This is the quote you're referring to, it's wrong... It is the scientists fault, they should know their studies are garbage.
You are being a prick...The studies are not "garbage". They add to the understanding of training and such.
Agreed. People are foolishly putting forth straw man arguments without a clue as to how science works and clearly often without having even read the paper.
I saw a fascinating article on a training program that improved VO2Max by 44% in only 10 weeks in 100% of participants and the results were linear. That is, the gains continued at the same level per week throughout the entire 10 weeks! Yet the study violates most of the known science of distance training.
The study involved three VO2Max workouts, three 40 minute runs as fast as possible, and one rest day each week. It was done in 1977. No recovery runs, no easy days, just six very hard days with one day of full rest.
Magness argues that the program is not sustainable. I think everyone here would agree. It started with an average participant VO2Max of about 38. Almost everyone on Letsrun is higher than that so the benefits would be much less impressive...
'But what if you could follow this or a similar program for a short period... say four weeks... and get a double digit boost in VO2Max? I'm curious to know if such a study has been done?
I wonder if changing the 1977 workout by keeping the running the same but changing the spinning days to 40 total minutes of spinning with some low aerobic zone spinning for 20 minutes to warm up followed by two 5-minute VO2Max sessions with a five minute recovery spin between them and ending with a 5 minute cool down might produce similar results and been more sustainable.
Has such an approach been studied?
This question hasn't been answered so I'll ask a different way with this explanation. Lots of masters runners have injuries that prevent them from running high miles or running almost every day. Cycling every other day would reduce the daily impact of running almost every day.
Have any studies been done where runners ran three quality running workouts/week and cycled on the recovery days that included a low volume VO2Max workout... say 2x 5 minutes spinning with a warm up and cool down spin in the HR recovery zone?
To be clear, I'm not advocating this approach. I'm asking has it ever been studied. And if so, what were the results? Was a recovery ride including a low volume VO2 spin better than just a recovery spin day?
I wonder if changing the 1977 workout by keeping the running the same but changing the spinning days to 40 total minutes of spinning with some low aerobic zone spinning for 20 minutes to warm up followed by two 5-minute VO2Max sessions with a five minute recovery spin between them and ending with a 5 minute cool down might produce similar results and been more sustainable.
Has such an approach been studied?
This question hasn't been answered so I'll ask a different way with this explanation. Lots of masters runners have injuries that prevent them from running high miles or running almost every day. Cycling every other day would reduce the daily impact of running almost every day.
Have any studies been done where runners ran three quality running workouts/week and cycled on the recovery days that included a low volume VO2Max workout... say 2x 5 minutes spinning with a warm up and cool down spin in the HR recovery zone?
To be clear, I'm not advocating this approach. I'm asking has it ever been studied. And if so, what were the results? Was a recovery ride including a low volume VO2 spin better than just a recovery spin day?
I'll ask again: what is it you're trying to achieve here? It sounds like you're focused on improving vo2max. It's not improvable!
To answer your question, no one on here is going to know if that particular methodology has been studied, but the answer is "almost certainly not." Go check PubMed.
And what would be the study? Gain in vo2max by untrained subjects over 8 weeks? What would be the value of that to a serious (trained) runner? Again, the answer would be "none"!
I'll give you some real advice though: sure, try to add the low-volume spin. Since it's not weight-bearing and since there are no eccentric muscle contractions, there's very little downside. Most cyclists (when outdoors), especially in group rides, end up having harder, almost fartlek-like efforts in their "easy" rides due to hills, little pick-ups, etc. It's the nature of the activity. Obviously you'll need to back off if you're not recovering, but if you have the cycling background (read: cycling-specific muscle strength/endurance) to support it, you'll probably be fine.
Steve gets at it in his post, but it’s important to realize just how bad these people were at baseline. They effectively improve from ~31 min 5k shape to ~21 min 5k shape. Its basically what happens with every kid whose parents make them get off the couch and join cross country
Even if that analogy is good, that improvement over the relatively short time period is fantastic. Almost no noob improves that much in just a couple months unless they were previously well trained and returning back to running.
No, they actually do. This is basically high school runners. They can't run far or fast. If they want to train, they struggle and strain to keep up with the older kids (think running almost all out). They get fit. I saw this progression dozens of times over the years (Yeah, I'm old. Me and Methusela go way back).