Just to restore the context, your example with Geb focuses on aerobic capacity, when popular myth credits his performance gains via long term improvements in his thresholds. Whether you think about thresholds or not for your own personal situation, you can not debunk a myth if you portray it incorrectly.In the context of training, I think these threshold labels add to our mutual understanding, by giving us the vocabulary to describe how we feel, and how to describe workouts, using a simple model that 99.9% of letsrun posters understand, to create a framework for our training. It doesn't have to limit our creativity, or control the training, or substitute pace by feel, but can provide useful feedback for seasonal and long term performance improvements, as things like blood lactate and VO2max can be measured, or even just estimated.I would argue further that "anaerobic" is not that much of a misnomer, even for mostly aerobic intervals. The key differentiator between fast workouts, and slow workouts is the by-product of "anaerobic" production of ATP. The question is not which "system" provides the greater source of ATP, but are we producing lactate faster than we are consuming it? Why is it confusing then, to label a specific workout "anaerobic intervals", when the desired effect is an over-production of this by-product of "anaerobic" ATP production, to trigger the intended stimulus?What Robergs showed, as I see it, is again, a labeling problem. If I recall, he showed that lactic acidosis should be called metabolic acidosis. I don't see a huge shift required in the physiological paradigm of the last 79 years. Acidosis is still occuring.It's my historical understanding that physiology is always playing catch-up with successful training methodologies. Successful coaches know what works, by a combination of luck and trial and error. What physiologists debate about, or what dubious concepts they developed in the past seem to be completely independent from the tried and true formation of successful training methodologies.So where does that leave physiology? On the shelf, in the lab, and miles away from the track. I'm missing the link between the "dogma", and it's failed consequences on the track.
wellnow wrote:
Mr Ray, I no longer think in terms of thresholds. I think these labels are misleading and tend to limit our creativity because adhering to such concepts places too much emphasis on controlling some imaginary physiological state rather than just learning to cope with certain paces by feel.
If I could show you how so many physiological concepts are debatable and dubious, you would see my point that these lables are nothing more than conjecture.
Robergs has shown that lactic acidosis is a myth. So where does that leave 100 years of physiology dogma?
On the shelf with all the other physiology dogma.