Silver Sage Sports and Fitness Lab and The Reno Wheelmen Present: HALF THE ROAD

Wednesday, May 6th 6:00PM to 10:00PM
The Peppermill, Tuscan Ballroom
Suggested donation of $10 at the door and silent auction Light food to be provided.  Cash bar.
Please join us for a celebration of women’s cycling in conjunction with the women’s AMGEN Tour of California stage race, which takes place in South Lake Tahoe the weekend of May 9th

HALF THE ROAD This documentary film explores the world of women’s professional cycling, focusing on the love of sport and the pressing issues of inequality that modern-day female riders face in a male dominated sport. The voices and advocates of women’s pro cycling take the audience on a journey of enlightenment, depth, strength, love, humor and best of all, change & growth.

Check out the trailer here-https://vimeo.com/65941045

WOMEN’S CYCLING PANEL DISCUSSION Featuring current and past pro racers:

• Inga Thompson is a Reno native, Olympian, winner of the Coors Classic, multiple US National Champion and multiple World Championship medalist.
• Julie Young spent the majority of her 12 year career racing in Europe with the US National A-Team where she thrived in stage racing, taking GC victories at the prestigious Tour de L’Aude and Tour d’Aquitaine, as well as numerous individual stage wins and podiums at Molenheike, Tour of the European Economic Communities, Tour d’Epinal and Grand Prix de Quebec. Currently Julie is the owner and head coach at o2fitness and Director of Silver Sage Sports and Fitness Lab.
• Robin Farina currently races for the BMW p/b Happy Tooth Dental Care cycling team.  She is a founding member and current CEO of the Women’s Cycling Association, which supports the growth of women’s cycling worldwide by advancing policies with governing bodies and creating opportunities to develop new riders and grow the sport.

100% OF PROCEEDS BENEFIT BIKE LIKE A GIRL CYCLING CAMPS All door receipts and silent auction proceeds will be used to help get more girls out on bikes.

This collaborative Reno Wheelmen and Silver Sage Sports and Fitness Lab sponsored, showing of the inspirational Half the Road, benefits the Bike Like A Girl cycling camps.

This camp concept has been my long-time vision as a way to share the rich life lessons that my cycling life has taught me. These camps will focus on the challenging pre-early teen years, and introduce these girls to the sport of cycling as a vehicle for character development, interpersonal skills and improved mental and physical confidence and empowerment. This program also provides the stepping stone for those girls who express interest in competitive cycling. The ultimate goal of the camp program is to provide the opportunity to ride a bike, to those girls who do not have the financial means. For these girls, scholarships will be provided for these eight-week camps to cover tuition as well as equipment.

The Bike Like A Girl Cycling camps gained momentum and a trajectory course when the stars aligned and like-minds met and partnered. The Bike Like A Girl Team tri-fecta includes – the Bike Like A Girl RAAM 2015 team, an eight-women relay team racing across America, gunning for the course record, while raising money for the Bike Like A Girl camps; and the Women’s Cycling Association, a world-wide organization working toward equality of opportunity for women in cycling.

I hope you can join us for the showing of the inspiring film, Half the Road.

This series is based on the Science of Running Symposium I recently attended in San Francisco. To read part I, click here.

Every running magazine contains at least one article on running injuries and prevention. And a website search on these topics will result in a life-time of reading. Frustrated by the apparent void of a science-substantiated, systematic approach to help the injured runner return to sport and the uninjured runner avoid injury, I was determined to find a research-based, clinic tested program that dug in to the underlying, root causes driving injuries.

As a result of this search, I found and attended a six month fellowship with Dr. Chris Powers, at his USC-affiliated Movement Performance Institute, and attend update courses with him, including this year’s Science of Running Symposium.

Dr. Powers opened the symposium by posing the question, Why are injuries so prevalent among runners? The answer may start with the sheer number of runners.

Why do so many Americans, approximately 36 million, chose running as their activity of choice?

• Easily accessible
• Low cost
• Time efficient workout

Injury rates, amongst the running populatiobn, range anywhere from 20-80%. And of those injuries, 50% occur at the knee.

What are some key factors that contribute to a high incidence of running injuries?

• Frequency of loading
• Magnitude of loading
• Ground reaction forces two to three times body weight
• Abnormal mechanics

With these factors in mind, then consider a majority of the running population turns to running to lose weight. So to piece the scenario together, we have an overweight person, who lacks muscular strength, stability, mobility and motor skills to effectively dampen and direct forces (two to three times body weight) that impact their joints. In many cases too, this population lacks a systematic progression to their training volume.

Dr. Powers then presented the concept of Envelope of Function, developed by Dr. Dye. The Envelope of Function states

• There is an area called homeostasis where the runner operates optimally
• Factors affecting the width of the homeostasis window include
  • Magnitude of loading
  • Frequency of loading
  • Abnormal mechanics
    • Increases in one or all of these factors, narrows the window of homeostasis, pushing the runner toward overuse injuries

Now let’s take the above factors and consider, for example, the demands on runners training for a marathon. These runners will foot strike over one million times while training for the marathon, and strike 26,000/mile/foot during the marathon. So how can we stay in that optimally operating zone of homeostasis?

Consistently and Purposefully Practiced Stability, Activation and Mobility Program

When we effectively train the stabilizers to kick in before the prime movers fire, the stabilizers set a foundation so the prime movers can direct the force in the intended direction. Visualize a canon floating in a canoe and firing its shots – this is analogous to a prime mover firing without stabilizers in place. Get the picture?

Hip activation, is the first step to develop brain to glute communication and the ability to properly fire muscles during movement. Proper recruitment of glutes, during running, allows safe and effective deceleration and shock absorption of those pesky ground reaction forces, through more reliance on the glutes and less over-reliance on the quads and hamstrings.

Finally a practice of global mobility with respect to joints, muscular length and soft tissues helps to facilitate proper neuromuscular firing/recruitment and structural alignment.

Less is More Training with Quality Taking Precedence of Quantity

Those years of Western States runners training, for example, by slogging away, eight hour day after hour day are gone. This training led to mental and physical break-down and slow, mechanically inefficient running.

The training goal is to get fit to run efficiently, not run to get fit. And this requires variety based on quality work and quality rest. The training week consistently includes intervals, speed and power, endurance, rest and non-aerobic activation, stability and mobility. It is the consistent practice of all these parts that provides injury prevention and performance.

One of the main goals of the interval work, shorter speed and longer tempo, is to improve running specific strength, power and economy of movement. This interval work assumes the supporting activation, stability and mobility program is in place. The goal is not how hard we can go at the expense of controlled movement, but how fast can we go with the objective of holding good mechanics, and fluidly moving with control and purpose.

Training programs based solely on slow miles, allow you to go long and slow. But endurance events are a game of efficiency, quality structured workouts develop specific running strength and economy of movement, reduce injury potential and improve performance.

Get the most out of every workout, by understanding why you are doing it. Be mentally and physically engaged in your running vs slogging away more and more mindless miles.

Stay tuned for part III, understanding normal running mechanics.

The injured runner and running injuries – what a conundrum! A while back I had become increasingly frustrated by what seemed, a lack of science-based treatment plans for the injured runner. There also seemed a void on how to systematically return runners to sport, and prevent injuries. Running magazines, blogs and books seemed to exacerbate the confusion, by presenting the flavor-of-the-day solutions, leading readers on a zig-zag course based on quick fixes and sweeping technique changes.

In my frustration, I started researching programs that offered science-based solutions to assessing, evaluating and returning runners to sport, as well as strategies to prevent injuries. As a result, I decided to commit to a six month fellowship on Advanced Lower Extremity Biomechanics with Dr. Chris Powers, at his USC-affiliated Movement Performance Institute in Los Angeles.

In short, Dr. Powers had his ah-ha, research-changing moment when the MRI became dynamic in its capability, and able to capture movement. Powers captured the movement of a single leg squat, and proved, in very simple terms, that hip stability dictates the hip, knee, toe alignment. This turned physical therapy regarding treatment of knee issues upside down. Up to this point much of the treatment had been focused on strengthening the muscles directly surrounding the knee in order to improve knee alignment relative to the hip and toe.

Fifteen years of research, focused on better defining the hip-lower extremity relationship, later, Dr. Powers has derived a research proven assessment, dynamic (video) evaluation, treatment and return to sport protocol.

Powers’ systematic, progressive protocol contrasts with the prevalent treatment which seems often based on a shot-gun, guess-work approach in attempting to solve the mystery of the injured runner.

Recently, now a few years after completing the Power’s fellowship, I attended a research symposium, entitled the Science of Running. This was a unique opportunity to hear three of the leading researchers and clinicians present on normal and abnormal running biomechanics, assessment, evaluation, and treatment of the injured runner. While all three agreed on most of the points presented, with slight degrees of variation in assessment and evaluation, they were oceans apart in their treatment strategies for the injured runner. Hmmmmm, Interesting.

The presenters included…

Dr. Irene Davis, on faculty at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Spaulding National Running Center, who treats runners by transitioning them to a forefoot strike, in minimalist shoes or barefoot.

Dr. Brian Heiderscheit, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Director of the Runner’s Clinic at UW Sports Medicine Center and Director of Badger Athletic Performance Research, treats injured runners through cadence manipulation, shortened stride and moderate heel strike.

Dr. Chris Powers, Co-Director of the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Lab at USC, and Director of the Movement Performance Institute, treats with improved hip activation/recruitment and stability with a heel strike pattern.

This was a unique opportunity to glean from three leading researchers, who implement what they have proven in their research in to practice with patience in their clinics. So these are research proven, patient tested protocols and strategies.

I was motivated and interested to attend the symposium to hear and understand all sides of the foot-strike story. We all know there is not a one-size fits all, technique. But I wanted to deepen and widen my understanding of the underlying issues in order to help runners, run pain free, and avoid injury.

This post will be the first in a series, sharing the 30,000 foot view (avoiding too much detail to bore you to delirium) of the Science of Running symposium.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to contact me with questions, Julie Young

Below is a collaborative piece based on an ongoing project between Silver Sage Sports and Fitness Lab and the developers of TrainerRoad software. We wanted to see how deriving threshold via lactate and power compared, contrasted and ultimately how the numbers stacked up.

Recently, Chad and Reid from TrainerRoad performed lactate tests at Silver Sage Sports and Fitness Lab. All of our TrainerRoad workouts are based upon Functional Threshold Power. While this value is ideal for power-based training, we wanted to dive in deeper and explore this value a bit more. What causes it? What can we learn from it? What does it really mean? While many things may factor into these answers, one of the biggest is lactate.

Lactate is the cause behind your pain when you’re grinding away at or above FTP. It is an acidic substance produced by skeletal muscles when they are no longer operating aerobically. It’s a very common product of endurance exercise, but when you’re really pushing your limits, the accumulation of lactate in your body is what forces you to slow down and fatigue.

To begin our experiment, we had both guys undergo a lactate threshold test in the lab. The first step was an EKG. After that came back normal they hopped on the bikes which were on a Computrainer for a 10 minute warmup.

The test was a ramp test which was conducted as follows:

1. Start at 60 watts
2. Increase by 40 watts every 4 minutes
3. Measure blood lactate, heart rate, and RPE at the end of each segment

Blood lactate measurements were done via a prick on the ear and the results were as followed:

Reid

 

 

Chad

Lactate Threshold Heart Rate

Looking at the data, there’s a couple interesting things that stand out. The first is in regards to heart rate. You can test LTHR using TrainerRoad, which sometime leads to confusion due to the uniqueness and plethora of variables that affect this value from athlete to athlete.

In this case, we see that Reid reached a significantly higher max heart rate despite putting out less power. While this can be attributed to many things, including current fitness level, recovery, amount of sleep they got the night before, diet, etc. it’s important to remember that heart rate cannot be looked at like power. More watts are always good, but a higher heart rate does not mean more power. Even more, sometimes LTHR can decrease as you go through a training plan and become more fit, even though FTP is increasing.

Muscle Types

Another interesting thing the lab test pointed out was in regards to the types of muscle fibers both Reid and Chad have. As endurance athletes, it’s safe to say both of them have a good amount of slow twitch fibers. These are the red, oxygen-dense muscle fibers that function aerobically.

However, notice how high Chad’s lactate shot up once he reached threshold. This large and rapid accumulation shows that he has a great deal of fast twitch fibers as well. These are white, anaerobic fibers that are utilized for things like weight lifting or sprinting. These fibers are also big lactate producers, so as soon as Chad went anaerobic with his effort, these fibers were recruited and the large lactate value we see here was produced.

By understanding this, both Reid and Chad can gear their training and racing to their strengths. For example, these results would lead us to believe that Chad has a pretty mean sprint and ability to really bury himself with an effort much over his FTP. However, due to his amount of fast twitch muscle fibers, if he were to jump right into an ultra-endurance event, he may struggle due to the extra lactate that his body has to remove from his muscles. In order to prepare for an event like this, he’d need to spend a lot of time training in Zone 2 in order to adapt and convert more muscles to slow twitch.

FTP Testing

Just a few days after the lab testing, both guys jumped on TrainerRoad to do a standard FTP test to compare and contrast the results. While the lab tests show where the curve regarding lactate production really starts turning upwards, indicating threshold, TR provides the exact number for FTP. For Both Reid and Chad, these numbers were right in the middle of the steepest part of the curve, indicating lactate is in fact the limiting factor.

Reid’s plot shows the greatest slope at approx. 260 watts, and his FTP was 265.

Chad’s graph shows the greatest slope at 315 watts and his FTP was 322.

In Conclusion

Perhaps the biggest thing we took away from the experiment, was that the FTP values were spot on with the laboratory-derived zones. However, actually seeing the physiology at work that was creating both Chad and Reid’s FTP’s was fascinating. Seeing the lactate accumulate provided an additional layer of insight into each athlete’s fitness, something that a single numerical value (FTP) cannot do. Beyond a definitive threshold number, lactate testing also provides

• A window in to the underlying metabolic systems and responses
• Data resulting in a lactate slope that provides clear indications of training effectiveness
• The ability to determine each athletes individual muscle-fiber make up and propensity for shorter explosive or longer endurance events
• A precise starting point for the threshold zone by indicating when the body is starting to accumulate lactate
• A clear ceiling of the pure aerobic zone
• A clear distinction where the aerobic zone ends and the threshold zone begins

The more you know and understand about your fitness, the better you can fine tune and perfect it.