What does "oxygen debt" mean? Is that term used today?

experienced coach wrote:

close minded coach wrote:

Actually, you are totally wrong.

breathing return to normal very quickly when laying down on the ground, and faster when standing with your hands on your knees

Yes, I am often totally wrong.

It takes a greater mind than mine to point that out.

It's obvious that you're usually totally wrong, probably at least 90 percent of the time.

It doesn't take a great mind to be a good coach, but it does take an open mind, to be able to learn and accept even the most elementary things about running, which you do not have.

i<3 poo wrote:

Right when you start running and your body hasnt yet up regulated the oxygen supply

This guy is right. Oxygen debt is when you start running and your body hasn't adjusted to the amount of oxygen it must take in in order to perform at an optimal level. When you start running, your body only needs so much O2. Once you start running, the demand for O2 increases but your body can only increase intake so much. The amount that your body needs is greater than what it can take in. The difference between the amount you take in and what your body needs is oxygen debt.

Might help to understand what it was and is now.

During high intensity exercise, researchers in the past have tried to estimate the total oxygen cost of exercise. It was thought that the oxygen consumption during extreme exercise was not enough to meet the energy demands, so if there was a “deficit” in oxygen consumption, then energy reserves were borrowed from “anaerobic” or fast glycolytic metabolism. So just like a credit system you borrow but have to pay back after exercise. It was thought that the “credits” borrowed during intense exercise were paid back after, plus interest during recovery. The extra oxygen consumed above resting baseline was termed oxygen debt.

We now know that measurement of O2 debt after exercise is inadequate for estimating “anaerobic” metabolism during exercise. The measurement of oxygen post exercise is now termed excess post exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). It is now considered that elevated catecholamine’s and temperature are responsible for an increase in oxygen consumption post exercise and it is not the repaying of energy reserves borrowed.

It may sound like a logical thing that is happening and simple for a coach to explain to an athlete but the credit system is too easy of an explanation and the human body is a complex organism.

experienced coach,Your most recent responses were even more entertaining than your first.You continue to be wrong and clueless.I guess your "don't think" advice comes from many years of personal experience.The original question is "What does oxygen debt mean"?Don't take my words. You can find a few definitions here:http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/oxygen+debtYou will see a common theme. During exercise, the energy demand is too high to be met aerobically, so we "borrow" from our anaerobic stores, and when the exercise is finished, we repay the debt by consuming more oxygen, until we reach a fully rested state again. It can be measured by comparing oxygen consumption during recovery "in excess of the quantity needed for resting metabolism".Now any first year physiology student from the last 30 years can see some outdated concepts:- lactic acid is not created during strenuous exercise, so cannot later be oxidized- the excess oxygen over-estimates the "borrowed" energy, because more things happen during recovery than just replenishing anaerobic storesThe concept is not completely wrong, but just exaggerates the effects it was intending to explain.I wanted to mention EPOC as the modern replacement for the term, but "rivas" beat me to it. Suunto has done a lot of research related to measuring EPOC (estimating it with heartrate and heartrate variations) as a way of managing your training and recovery.

experienced coach wrote:

Your most recent response was even more entertaining than your first.

You continue to be wrong and clueless.

...

Since we are all on a level playing field and

everyone in this conversation is my peer with an

equal amount of experience we can see how futile your

attempts would be to explain this "science" to a group of runners when the question comes up. Dealing with thousands of runners over the decades I have found some will have the attention span to listen and learn, whereas the majority will not.

I can picture any one of you experts on the subject

lecturing a handful of runners in a track practice.

The person that argued that they read something in a book somewhere that contradicted my use of the word "debt", saying it was incorrect as it referred to past tense and how I should have used the term "deficit" to explain what was happening to a runner as they ran.

An old classmate of mine once said...

"Be careful about reading health books.

You may die of a misprint."

-Mark Twain

Even if you tried to explain this to a bunch of eggheads at a coaches conference and had a powerpoint presentation on the screen there would still be more than a few in the audience nodding off. That would be a video worthy of showing on Tosh.O or Ridiculousness.

and rekrunner...

if you wanted to be Mr. Helpful you could have offered that link or told the OP to google the term three days ago.

Because it was a simple question with a simple answer. Giving the correct response in the first place should have been sufficient. No need to invent entertaining stories, for fear of putting someone else to sleep.

experienced coach wrote:

and rekrunner...

if you wanted to be Mr. Helpful you could have offered that link or told the OP to google the term three days ago.

experienced coach: your initial post suggests that you've borrowed a phrase from the ex phys literature and applied your own meaning to it. But now you insist that your meaning is correct. A hallmark of a good coach/leader is one who recognizes mistakes and corrects them but your train of posts suggests that you are unlikely to do this.

Even worse, your posts suggests you use your meaning of oxygen debt regularly with your athletes and argue to us that they can't handle the truth (although your first post suggests you never bothered to actually learn the truth). Many of the HS track teams in my area include most of brightest and intellectually curious kids in school, most of whom want to eventually pursue math, engineering, computer science, and to a lesser extent, other STEM fields in college and beyond. Maybe your team just gets the dullards. More likely, you don't recognize how bright and intellectually curious your athletes are and that they can handle the truth.

For me, I've filed this story in my archives for teaching human anatomy and physiology. These students bring in lots of misconception, some due to the changing nature of the science (a good example is the actual concept of oxygen debt as outlined in several nice posts on this thread) but many due to ignorant and lazy coaches and parents who trade in stories about how the body works without ever taking the time to learn how the body works. Cheer.

Thanks for the helpful post, rivas, but don't leave us in suspense--"that elevated catecholamine’s" WHAT?

And which catecholamine?

“experienced” coach – Just by a few of your post, I can already make the assumption of the type of coach you are. I don’t coach any more, but met two types of coaches. 1. Humble and giving 2. Arrogant and know it all (or think they do). Others can come to the same conclusions about which one you are in..

The question was to answer what it is “oxygen debt” and the term used today. I think it was answered. I don’t know what type of runners you coach, maybe they are all influenced by your coaching but most runners like to learn and are smart people. The true meaning is not that hard to explain.

Lastly, I don’t know why this topic would make it into conference of any sort. The history of oxygen debt/ EPOC is one discussed in beginning undergraduate exercise physiology courses.

The adrenal medulla within the adrenal gland secretes epinephrine and norepinephrine. These are derivatives of amino acid tyrosine and belong to a class of compounds called catecholamines. If you’re thinking where it is located, adrenal means above the renal, or above the kidneys. These hormones act with the sympathetic nervous system on a wide variety of tissues to maintain the integrity of the internal environment both at rest and during internal and external stress. You may have come to learn of the response of “fright, fight, or flight.” To keep this explanation short, catecholamines which were elevated during intense exercise for metabolism are still elevated post exercise which cause an increase in oxygen consumption and as mentioned no relation to “paying back debt.”

experienced coach wrote:

Since we are all on a level playing field and

everyone in this conversation is my peer with an

equal amount of experience we can see how futile your

attempts would be to explain this "science" to a group of runners when the question comes up. Dealing with thousands of runners over the decades I have found some will have the attention span to listen and learn, whereas the majority will not.

I can picture any one of you experts on the subject

lecturing a handful of runners in a track practice.

A couple of things.

1) This isn't a lecture at a track practice. This is a discussion on a message board. The explanations provided are for an audience consisting of people who have indicated interest in the topic by opening the thread. To say that explanation is not good because it wouldn't fly at practice nonsensical. Even if you were right that runners would be bored, runners at practice are not the audience for which the explanation was intended. All discussion on this thread is intended for people who are interested in the topic. This thread is titled "What does 'oxygen debt' mean? Is that term used today?," not "how should I explain the concept of oxygen debt to people who don't care about oxygen debt?"

2) It took only a handful of sentences for each of the other posters to explain the concept correctly in a manner that any reasonably intelligent human being could understand. A verbal explanation would take all of 60 seconds. Maybe you coach exceptionally apathetic or distractable runners, but most high schoolers I've come across can manage to listen to a one minute explanation without falling asleep.

It's quite simple actually, anaerobic means without oxygen, so when you run anaerobic you build up an oxygen debt which gets filled after you slow down or stop and repay the debt.The oxygen is needed to rid your body of the chemical imbalance built up by during anaerobic activity.

I’m back!

Yes, I was away this weekend coaching some of my runners to prize-winning performances as well as inspiring and motivating future generations of runners with the talks I gave.

And I did it all without reciting from a physiology textbook or medical dictionary the things that a runner experiences on a cellular level. Since you are so concerned that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth gets out there I am going to leave that talk to you “experts”.

I will continue my ignorance on the subject by explaining it to those interested runners and telling them what they can see, hear and feel in themselves and other runners and not waste their time talking about biological reactions and processes on the microscopic level (especially when that is not what they are asking me).

Perhaps you are so sure of yourself that it’s your way or the highway, maybe you will mock and ridicule some of my contemporaries like Dr. Vigil and Dr. Daniels who, last time I checked, talk about the subject in the same manner as myself. And if you’ve got the whole thing memorized, well good for you!

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”

-Albert Einstein

If their opinions count for nothing maybe you will listen to this youngster...

"What I can't stand is these guys who make a cult out of running. It ruins the whole thing to take it too seriously."

-Frank Shorter

“The marathon is all about energy management. I had planned to run it like a track race with strategic surges to blow up my competitors by putting them into oxygen debt, so that is the way I prepared.”

-Frank Shorter

Humans may be the only animals that can consciously control their breathing. In the wild they will run until they collapse from exhaustion, perhaps because they are running for their lives.

And if you continue to detest and loath my coaching style and methods maybe you can try to take away my USATF Level III Coaching Certification.

If you are still having a Manic Monday, I would suggest you take a chill pill and wash it down with some dihydrogen monoxide.

[quote]rivas wrote:

The adrenal medulla within the adrenal gland secretes epinephrine and norepinephrine.../quote]

Did you corner someone at a cocktail party and tell them this? I can picture the runners you told this to rolling their eyes asking, "is this going to be on the test?"

experienced coach wrote:

Humans may be the only animals that can consciously control their breathing.

Any animal without gills would drown when it went underwater if it could not consciously control its breathing.

Did you learn that watching "Gator Boys" on Animal Planet?

I will defer to your scientific expertise when it comes

to researching polar bears and water fowl in their habitat.

experienced coach wrote:

Did you learn that watching "Gator Boys" on Animal Planet?

I will defer to your scientific expertise when it comes

to researching polar bears and water fowl in their habitat.

This isn't knowledge, it's just common sense. If an animal couldn't control its breathing, it couldn't hold its breath or choose not to breathe. If an animal couldn't hold its breath or choose not to breathe, it would inhale water if its nose, mouth, blowhole, trunk, or whatever was submerged. If you were right and animals other than humans couldn't control their breathing, whales couldn't exist. I mean, how could an animal spend an hour at a time underwater if it couldn't control when it took a breat?

Someone scolded me earlier because I wanted to simplify things and talk common sense and then all the "experts" came on and told me, "No, you have to parrot back what you read in a physio. journal or medical textbook!"

Let's Not...and say we did.

I am pretty sure this website is called Let's Run...

not Let's Discuss Marine Mammals. Can wild animals consciously regulate or control their breathing while out running on the Serengeti?

Smart human runners can keep themselves from going into oxygen debt if they have learned from their mistakes, have the other species evolved to this level?

experienced coach wrote:

And if you continue to detest and loath my coaching style and methods maybe you can try to take away my USATF Level III Coaching Certification.

If you are still having a Manic Monday, I would suggest you take a chill pill and wash it down with some dihydrogen monoxide.

Big fvcking deal! If you are so proud of that certification, good for you. What an accomplishment! (not to "loath" on your big achievement, BUT anyone and everyone that pays for that certification gets it) You really should stop; you’re making yourself sound ridiculously ignorant.

rivas wrote:

What an accomplishment! anyone and everyone that pays for that certification gets it, you’re making yourself sound ridiculously ignorant.

Level 3 Certification?

"anyone and everyone"?

Your credibility is starting to wane.

Do you know one person that has Level 3?

No, not that you've heard of them,

but personally know them and what

experience they have coaching the sport.

If you make outrageous claims,

how can anyone trust you and your previous opinions?