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

The molecular biology example was only an analogy. I'm not asking him to abide by molecular biology principles, but by common scientific principles.

Let me be more precise. There is something in statistics called "R squared", which I will refer to as R2 here. If R2 equals 1.0, this means that the variable(s) being studied explain all of the variability in a system. In practice, you never see R2=1.0 because it is virtually impossible to include all variables in a study.

For example, say you study two runners and measure their VO2max. You find that R2=0.2, meaning that most of the variability between their performances is not explained by VO2max. This does NOT mean that VO2max is not important! It explained 20% of the variability.

If you read through the support presented for the Central Governor model, what you essentially find is that they say that since various components of the aerobic metabolism/Hill model don't provide a R2 of 1.0 that the Central Governor must exist. Noakes basically eluded to this in one of his posts. Showing that R2 is not 1.0 does not provide support for anything! It simply means that some variables impacting the result have been excluded or that measurements were not exact. THAT's IT. It could be the Central Governor, a little green Martian in your head, or a million other things.

Showing that the system is not fully explained by a model that, by definition, can't explain everything, is not showing support for anything. If Noakes were ever worth being published this concept would not escape him. I expect he realizes this but this is some sort of ego thing for him and he won't acknowledge it.

If you look back, I agreed with Noakes on several things. However our discussion was centered around something we don't agree on, so it should not surprise you when I point out differences. You should be looking deeper at the logic and arguments being presented and not simply feeling sorry for someone whose points are being countered.

Peter Snell is an iconic runner, a highly regarded human and a very fine physiologist.

Recently the cardiologist with whom Dr Snell works in Dallas, Dr Ben Levine, has published a paper in the Journal of Physiology in which he begins to distance himself from the traditional Hill model. Thus he writes to the effect that during a maximal effort the athlete stops running not just because of the development of peripheral fatigue in the skeletal muscles but because this information is sensed by the brain which then terminates the exercise by preventing the further recruitment of the exercising muscles. This model would seem to be half way between the original Hill model and the much maligned central governor model.

Timothy Noakes wrote:

I think the Kenyan coaches will tell you that one of the key factors behind the success of the Kenyans (and presumably the Ethiopians) is focus and the avoidance of the Western lifestyle.

I expect that with time we will be better able to tease out the different contributions made by life style and training to the success of the Kenyan runners.

I think you may be onto something here. The key to the success of the Kenyans is their superior lifestyle rather than their native ability. Just look at Robert Cheruiyot, who was a heavy cigarette smoker for years and who didn't even take up serious running until after he had turned 20. Americans should follow his example if they want to become the best. It's the life-style, not the talent.

JEH wrote:

Richard,

I liked your analagy effort... can I give it a try?

Imagine you have the four guys you mentioned. The weight is such that each could lift it individually,

I like this one better. I've not heard of distance runners tearing off at maximum pace from the get-go. That kind of strategy tends to result in failure. You don't push the maximum weight, you reduce it to manageable levels so you move it a very long time (a full working day).

There's a term used when someone tries to move it all at once. It's called the lazy man's load.

With regard to your earlier point on models: Stephen Hawking who holds Isaac Newton’s former chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (UK) and who probably has an intelligence equal to the sum of all of us who contribute to this blog, wrote the following in his book Black Holes and Baby Universes (1993; p36):

“In theoretical physics, the search for logical self-consistency has always been more important in making advances than experimental results. Otherwise elegant and beautiful theories have been rejected because they don’t agree with observation but I don’t know of any major theory that has been advanced just on the basis of experiment. THE THEORY ALWAYS COMES FIRST, PUT FORWARD WITH THE DESIRE TO HAVE A CONSISTENT MATHEMATICAL MODEL. The theory then makes predictions which can be tested by observation. If the observations agree with the predictions, that doesn’t prove the theory; but the theory survives to make further predictions, which again are tested against observation. If the observations don’t agree with the predictions, one abandons the theory”. Hawking also warns that: “A theory is a good theory if it is an elegant model, if it describes a wide class of observations, and if it predicts the results of new observations. Beyond that, it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT REALITY IS INDEPENDENT OF A THEORY” (P38).

To say that the only evidence for the Central Governor model (CGM) is because of studies showing that VO2max is an imperfect predictor of performance (ie less than an Rsquared of 1.0) only confirms the confession that you made in an earlier post – that you have never taken the time to read this work or to try to understand what we are saying or even what is the role of models in scientific research. The CGM is simply a model that has been advanced in an attempt to explain many observations in the published exercise physiology literature that cannot be explained by the traditional Hill model of “peripheral fatigue”. For as Hawking writes, a model that is unable to explain all the published observations should be modified or abandoned. But for many reasons this has not happened with the Hill model – instead its manifest weaknesses continue to be defended by scientists who should know better.

But Hawking also explains why this is so: “In practice, people are very reluctant to give up a theory in which they have invested a lot of time and effort. They usually start by questioning the accuracy of the observations. If that fails, they try to modify the theory in an ad hoc manner. Eventually the theory becomes a creaking and ugly edifice. Then someone suggests a new theory, in which all the awkward observations are explained in an elegant and natural manner” (p36). Hawking also refers to the popular technique of “refutation by denigration” which is much in evidence on this blog but which, besides being very demeaning for all concerned, is a very tedious and boring tactic; one that needs to be recognized as the final resting place for the intellectually destitute.

More than one hundred years ago the German bacteriologist Robert Koch was faced with a difficult problem. He believed that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis. This was at a time that the infectious theory of disease was still not widely accepted. He therefore posed this question of his learned colleagues: “I believe that tuberculosis is an infectious disease and I believe that I have discovered the cause. What experiments must I now do that will convince you that my hypothesis is true?”. After much discussion it was agreed that there were 4 experiments he would have to complete before it could be proven that the bacterium he had isolated caused tuberculosis. Koch went away did the 4 experiments and then on March 24th 1882 came back to report his results to the Berlin Physiological Society. Since he has been able to fulfill the 4 criteria laid down, his proof was accepted. This method of proof then became known as Koch’s four principles and these are still used to prove that a particular infective agent is the cause of a particular disease.

Now the question that I might ask is the following: What research study is needed to prove the existence of the Central Governor (CG) as we have described it? And if we provide that evidence would anyone be prepared to accept it?

I suggest there is one obvious experiment: Ablate the action of the CG either surgically or with the use of drugs. If the CG acts as we suggest it does, then after its removal, the subjects that are being studied will pace themselves at a higher intensity than they would when the CG was intact and acting in the way we suggest it does. This would then prove the following:

(i) That the regulation of exercise performance is not due to the development of “peripheral fatigue” since the exercise performance was improved without any interventions that could have influenced the development of “peripheral fatigue”.

(ii) That the regulation of pace is not set purely by conscious (learned) actions since if this were the case, the removal of the CG would have no effect. For if the CG does not exist, then subjects would continue to pace themselves consciously at the exactly same pace that they did when they had the CG in place (since the CG does not play any part in the pacing strategy which is consciously chosen by the athlete – as argued frequently by a number of participants on this blog).

Of course the absence of an effect might also indicate that we had not located the CG and had failed to ablate its action – a false negative finding.

Thus the really important finding (to support the existence of the CG) would be an increase in performance after the removal of the postulated CG.

Thank you for for engaging the discussion with me. You've likely heard all of this before, so, I'm sure you're well practiced in responding to the points I've made. As I said, if you are at ACSM this year, you may want to come by the talk my student is giving on Control Entropy of treadmill locomotion as there are two elements that would likely be of interest to you.

Take care

Steve

I think a VERY STRONG counter argument would be that someone who smokes and doesn't take up serious running until after 20, and then goes on to become an elite endurance athlete likely has a great deal of innate talent. You could probably count by the thousands western youths who live like monks and train diligently and never become successful simply because they don't have the genetic talent. Who knows though.

Steve

There are several references in this thread, some direct but many indirect to the mental aspect of running and performance, the most recent being the comments about the East African way of life.

The trouble with looking at the mental aspect of running is that it is very hard to quantify and we tend now to limit our discussions to what is quantifiable. On the other hand, though unquantifiable it may be the most important.

It seems, though I have no idea how you'd quantify this, that athletes tend to take cues from their environment, which includes competitiors,world records, national records, world lists, as to how they should perform.

If, for example, you compare the training of Jim Peters and Steve Jones, you find they did fairly comparable things. Yet Jones was ten minutes faster at the marathon than Peters was. Might he have been more talented physically? Perhaps, but Peters was arguably the best in the world in his prime. How much less "talented" physically could he have been and if he and Jones were of comparable talent why was Jones so much faster?

I'd argue that it was because in Peters' day 5:20 per mile pace was believed to be at the very furthest edge of what was possible to sustain for a marathon so when he opened a marathon with a first two miles of 10:00 or so he believed he was right on the edge of running too fast to be able to finish the distance. By the time Jones was competing marathons had been run at better than a 5:00 pace and therefore he could open with two miles in the mid 9:00s and think, like Peters had done at slower speeds, that he was right on the edge of going as fast as possible and running too fast.

So if you're an East African and you're training regularly with guys who run under 13:00/27:00 for 5/10k, or if you're Japanese and you train regularly with sub 2:10 marathoners, you probably develop a different idea of how fast is as fast as possible vs. how fast is too fast than if you're a western runner training with people for whom 13:30/28:00/2:15 seems really fast.

I read an interview with Nic Bideau not too long ago in which he talked some about how Mottram trains and Bideau said something along the lines of "The training is not the most important thing" he does for Mottram. He regards the mental aspect of preparation as more important and there have been interviews done with Mottram in which he expresses irritation at people who have congratulated him for being the first non-African in a race because he thinks settling for anything less than winning is unacceptable.

In 1971, I think, Don Kardong surprised everyone by coming out of nowhere and running under 13:00 for three miles. At the time there had been only a handful of people to do that and Kardong's career showed no indication that he could run that fast. Asked how, he answered that looking at the way records and times progressed it occured to him that in twenty years all sorts of people would be running under 13:00 for three miles and many of them would not be of the caliber of a Prefontaine or a Ron Clarke. The reason they'd be running that fast, Kardong said, was because the WR would be so much faster than 13:00 that they'd believe that for them sub 13 was possible and they'd go and do it. "I decided," he said, "just to believe now that I can run that fast."

Apres moi le deluge.

Back to the original reference for this thread.

From what I can see from Dr. Noakes' input, the CG model is proposed to explain behaviour apparently not supported by the Hill model.

For the original question, what would we gain with the CG model?

By definition, the CG intercedes to prevent 'us' from damaging ourselves during exertion/exercise. If this is true, it implies two distinct issues:

1) we can't override

2) if we could override it, we shouldn't

Given this, what possible advantage would acceptance of the model gives us in a positive manner?

Dr. Noakes

Interesting thoughts on lifestyle, focus, and performance. I don't think American runners would readily subscribe to a lifestyle devoid of modern conveniences. And maybe such a lifestyle wouldn't even be good for Americans. Anthony Famiglietti's career really took off after he moved to New York City. Certainly Fam was no slouch before his move and maybe after years of training it was just time for his breakthrough. Or maybe once he put himself in a living situation he really enjoyed he was able to focus better?

Success can't be placed squarely on the shoulders of one variable alone, not much in life is that simple. But I wonder how much of an athlete's success can be attributed to the relationship between lifestyle and concentration.

Also, here's hoping your study of Kenyan runners comes to fruition.

Steve, that was my point. I was being sarcastic in saying that it's all about the life-style. As a longterm observer of the sport and as a modestly talented runner myself (10:30 for the 2 mile as a high school sophomore), I think genetics are the most important aspect of running success. I did interval training twice a week in the summer before my sophomore year with a guy who was about to enter his senior year, during which he ended up running the mile in 4:05 and setting a state high school record. Obviously, he ran those track workouts a lot faster than I did.

Inspired by his achievement, I trained beyond my talent level and developed plantar fasciitis during my junior year of cross country, an injury that plagued me for the rest of high school. What I learned is that there's simply no substitute for natural ability, which allows one not only to race faster but to train at a higher level.

Dr. Noakes suggests that the Kenyans succeed because of superior coaching, superior environment, superior life-style, superior dedication, and superior mental toughness. But then you have guys like Henry Rono, Robert Cheruiyot, and Richard Chelimo. I'm not an exercise physiologist, but it seems obvious that their superior talent overcame some poor life-style habits.

“In theoretical physics, the search for logical self-consistency has always been more important in making advances than experimental results. Otherwise elegant and beautiful theories have been rejected because they don’t agree with observation but I don’t know of any major theory that has been advanced just on the basis of experiment. THE THEORY ALWAYS COMES FIRST, PUT FORWARD WITH THE DESIRE TO HAVE A CONSISTENT MATHEMATICAL MODEL. The theory then makes predictions which can be tested by observation. If the observations agree with the predictions, that doesn’t prove the theory; but the theory survives to make further predictions, which again are tested against observation. If the observations don’t agree with the predictions, one abandons the theory”. Hawking also warns that: “A theory is a good theory if it is an elegant model, if it describes a wide class of observations, and if it predicts the results of new observations. Beyond that, it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT REALITY IS INDEPENDENT OF A THEORY” (P38).

In theoretical coaching the theory would come first, put forward with a desire to find a consistent mathematical model that can be translated into training generalised theory. In practical coaching the theory would come second, put forward after observation has occurred and with desire to improve the current training methodology.

Truth and reality? Well reality is perception. Whatever one perceives is their reality. Someone can postulate a theory that is proposed to more accurately reflect reality than what came before; this theory can be accepted and lead the thoughts of whole generations to come, similar to what Hill has done. Hill's reality should change and i agree with you on that now.

Should the new reality be the Central Governor Model? I still don't know as i have this one issue which possibly you can help with. How does the central governor differ from homeostasis? Are you possibly trying to define homeostasis more accurately than before through the medium of high performance sport training?

cheers

sim

[quote]HRE wrote:

It seems that athletes tend to take cues from their environment, which includes competitiors,world records, national records, world lists, as to how they should perform.

So if you're an East African and you're training regularly with guys who run under 13:00/27:00 for 5/10k, or if you're Japanese and you train regularly with sub 2:10 marathoners, you probably develop a different idea of how fast is as fast as possible vs. how fast is too fast than if you're a western runner training with people for whom 13:30/28:00/2:15 seems really fast.[quote]

I agree that world record progression makes it easier for the next generation to shoot for faster times. But then you also must have the talent to actually run that fast. It's not so simple as moving to a monastic enclave and training with the best. Look at Alamosa in the era of Pat Porter. Anyone training with Porter and under Vigil at that location had an ideal environment, but no one was remotely near Porter's level. And then you have the example of the University of Oregon in the late 70s. How many of those guys burned out from overtraining (at least among those who started there as true freshmen)? Alberto Salazar trained to be the best, better than Rono, and look what happened to him.

You do make an excellent point that runners take cues from their environment. But if guys like us had trained with the best Kenyans or Japanese during the 70s, it likely would have destroyed us.

As for Kardong, he was an outstanding runner at Stanford. Do you recall that photo of him and Arvid Kretz wearing war paint and finishing first and second in a two mile dual meet race against California? Kardong is leaping into the air with his arms spread eagled. I think he ran 8:47. So getting down to 13:00 for three miles wasn't a huge leap (no pun). He had the talent.

Ah.. difficult to see the sarcasm without the emoticons. Again, sorry. Burned twice on sarcasm in two days. Gotta turn up my tongue in cheek detector.

Steve

Steve McGregor wrote:

Well, to equate disease conditions to exercise perturbations of homeostasis is often done, but typically misguided. That is a rather large can of worms that really can't be opened right now. Suffice to say that the acidosis associated with lactate accumulation in the blood is transient, whereas a pathological acidosis will likely be more chronic.

Steve

I want to open this can of worms! Sure it is transient but so is the pathological state unless it results in death. Even so, whilst it is in its transient state the effects on cells would be similar or the same would they not? Exercise perturbations of homeostasis. I like this description.

Adicosis is acidosis. Aerobic conditioning to me is like anti-acidocis. Like the antidote.

The idea that it would "destroy us" as you explain is the point to greatness.

99% of the people who partake will die a horrible burn out death. The other 1% will be great. 1% of 300 million is 3 million world class American athletes.

The problem, of course, is the distractions of American life as well as competing interests from other available sports.

Say 1% gravitate towards endurance running and got at it full bore. That is 3 million participants. Then 99% of them die a horrible burn out death and 1% make it. That makes 30,000 elite world class American athletes.

Ah.. difficult to see the sarcasm without the emoticons. Again, sorry. Burned twice on sarcasm in two days. Gotta turn up my tongue in cheek detector.

Steve

Eh? wrote:

[quote]Timothy Noakes wrote:

This is one of the key differences between the African runners and so-called Western runners; Kenyans and Ethiopians never abandoned their traditions, like high volumes of strong running with hard intervals. Though as you have noted, again, they likely have added to their traditions. I have no problem acknowledging that Kenyan and Ethiopian runners are practicing other forms of training now. But, it's very important to note this new training is in addition to successful traditional forms of training, not in place of it.

Look deep. The most prominent east african coaches and runners as Kostre is one or look to runners as Bekele Gebre or Tergat and many more east africans past and present. You will realise that all those coaches and runners did learn to coach and train by europeans coaches and non-africans - directly or indirect. Since early ones Abebe Bikila or Kip Keino or Filbet Bayi – to more recent Daniel Komen or Gebre or Tergat or Kipketer. Look to the actual Kenyan/Qatari runners. Behind them there is an european coach. English, Italian, Polish, Bulgarian coaches and mentors. The hypothesis that what they know and what they train have to do with the African background that’s wrong.

What the east africans did preserve that’s not a new training style the african training style. Since the early days they follow the european training models adjusted to his own training reality and environment. What they did preserve it is the lack of training control by occidental technology and paraphernalia as well as physiology.

Abebe Bikila was coached by an European as well as most of the Ethiopians of that period. Kip Keino had an european coach. Tergat is coach be Dr. Rosa. Bekele and Gebre that´s Dr. Kostre but he did learn to coach in an European university. Daniel Komen was by the English M. Mac. Brother O'Connell is predominant to coach Kipketer and then he had another European coach. Bernard Lagat have an American coach. Kimbia coach is Dieter Hogan an german coach.

If you want to get back to the east african training sources you shall take a look in the european training methods that are adjusted to the east african runners and adopted by east african coaches.