Will lactate heavy strength training corrode my aerobic base gains?

I don't think there's any evidence that lactate directly ruins your aerobic base; it's more, as you say, that it messes with your running in other ways and will reduce the amount of training. I never found upper-body or core/midsection work to interfere with running much.

But if you want to get good at pulling or pressing, consider the "Easy Strength" approach where you do a little each day - I mean REALLY little, like ten pullups total - and just focus on getting stronger - i.e. progressively heavier loads. This definitely does not interfere with running. In fact, it tends to really 'perk you up' if you are tired from mileage and long sessions.

So define:

What constitutes an "aerobic base"?

Why would Strength Training or lactate or more specifically muscular acidosis erode this base?

I think you'll find more old wives tales and dogma associated with running that most sports.

The body is very stupid and simple. It will get good at the stimulus you provide if you continue to repeat that stimulus.

Alan

It won’t make a difference. The sensation you describe when lifting is more correlated with muscle lactate than blood lactate.

Strength training muscles which aren't used for running will not interfere with your aerobic muscle development. Additionally, anaerobic workouts don't necessarily mean that you are recruiting fast twitch fibers, or encouraging their development. If you are performing high load power moves, then, yes, you will derail your aerobic development. So, some higher intensity stuff that recruits more slow twitch fibers (for greater neuro-muscular innervation - strength) won't hurt anything, even if they can't avoid going anaerobic. You need to do some serious acceleration moves, or fast steep hill sprints, before your body resorts to using the easily fatigued fast twitch fibers. So, let your perceived effort guide you. If you instantly bind up with a pumped up calf, then you are probably recruiting fast twitch fibers.

Runningart2004 wrote:

So define:

What constitutes an "aerobic base"?

Why would Strength Training or lactate or more specifically muscular acidosis erode this base?

I think you'll find more old wives tales and dogma associated with running that most sports.

The body is very stupid and simple. It will get good at the stimulus you provide if you continue to repeat that stimulus.

Alan

Agree with Alan. The body loves simple repeatable actions

My fastest season racing 800’s I did a lot of 100m reps at race pace + slightly faster.

Thanks folks. Yeah I think it was more the “presence of lactate in the body negates / negatively impacts aerobic development” type of thing I’ve heard he before that worried me.

I used to do a lot of high rep gym work until very exhausted and never noticed any negative effects, but as I’m getting older and looking for more and more 1% type gains in my running I was curious about it. It sounds like I should be able to move forward with it without much fear of impacting anything. I’ll just keep the lifting on my running workout days so that my easy days will be true recovery

Runningart2004 wrote:

So define:

What constitutes an "aerobic base"?

Why would Strength Training or lactate or more specifically muscular acidosis erode this base?

I think you'll find more old wives tales and dogma associated with running that most sports.

The body is very stupid and simple. It will get good at the stimulus you provide if you continue to repeat that stimulus.

Alan

Heh. Brocience was invented by bodybuilders.

Your terminology is severely outdated, most of your assumptions and premises wrong.

The upper body work will likely help your running overall unless you go full on meathead.

the fayetteville-manlius girls deadlift 2x their weight

The key is to maintain mileage. Don’t overuse strength training to the point where you can’t maintain mileage. Just add training in little by little. Focusing on upper body is an easy way to make sure it doesn’t interfere, but try some lower body exercises as well at some point. I think if anything lifting a couple times a week actually helps recovery and helps you increase mileage over time, as long as you don’t overdo it.

I’ve never read any convincing evidence that doing anaerobic workouts destroys aerobic capacity, rather as stated previously on the thread you can retard your aerobic development by replacing it with too much anaerobic stuff.

A. Anaerobic stuff is, by nature low volume, so you’re not getting a great aerobic stimulus during the workout.

B. Hard repetition type workouts will leave you sore the next day, reducing the volume and quality of that workout as well.

If done properly, some high rep, low rest, upper body lifting will help your body deal with acidosis. Look up the term “lactate shuttle”.

Basically, when your running muscles start to pour lactate into your blood, some of it will circulate to other tissues in the body and be processed. I don’t know about you, but when bid get to the death throes of a race, I’d get funny things happening like my forearms tightening up and my teeth hurting.

Take this next part for what you will, sample size of one.

In grad school, I worked in a gym for about a year. During that time, I started playing around with a super set type circuit where I was able to go from exercise to exercise for about 30 min. At one point, about 3-4!months in, I remember going to the track and doing a workout that normally made me start to tie up in the upper body. During the last couple of reps of the workout, I remember thinking that I was still feeling really good. None of the usual tightness was seeping into my upper body.

I ran a few races during that time and despite actual running training being far inferior to what I had done with my college team, I was able to run within 10 seconds of my 5k PR a couple of times.

These days, I tend to agree with eurodonkey on the John Day “easy strength “ type system. The low volume, high load system is great for stimulating anabolic hormone release without creating soreness that lingers. I’ve done a number of his 8 week cycles and never feel any soreness the next day. You probably don’t need to follow the plan exactly as written to get the benefit that you need as a distance runner. 3-4 days a week would be fine instead of the 5 recommended in the plan. If you don’t do a lot of heavy stuff, start pretty light with it and only increase the load as the workouts begin to feel easy

There are some studies that point out that concurrent training can jeopardize your hypertrophy or fast twitch strength development. Basically, your muscles will either adapt with more mitochondria (due to endurance training), or they adapt by creating more protein (due to intense resistance training). It's one way or the other, not both at the same time.

But, it's complicated. A lot of work needs to be done, since there are multiple ways that such either/or gene transcription decisions are made, along with whole body messaging involving myokines and microRNA 's, and other stuff.

Still, empirical studies on athletes show that concurrent training messes things up - even if the explanation isn't worked out yet.

Look up "The molecular bases of training adaptation" by Coffey and Hawley

RyecorDone wrote:

There are some studies that point out that concurrent training can jeopardize your hypertrophy or fast twitch strength development. Basically, your muscles will either adapt with more mitochondria (due to endurance training), or they adapt by creating more protein (due to intense resistance training). It's one way or the other, not both at the same time.

But, it's complicated. A lot of work needs to be done, since there are multiple ways that such either/or gene transcription decisions are made, along with whole body messaging involving myokines and microRNA 's, and other stuff.

Still, empirical studies on athletes show that concurrent training messes things up - even if the explanation isn't worked out yet.

Look up "The molecular bases of training adaptation" by Coffey and Hawley

I was listening to some renown sprint and jump coaches discuss training. Someone asked about combining explosive strength work and speed work. The question if you are doing a speed workout in the afternoon and you dont want to do the lifting that morning could it be done the next morning. The answer was yes even though the next day's track session might be a recovery or extensive tempo session. I guess this type of "endurance" session might not be the purely aerobic training you referenced.

"Renowned" before I'm attacked

I guess I disagree with almost everyone here in saying that acidosis does damage mitochondria. If balanced with rest the damage will be minimal. If an athlete is doing it constantly they will decrease aerobic capacity because of it.

I have also mentioned in many threads that grouping your strength training neurally is important and the problem with doing static type lifts like squats too often is it can mess with proprioception. Coordination is very important for running economy. So with your example of squats, maybe once every ten days or so and heavy with low volume when you do. Deadlifts are somewhat better because they require more coordination between muscle groups.

Lifting with your arms can be helpful for your legs given there is a spike of growth hormone when you lift so there is a global benefit to this.

Otter, most people look at weight training through the lens of power lifting and or pure strength training. As gary Winckler stated the US athletes have lifted themselves out of medal contention.

You're one of the few guys here who have taken the USTFCCCA's strength course.

My feeling is the average hobby jogger on these boards who just wants to lift to prevent injuries doesn't need to worry about lifting the way sprinters or competitive mid distance runners do.

We've all seen that hobbyjogger that looks as stiff as a board with no flexibility and a lack of control running down the road. It looks painful at best.

Science does not care what your ability level is and in some ways your average athlete will have a more difficult time overcoming improper training.