Jan Olbrecht is a former elite swimmer, holds a PhD in sports physiology and biomechanics, and has advised athletes who have won over 600 Olympic, World Championship, European Championship and Commonwealth Championship medals...
Thanks for posting this. I've listened before, but it's nice to refresh. I use the Mader simulation in an Excel spreadsheet, but mine is extremely basic compared to what they use.
Jan is great. One thing he mentioned (and others) was very interesting, he said 'the default setting for an athlete is 1 quality session per week'. That made me thinking. Frank Shorters principle is 2 quality sessions and 1 long run per week as default. Most runners train that way. Maybe especially for older athletes 1 quality session per week is better to get a better or 'safer' supercompensation. Supercompensation is a key concept for Jan.
Are there 2 different camps, using the term 'CP' to denote different things? One camp (mostly cyclists) defining CP or CV as the max power or speed that can be maintained for any specific time, such as CP10 or CP45 or CP200? And another camp that sees a theoretical asymptote on the CP graph at about 30 minutes, that (as you wrote) represents the boundary between moderate and severe work? And they are operating on the assumption that this level of work can theoretically be continued indefinitely??? The fellow on this video below even points out that this is a controversy because we know it is not true. He says this at 11:13 in the video. Correct me if I am wrong.
There are two different camps, actually. Those who understand CP/CV and those who kind of don't. Joe Friel started that CPXX thing with his Power meter handbook. Currently, people use MMP20, MMP30 to define your mean maximal power at different points. There's only one CP, like the highlander.
And yes, if you go back to the 1960 Monod paper on CP...CP is the workload that can be sustained indefinitely. That's a main assumption. It's not a great assumption, but it's not bad, either. However, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Here, try reading this. It's by Dr. Clarke and Dr. Skiba...two people who know a thing or two.
Okay, so baby is the modeling that can be done in the time range of about 2 to 30 minutes. CP as 'workload that can be sustained indefinitely' is the bathwater. It can be used for modeling, but should not be touted as valid by itself.
I was wondering why people were not plotting power (or speed) vs time on a log plot, and found a nice site here...
This post introduces a new way of plotting performance to better visualize W’ and Critical Power (CP). I haven’t seen anyone plot performance this way, so I’m going to take the liberty to name it the Veloclinic plot. In descr...
There are two different camps, actually. Those who understand CP/CV and those who kind of don't. Joe Friel started that CPXX thing with his Power meter handbook. Currently, people use MMP20, MMP30 to define your mean maximal power at different points. There's only one CP, like the highlander.
And yes, if you go back to the 1960 Monod paper on CP...CP is the workload that can be sustained indefinitely. That's a main assumption. It's not a great assumption, but it's not bad, either. However, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Here, try reading this. It's by Dr. Clarke and Dr. Skiba...two people who know a thing or two.
Okay, so baby is the modeling that can be done in the time range of about 2 to 30 minutes. CP as 'workload that can be sustained indefinitely' is the bathwater. It can be used for modeling, but should not be touted as valid by itself.
I was wondering why people were not plotting power (or speed) vs time on a log plot, and found a nice site here...
You’re still missing a lot of information. Keep reading. Your opinion on whether CP is valid or not is not relevant.
That veloinic plot can be found in Golden Cheetah. It’s been around for many years. It’s not the most useful plot. But it demonstrates how W’ is not constant.
Attached paper gives a nice overview and further information about CP/CV: 1) MLSS < CP and is not the same, but for Jones the gold standard as boarder between heavy and severe intensity is CP and not MLSS (he provides a good rational) 2) Training at CP is not optimal, as you do not know if you are above or below it (50-50 chance). So training at CP seems to be not optimal. Tinman: My recommendation is to update your calculator. 3) There is also a tolerance for CP evaluation. He mentioned ±3-5%, however he uses 2% as example. I have seen that ± 5 sec/km (about ±2%) seems to be a good gap above and below. 4) He mentioned a 3min all-out test to estimate CP, however there should be no pacing, every second must be all-out. Have fun 😊 5) CP and W’ (2 parameter function) works for endurance ranges around 2-25min 6) CP und W’ are dynamic quantities and decline with time and fatiguing Source:
Bit late to the conversation, but I think the CP / W' concept is definitely worth exploring. And I'm talking about the cycling definition of CP, which has been around for years. What I like about the model is that it's performance derived (rather than lab derived), that is, you can use three recent race results or TTs (varying from 3 - 30 mins) to fit your model. A downside is they need to be all out efforts, which may not be feasible during a big training block, or if someone is returning from an extended break the values might be skewed.
I see the benefit of using it for prescribing reps/rest in training (as long as they're over 1 min / 400 m). Attempting to get W' as close to zero in the final rep, by tracking the depletion in each rep and the restoration during the breaks, could be a great training tool.
As for the calculations, Skiba has one from recreational cyclists that's been around for a long time, and more recently, Bartram published a paper where the calculations are derived from the Australian cycling team. I'd lean towards using the latter because they're from an elite population.
Regarding terminology... you can't go wrong if you say W' describes the work capacity available above CP . Whilst W' does not equal anaerobic work capacity, it's predominantly an anaerobic contribution. From a lay persons perspective, I would keep it simple and say CP is aerobic and W' is anaerobic. But if you speak to a physiologist they'll know this isn't true. Regardless, as an applied sport scientist I don't get bogged down in definitions, leave that to the academics!
So do you feel tinman's cv pace is too fast or too slow?
There are several traps.
1) A calculator which uses only 1 race distance entry (or TT) to calculate CV can't be too accurate. 4 to 5 individualtime trials are better. So it can provide only a ballpark per definition.
2) If you enter 20' for 5k male, you get a CV range from 04:11-04:06. If you run now at 04:08 are you above or below CV? That makes a hudge difference. It seems to be other training paces are derived from that CV range.
3) If you enter a 10k, 1/2 or marathon race time, this is out of the applicable range (2-25min) therefore CV calculation is off. So any calculator can only work up to 25 min race times, whatever distance covered in this time. A ≤5K time trial seems to be the upper boarder.
4) There is no running at CV! You are either below or above CV range per definition. You are either in the heavy or in the severe intensity range, if we say this theory is good. So a description of 6-8 x 1000m @ CV pace is a bad intensity description.
As for the calculations, Skiba has one from recreational cyclists that's been around for a long time, and more recently, Bartram published a paper where the calculations are derived from the Australian cycling team. I'd lean towards using the latter because they're from an elite population.
I read the Bartam now, and it is in line with my analysis that an 3 Min all-out does not provide reliable data.
I played around with the IAAF score table and a good estimation is to take a 1000m time trail and 5000m time trial. So theses are the edges of the hyperbolic function, like also recommended in the last paper i posted.
2) If you enter 20' for 5k male, you get a CV range from 04:11-04:06. If you run now at 04:08 are you above or below CV? That makes a hudge difference. It seems to be other training paces are derived from that CV range.
After training 12 weeks at 4:08 instead 4:11, what will be the huge difference in my running economy, Vo2max, anaerobic threshold, 10k performance or whatever else you want to measure?
As for the calculations, Skiba has one from recreational cyclists that's been around for a long time, and more recently, Bartram published a paper where the calculations are derived from the Australian cycling team. I'd lean towards using the latter because they're from an elite population.
AIS definitely an under-appreciated source of knowledge.
