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

Did you guys get this worked up about the bobby knight joke too?

Oh boy! A new name for something! Just think of the possibilities. We could rename rocks and call them fossilized minotaur turds. They would still be the same objects with the same properties they always had, but it would be so exciting for awhile to pretend otherwise. And it would provide seconds of fun to use the brand new term in everyday speech ...

"Officer! Those hooligans on the overpass were throwing fossilized minotaur turds at my windshield!"

"Son, you're as dumb as box of fossilized minotaur turds."

"As the robbers made their escape crawling along the high mountain ledge, they met a fitting end when they slipped and fell on the jagged fossilized minotaur turds below."

Kind of catchy, eh? I like it.

Hallelujah indeed. Noakes be praised.

I'm playing in a fossilized minotaur turd band.

Wow! That concert really fossilized minotaur turded!

See? Told you it was catchy.

"You know how it is. A bloke just needs to get his fossilized minotaur turds off every now and then."

every now and again you just gotta get your fossilised minotaur turds off, especially to minitiarised fossilised brains

I don't think there is a single overarching biological homeostasis. If there is, it's life, and smarter folks than I have come up short in their efforts to define life. I don't even believe that the central governor itself is a single brain function or region, but rather a diffuse set of connected brain functions that share a single general purpose (to protect the body from self-harm during exercise).

Like any biological mechanism, the central governor is fallible, and limited, and therefore people have been known to exercise themselves to death. I'm currently writing an article about why 75% of marathon runners (including top finishers) run significant positive splits, and I believe that this phenomenon has to do with the limits of the central governor's calculative capacity.

As for proprioceptive cues... These relate to recent exercise science research on the brain that really has nothing to do with the central governor. The idea is that running is, contrary to conventional thought, a technique sport not that much different from golf and baseball. It is possible to consciously alter one's stride in all kinds of ways, for better and worse. I believe that runners should approach every workout as (secondarily) technique practice. Proprioceptive cues are sensory guidelines that one can actively call to mind in order to run more like the most eficient runners do.

target pace wrote:

Yes,but if you don´t base the training on individual physiological causes of fatigue how you can define the RIGHT target pace?

Im a 14:50 5K runner, but I believe that I can run 12:35.Infact I think I can run it already this year.Watch out Bekele im going start training the central governor!

It's circular: You choose target paces based on past race performances.

Matt Fitzgerald wrote: I'm currently writing an article about why 75% of marathon runners (including top finishers) run significant positive splits, and I believe that this phenomenon has to do with the limits of the central governor's calculative capacity.

I'll admit to only having ever scanned the Noakes stuff on the central governor. But is "it" supposed to somehow know at the outset how far you plan to race? How is "it" supposed to "calculate" anything?

Not trying to be a dink - looking for an explanation is all.

I think the central governor plans things based on previous experiences.

Remember your very first races. You either a) didn't run all-out and only ran to complete the distance and/or b) ran way too hard from the start and died at the end. Your body and your central governor learns from these repetitive experiences until you get to the point where your central governor "knows" what a 5k feels like. So "it" knows based on previous experiences.

The challenge then is to think of the body as a machine with set points of exertion. As you train and become used to races your governor realizes these points to be (as example): 98% of vo2max for 5k, 95% of vo2max for 10k, and 90% of vo2max for half-marathon. I use vo2max simply as a measure of oxygen consumption, which then you can calculate breathing patterns, etc that your central governor sets as a point of exertion. Whether you are a 13:00 5k runner or a 16:00 5k runner these "exertion points" are the same. The difference comes with moving your central mass in a forward direction. All things being equal, a 100lb mass will move faster than a 150lb mass and muscles producing 200 newtons of force will move forward faster than muscles produing 100 newtons of force. Then you have the biomechanical differences between a 13:00 runner and a 15:00 runner...differences in levers, potential energy, wasted energy, etc. These are the components that are ultimately trained in high level athletes. After a few years of consistent running and training the metabolic components are pretty well set.

Let's take a workout such as 4x1600m at 5k race pace.

As an out of shape runner you may be 10 pounds over your racing weight. This slows you down. Over the course of the season if you repeat this workout you will become faster simply by losing weight. If will take less force to move a lighter object up and forward through the air.

You can explain the increases in force production as simple mechanical efficiency and muscle memory. The more you do something the easier it becomes. The central governor does not enjoy you stressing the heart and lungs so much so it prepares the body to tackle that same stress again (a la SUPERCOMPENSATION). 5:00 pace becomes easier. So, if you continue the same pace and the same exact workout over and over again you recieve less and less benefit. Also, the amount of benefit may be different from runner to runner. This could be one reason why elite runners are faster than sub-elite runners given similar body and metabolic dimensions.

The mindset of the elite runner to always do better, to always do more, may also lead to the central governer to always reset these mechanical responses. A mere mortal runner may do the same workout at similar paces over and over again because we know we can do such a workout with relative ease (12 x 400 in sub :70 with 200m recovery). The elite runner may look at this and want more (20x400, or reduced rest or force a faster speed).

Genetics also comes into play. The amount of benefit you recieve from a workout may be different than another runner. Your weight, your height, your muscle fibers, etc. These are things that are at least mostly or partly determined by genetics. Hell, even your demeaner, your mindset, is partially determined by genetics. Your desire to train harder to work to the bone are also partially determined by genetics.

So...to train your central governor...have good parents!

Alan

Agreed Matt, the over arching homeostasis is life. Survival instinct maybe.

So part of that is physically based.

Which parts?

Also i like your explanantion on proprioceptive cues. That's pretty much what they are and i reckon every second coach has dozens he could talk to you about. Since i became a serious athlete with a serious coach about 20 years ago, i have been aware fo adjusting running technique. My coach had been coaching for 20 years at that point. He knew from the start. It's actually pretty standard knowledge.

Can you please provide some specific examples. This is still just theory without any grounding, any practical applications of your own?

good question wonderer.

So if you plan to run for 30 minutes and you get lost and end up having to run for 45 you have to walk the last 15. Because you are spent already. Your central governor didn't remember to plan for unseen occurances.

Seriously who is trying to peddle this stuff?

wonderer of things wrote:

I'll admit to only having ever scanned the Noakes stuff on the central governor. But is "it" supposed to somehow know at the outset how far you plan to race? How is "it" supposed to "calculate" anything?

Not trying to be a dink - looking for an explanation is all.

The conscious brain makes up part of the central governor and it influences / informs the central governor how far you plan on racing / running. That's why athletes are able to pace themselves - they know how far they plan to run and their brain calculates the appropriate pace so as to run that distance at the best possible pace.

Additionally, the more experience a runner has at a particular distance the better he/she gets at pacing that distance. This is evident with how often first time marathoners have difficulty selecting the correct pace. It is not at all uncommon for first timers start a bit too hard and fade badly near the end.

people who don't actually run or coach are still talking in the same language as always. Heavy on the theoretical and absent on the practical.

cheers but I'm out to find other people

OMG! Your brain has something to do with your running performance? NO WAY!

Your brain tells you that you are fatigued long before you actually are - poppycock! This is all just crazy talk.

Runningart2004 wrote:

I think the central governor plans things based on previous experiences.

Remember your very first races. You either a) didn't run all-out and only ran to complete the distance and/or b) ran way too hard from the start and died at the end. Your body and your central governor learns from these repetitive experiences until you get to the point where your central governor "knows" what a 5k feels like. So "it" knows based on previous experiences.

Rarely have I seen such a deliberate attempt to complicate something so simple.

My "central governor" didn't learn how badly it hurt to go out hard. I did. My conscious mind. The next time I raced, I remembered how badly the previous time hurt AND I remembered how all those people who were slower than me but didn't go out as hard managed to blow by me in the late stages of the race. So I made a conscious decision not to sprint the first 400 yards.

See that? No mystery organ. No vague, unexplained phenomena. We refrain from sprinting the first 400 yards of a marathon not because we are controlled by some mysterious mechanism in our bodies. We do it because we're not stupid.

Ghost of Cerutty wrote:

OMG! Your brain has something to do with your running performance? NO WAY!

Pretty amazing, isn't it? And all this time runners have been told performance was due mostly due to limitations in oxygen consumption and lactate threshold.

I have yet to see your question answered.

Noakes Central Governor Theory doesn’t suggest much for your training. The main point is that, “your brain paces your muscles to keep them back from exhaustion, your brain decides when to quit.”

Correct me if I’m wrong here Richard_ but this theory against what you propose on your power running website? You say it’s in your muscles right?

You have suggested that high bouts of interval training work your muscles right? not your lungs or oxygen transport system..

Richard_ wrote:

Ghost of Cerutty wrote:

OMG! Your brain has something to do with your running performance? NO WAY!

Pretty amazing, isn't it? And all this time runners have been told performance was due mostly due to limitations in oxygen consumption and lactate threshold.

Ah, but they haven't always been told that. What we were told most often in my ealr years was that we needed to be "tough," that racing hurt like stink so if you made your training hurt like double stink you'd race faster because the race would seem "easy" by comparison.

And since old Perce has checked in from beyond it might be worth noting here that he rarely dealt with schedules or physiology or anything that today's "experts" muck around with.

I just finished reading an interview with Albie Thomas in which he was asked about his coaching relationship with Cerutty. He said that he and Cerutty wrote to each other regularly but that it took about a month for the letters to get back and forth. He said that Cerutty never sent him training schedules. It was all inspirational and motivational stuff. But it was enough to get Thomas two world records.

thanks for luring me back in HRE. Always on the money! I see physiology and the rise of the physiologist as a major harming influence in our sport. Unfortunately they talk in the same language as the administrators whereas coaches are talking a somewhat different langauge. So they have gained power in the systems around the world. No good i think. I really like Renato as he appears to be able to us your language to describe what he does in a training sense. Cabral is also along similar lines. I'm sure there are others.

My own coach was Soviet trained. This meant that he went to university and studied coaching for 4 years and coached in that system for 15. Then he came to Australia in his 40s and has been coaching here for the last 25 years. He knows how the physiology fits as he was taught it directly and has applied it for 40 years. The science is not what he uses to understand the sport. He uses coaching theory or as Cabral would put it coaching technique. Different field of knowledge to physiology. Very very different.

An example of this crap relates to the guy that used to work in the same office as Efim. Both worked for the Ais (Australian Institute of Sport). Norm Osbourne is the guy i'm talking about. Basically he coached an athlete to 7 consecutive Olympics before Sydney. he coacher rick mitchell to a silver medal in Mexico, coached Mike Hillardt who some of you might know of and more recently coached Marg Leaney to 5th in the 1500m at Atlanta. Before Atlanta he had a revieew of his position. A panel decided to re-interview him and was made up of administartors, sports scientists and one coach who was of the wrong mind already. they said how are you going to use the physiologists from now on. He said i don;t need them as i have my own system of testing and analysis. He didn't have his position renewed. A very unjust situation led about by having the wrong people making the decisions.

But i think phsyiology is a great peripheral science. I just think we need some of you guys to know the practical side as well. Possibly this is why Peter Snell who has some serious credentials says differently to most physiologists. he was saying run slower to race faster all along. Now it's in vogue because 'the central governor theory supports it? Not on the front line where the coaches are interacting with the athletes. There it's about self honesty more than anything else really. In a schema of relative importance i would say that self honesty is number one from a coaching perspective. If you can encourage the athlete to start being truly honest with themselves half the job is already done. do we need to get some psychologists to speak to us about this self honesty. I really don't think so.