probably reduced and this would make it more likely that hyperventilation would cause a drop in arterial CO2 content and hence in brain blood flow (considered to be important in maximal exercise).

I suspect that when we find which is the main "reserve" that is being "protected" during more prolonged exercise (according to the CG model), it will be something that we never even considered.

Timothy Noakes wrote:

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Muscle glycogen for one. Also the body is much hotter at this time than at the start. Then there is the "stress" caused by repetitive eccentric loading of the anti-gravity muscles which might produce effects that we don't yet understand. Liver glycogen content would also be lower especially if the athlete was not ingesting much carbohydrate. Blood CO2 content is also probably reduced and this would make it more likely that hyperventilation would cause a drop in arterial CO2 content and hence in brain blood flow (considered to be important in maximal exercise).

I suspect that when we find which is the main "reserve" that is being "protected" during more prolonged exercise (according to the CG model), it will be something that we never even considered.

All physical properties.

So you posit the CG works to preserve a state sufficient to allow you to finish, for example, a marathon (as per your 10k PR pace at the start of a 42.2 k effort). By this definition, it's impossible for a runner to execute an effort, beginning with the start of a marathon, that would prevent this runner from finishing it. It cannot happen. They cannot run such an effort that they would be forced to give up along the way.

For an extreme example, this runner could start off at something even faster, such as 60 meter sprint pace. Right from the gun this runner to go full sprint. This runner can, under full protection of the CG, push themselves to the limit of discomfort they are willing to accept, exploit any even slight level of recovery to run as hard as they can at any given moment. Doesn't matter whether it's a pace they can sustain or not, they may have to slow down, vary pace, etc. There will always be a limit max pace and effort they can achieve at any given moment. They can do this in any marathon they are otherwise quite capable of completing and they will be guaranteed to finish without having give up or get medical assistance, leave to rest, refuel (more than what's otherwise provided on course), whatever.

Shouldn't be a problem. The CG guarantees it by this definition. Correct?

Tim,

Noakes said:

I quote the following from one of the book written by one of these authors to see if my students can see the flaws in this explanation:

>>So, we are your students now? Do you actually teach? If so, I might have a proposition for you;)

".... your marathon pace is very close to your lactate threshold pace, which is determined by your oxygen consumption at your lactate threshold and your running economy. If you run faster than your lactate threshold pace, then lactate accumulates in your muscles and blood; this occurrence deactivates the enzymes for energy production and makes you slow down".

>>Too easy;)

Noakes said:

If this explanation is correct, then there is only one competitive pace - that at which the poisonous lactate reaches the threshold at which it begins to "deactivate" the enzymes for energy production. But how would this same mechanism explain your different paces at other distances - 1 mile; 21 km; 100 miles?

>>Since the aforementioned statement is fundamentally flawed, the remaining arugments are arguments against a flawed statement, I presume, but I will read on. That is a good question though, one that I, among many others, have pondered for a while.

Noakes said:

Next, if this explanation is correct,

>> But it's not. We've already established that.

Noakes said:

then muscles would run out of energy and go into rigor as a result of the "deactivation of the enzymes for energy production" which would cause muscle ATP concentrations to become depleted. That is how metabolic poisons work. Unless there is another control available this would be the outcome - athletes would not slow down; their muscles would simply go into rigor.

Finally there would be an easy way for the body to allow you to run faster. All it need do is increase your cardiac output which is submaximal during marathon running. This would increase the oxygenation of the muscles, reverse the anerobiosis and lactate production, causing the lactate concentrations to go down and the energy producing enzymes to be re-activated allowing you to speed up. Only when the maximal cardiac output was reached would this mechanism then explain why you slow down.

>>As I say, the original statement is obviously flawed, but we have addressed this misconception earlier in the thread. There are two things to consider, 1) it is possible to increase performance in endurance events simply by increasing plasma volume, which presumably increases max cardiac output. Now that's a slightly different notion than improving LT though, but you mixed the metaphors. 2) As is clearly evident in the literature, if one improves LT, their performance in endurance events will improve. Now, this is not to say there isn't a "mental" component to this adaptive response as well, but my counter argument is actually stronger in my view, than the simple paradoxical argument you present. It's also not to say the person with the highest LT wins, but, in general performance moves with LT/CV/MLSS in macroscopic terms. So, just because we both agree that lactate is not a poisonous metabolite, and that the mechanisms of metabolism are generally not "locked up" during exercise, does not necessarily mean that instantaneous, or even small time scale control is moved to the central controller. It simply means the traditional notion is misguided.

Noakes said:

The same paradox occurs when we try to explain why some forms of altitude training improve performance or why EPO use increases submaximal exercise performance more than it does the VO2max. The moment you say that either intervention improves exercise performance by increasing oxygen delivery to

muscle, then you have to answer the question: Well why in the control state did the heart not simply pump harder and so send more blood to the muscles and so allow the exercise to be performed at a higher intensity (up to the point at which the cardiac output is maximal)? Why in the absence of altitude training or EPO treatment is the heart not pumping optimally to maximize oxygen delivery to the muscles?

>>Well, of course as you're aware, the heart action is dictated by the metabolic needs of the tissues. I see what you're saying, but a similarly plausible argument might be that as relative oxidative potential of the muscles is reduced, at altitude, the same peripheral control mechanisms are activated that limit work capacity at sea level, just with a different offset.

Noakes said:

These are fundamental questions that in my view cannot be answered by the HIll model.

>> Yes, fundamental and not entirely explained, on that we agree.

If however the regulated variable is the mass of muscle that is being activated which then sets the pace and consequently the demand for oxygen and cardiac output, then the explanation is easier. It would then be hypothesized that altitude training and EPO use improve submaximal exercise performance by allowing the recruitment of a larger muscle mass during exercise allowing an increased running speed to be achieved.

>> Yes, that would make it easier, but again, that doesn't make it the explanation. It's an alternative to the traditional, which "makes sense" in some contexts, but not necessarily in others.

Changes in which sensed variables allow this to happen, is the mystery inviting answers.

>> Yes, but where is the "sensing" taking place, and where is/are the control constraint(s) being imposed?

Steve

Dr. Noakes,

Thank you for posting. Letsrun can be a bit rough of a place with a shortage on civility at times, but many of us here enjoy reading your ideas.

The Light wrote:

I was thinking something similiar about Richard's muscle factor model -- does his model explain multi-pace training, or the other way around? What new things can this refined way of thinking reveal?

Light,

I think it happens in 2 stages. First, my model explains why multi-pace training works. Multi-pace training has been around a long time and has been employed in various ways for many, many years, but without an adequate physiological explanation. I believe my model now provides an updated physiological explanation for why multi-pace training works.

The absence of an adequate physiological explanation didn't negate the effectiveness of multi-pace training. However, I suggest the lack of an adequate physiological explanation may have stifled refinements in multi-pace training. So, the 2nd stage is that my model is applied by runners/coaches and produces refinement in multi-pace training (and perhaps decreased usage or even abandonment of some other training methods). Clearly, we aren't in stage 2 yet.

Theory,

You appear to be mixing training practices and physiological explanations instead of treating them as the separate things they are.

What Prof Noakes has provided is a different physiological explanation for training practices. His physiological explanation (the CGM) is very different than the cardiovascular/anaerobic model being preached by others.

Richard_ wrote:

What Prof Noakes has provided is a different physiological explanation for training practices. His physiological explanation (the CGM) is very different than the cardiovascular/anaerobic model being preached by others.

I agree there's no training value in his concept.

By what definition? Do you do this on purpose? I didn't see any guarantees that any athlete finishes no matter what.I understood the CG works to preserve a minimum state when exercise terminates. When he is capable, and doesn't overdo it, this means the full race distance. But I would argue, for the athlete in your extreme example, if he pushes too close to catastrophe, the body starts shutting down, and exercise terminates, regardless of final race distance.

I have a theory too wrote:

...So you posit the CG works to preserve a state sufficient to allow you to finish, for example, a marathon (as per your 10k PR pace at the start of a 42.2 k effort). By this definition, it's impossible for a runner to execute an effort, beginning with the start of a marathon, that would prevent this runner from finishing it. ... Shouldn't be a problem. The CG guarantees it by this definition. Correct?

Further to the question of not overriding the CG, what would you call it when athletes reach some physical limit, e.g. suffer heatstroke in a hot marathon?

I've been lurking a while. I think CGM has some interesting points but reminds me a lot of Frank Horwill's five pace system - it formalises what has been openly done for a while. Herb Elliott and Percy Cerutty had a huge understanding that training was about both building fitness and increasing the athletes ability to go to their limit. Peter Coe said you win a race either by better fitness or being willing/able to hurt yourself more. (Look at either of these coaches and you will also see their understanding that fitness goes way beyond CV fitness lactate thresholds etc and includes muscle condition, technique etc... these areas seem to have people making bold statements about their new 'discoveries' too which can only been seen as discoveries if you ignore everyone else who has been there 50+ years before). My old coach who trained with Bannister always said: "It is the first role of the coach to teach the athlete to tolerate pain." Something he learned in the 50s.

Here's an another aspect that interests me: Dick beardsley said that the Duel in the Sun triggered something in his sub-conscious that meant he was never able to push himself that hard again. Could pushing too hard mean that the limits get reset 'too low'. Is this a dimension of over-training with the body taking a battering and thinking 'Time to protect myself'? (Again see Martin and Coe and their belief in 'Therapeutic' runs. They're not just thinking about the 'physiological' in teh traditional sense)

How much can we affect the CG 'naturally'? Is there a danger of people ending up like Tommy Simpson? Someone who was basically a neural scientist once told me he though that this was the next area of performance enhancing drugs. He said he could envisage someone running 100m in 7sec, finishing with shredded muscles and then dying as their body gave out. His grasp of elite athletics was not great but it was interesting to hear a scientist from a non-running background having an alternative outlook on where PEDS could go next.

I'm not getting over excited about the CGM as it is a new name for something that has existed for a long while. We don't rip up VO2 max etc as we know what has been seen to work even if we don't fully understand why.

But the more we understand what goes on the more effectively people can train and race. And, as per Horwill's 5-pace, if a model works then we use it, if it doesn't we don't. Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So if an understanding of what enables people to push themselves and maximise performance from their fitness can be achieved then all well and good.

The Light wrote:

By what definition?

This one:

Timothy Noakes wrote:But what clever athletes do is that they run at the pace that the CG has calculated is appropriate for the full 42km not for the first 10 or 20 or 30 or even 41 km because if the pacing strategy does not exactly match the optimum pace that their bodies are able to deliver, the CG will come into play sometime along the route and force them to slow down and so adopt the pace that it has calculated is appropriate

These sorts of posts are totally unhelpful because the argument is intellectual and not empirical. Your method of refutation is entirely rationalistic and idealistic (in the philosophical sense); you test the validity of a concept by pushing it to its logical extremes instead of looking at the empirical consequences of its employment. William James called this mode of argumentations the fallacy of "vicious intellectualism." Empirical science was able to get off the ground when it abandoned this form of dialectical argumentation for experimentalism because it realized that the truth of ideas does not lie in their logical consistency under extreme conditions, but in their predictive power for experience.

This problem is rampant on message boards precisely because all we have are words and concepts and no access to the rough ground of primary experience. Noakes himself hinted at this problem in the distinction he drew between legal argumentation and scientific exploration in a prior post...perhaps pg 45?

deleuze wrote:

These sorts of posts are totally unhelpful because the argument is intellectual and not empirical.

To draw conclusions on behaviour and attributing to cause is an intellectual process. I'm performing a litmus test on the conclusions Dr. Noakes posits.

I have a theory too wrote:

To draw conclusions on behaviour and attributing to cause is an intellectual process. I'm performing a litmus test on the conclusions Dr. Noakes posits.

Sure, it's an intellectual process. And it's a litmus test. But some intellectual processes and litmus tests are better than others. It's my contention that yours is unhelpful because it distracts attention from the everyday empirical and practical consequences of Dr. Noakes' theory by focusing on the theory's logical consistency under very strange circumstances.

The mode of argumentation you are using was developed by the scholastics in the medieval period who were discussing the characteristics of a perfect being. Since the perfect being was supposed to be logically consistent under any circumstances, it was actually a useful mode of argumentation for those purposes. However, for the present purposes, not so much.

deleuze wrote:

Sure, it's an intellectual process. And it's a litmus test. But some intellectual processes and litmus tests are better than others. It's my contention that yours is unhelpful because it distracts attention from the everyday empirical and practical consequences of Dr. Noakes' theory by focusing on the theory's logical consistency under very strange circumstances.

The mode of argumentation you are using was developed by the scholastics in the medieval period who were discussing the characteristics of a perfect being. Since the perfect being was supposed to be logically consistent under any circumstances, it was actually a useful mode of argumentation for those purposes. However, for the present purposes, not so much.

Dr. Noakes is claiming the CG will force an appropriate pace, will impose itself on the runner, it will do these things. These are significant claims. My test is completely reasonable. If I presented something like the runner strapped 10 pound weights to their feet, or they were being chased by bulls or something, that would be an unreasonable test because it introduces factors beyond the control of the subject.

However, since Noakes says the CG will force the behaviour, then it must do so regardless of how the runner approaches the event. If Dr. Noakes cavaets the behaviour to say it will happen as long as the runner allows it or follows it, then it isn't what it's claimed to be. It's as simple as that.

Thankyou for that information on Borg and the Aussies and PRE, i had only come across it in this thread and didn't pick up that the PRE rises linearly as the important point.

I am wondering if this linearity also occurs during special situations. For example the race that is sit and kick in variety. The jogger who increases his pace as he passes that beautiful woman and then pays the price by having to slow down around the corner or his jog is over. What about when the motivation is flagging so you alternate between keeping the pace up and letting it go for a bit.

Is there an example of a marathon where they ran slighty over distance? Like 1km over? But the athletes never knew because they just ran to the finish line? Did they suddenly all have to stop and walk after 42kms within sight of the finish line potentially?

It is possible we learn to anticipate very well and after your first ever 1500m race major adjustments are made so that the second race is markedly improved? Oh too fast too early or keep the pace up on the third lap so you don't have too much left at the finish type of thing. After half a dozen such races the improvements in race familiarisation (distance familiarisation) would already be fine tuned quite dramatically from that very first effort.

Taking your example at the end which i'm sorry i don't totally understand, but taking the point of anticipation, i found it very difficult initially to deceive athletes. If i suddenly said "ok 2 more reps" they would groan and do them. If i did it again well that's the end of that deception. Now i cover it by never letting them know what is coming next. Igloi inspired me partially in that thanks to letsrun. I guess i want to be in control of when they get too tired to continue. Some sessions don't even require that although they do require partial fatigue where technical elements are focussed on. Those exhaustion sessions i want to control the ebb and flow of their energy levels and finalise in temporary exhaustion of them. If they are honest with themselves then they take control of that once they understand the concepts underlying them. Until that happens i must take control so they can learn to be more self honest.

blah blah

cheers

Of course nothing is as simple as it seems. I would call it masturbating with semantics rather than a providing a litmus test.Your litmus test is to equate "force an appropriate pace" with "guaranteed to finish a race; impossible not to finish a race". This quantum leap of logical conclusion is what makes your example unreasonable.The definition you selected did not contain the keywords "guaranteed", or "impossible not to". It did contain a qualifying phrase "that their bodies are able to deliver". It may be that the non-clever athlete puts himself in a position, that his body is no longer able to deliver *any* pace that can finish the race -- or that the appropriate pace is simply walking. This seems like a trivial caveat that can be contained in the formal definition, without undermining the main idea of a CG guided optimal race pace.I think every runner has experienced slowing down during a race. The relevent question that CG poses is, does this happen before, or after some physiological failure?

I have a theory too wrote:

Dr. Noakes is claiming the CG will force an appropriate pace, will impose itself on the runner, it will do these things. These are significant claims. My test is completely reasonable. If I presented something like the runner strapped 10 pound weights to their feet, or they were being chased by bulls or something, that would be an unreasonable test because it introduces factors beyond the control of the subject.

However, since Noakes says the CG will force the behaviour, then it must do so regardless of how the runner approaches the event. If Dr. Noakes cavaets the behaviour to say it will happen as long as the runner allows it or follows it, then it isn't what it's claimed to be. It's as simple as that.

Possibly the central governor is a descriptive term for something that is real and tangible within us. After all homeostasis is real and tangible within us. It seems to me that Tim has been looking at this 'real' thing for some time within his field. He has seen many experiments all pointing to the existence of this thing.

So what is this thing? Do we deny it exists or accept it?

This thing to me is our instinct, our nature. It can change over time but it is that part of the essential us that is reactive to our environment and is separate from our control. Then there is the other part which is our control side, our rational side. It can make decisions independant from the instinctual side. It can make decisions which force the central governor to adjust itself. Alternatively, the central governor can force the rational decision maker to stay within certain boundaries. (ps Bruce Lee said it is the balance between instinct and control within ourselves that is important *see bottom for quote)

This would explain how during a race we can respond to surges or that sudden often necessary finishing kick (which always comes from a slightly sub-max race). The Governor has limits which it regulates but the individual can do whatever it wants within these limits including temporarily override those limits for a higher purpose.

Say you are right at the end of a totally exhaustive maximally hard run and just about to drop, when you see your son up ahead on the train tracks and you notice the train is coming. So it is sprint for 400m or a dead son. I bet there is some serious recruitment going on. Possibly because in the fathers mind the son is more important than himself and so can override himself for that reason. Maybe some people can do this for big races. Maybe wellnow can do this at will soon! :)

cheers

*Bruce says: "Here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. Now if you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you will all of a sudden be a mechanical man, no longer a human being. It is a successful combination of both. Therefore, it is not naturalness or unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural, naturalness or natural, unnaturalness."

You can interpret what Dr. Noakes said in any way you want. I posted what he said, and you can argue that 'force' doesn't really mean 'force' at all.

"Timothy Noakes wrote: But what clever athletes do is that they run at the pace that the CG has calculated is appropriate for the full 42km not for the first 10 or 20 or 30 or even 41 km because if the pacing strategy does not exactly match the optimum pace that their bodies are able to deliver, the CG will come into play sometime along the route and force them to slow down and so adopt the pace that it has calculated is appropriate"