The version I always heard was that sex is good for females, and more complicated for males. At least assuming the athlete doesn't fatigue themselves pre competition.

Part of programming workouts and training loads is understanding the basic relationship between "Input - Output." Some call it the "Dose-Response Relationship," along with a host of other terms. When I'm working with athletes, I have to be aware that too much input (pick any of a thousand metrics) can negatively influence the output. Measuring efforts is a HUGE part of that, because now we actually have numbers that can be run for correlations. When I was in grad school, we (the sports science staff) worked with the coaching staff seven days a week controlling the inputs (as much as you can in an NCAA environment) in order to manipulate the output of our team.

That said, very few of those "inputs" we are discussing are quantifiable and/or qualifiable. Mental state and non-training-load-stress are notoriously difficult to account for largely because they affect every athlete differently, and because they can be fleeting at best. For example: I was the Strength and Conditioning coach for an NCAA D1 soccer team, my colleagues and I collected survey data on sleep, (quantity, and subjective quality), injuries/soreness, weight room volume and intensity, and field intensity and volume. After a few weeks, we had a reasonable picture of how individual athletes responded to different stimuli. After two years, we had almost every player dialed in. We had an advantage in that we could foresee high-outside-stress periods for our athletes, mid-terms and finals. The rest were accounted for as much as possible, because they generally displayed SOMEWHERE in the data.

What we noticed, and what other research has indicated as well, is that nutrition is a very small contributor to performance, in the short term. It appears that the effects of nutritional interventions are limited to ~5% per annum, if practiced with high levels of rigor. Acutely, nutrition does not appear to have much effect (single dose - single bout studies). Our data collection confirmed this. We loosely controlled athlete's food intake pre, during, and post, competition and saw very little difference in athletes responses. The largest changes in performance, for individual athletes, were attributed to total training load and difficulty of opponent.

I said all that to say this: any coach worth a rat's is going to have some system of measurement for evaluating the input/output of their athletes. We accomplished our monitoring with some fancy and expensive gizmos, but we also used basic, basic, basic, stuff and looked at trends over time. Sports science and athletic performance is a relatively new field of study. Remember that MOST sports monitoring programs date back to the early 50s. The Soviets spearheaded athlete development (and dianabol!), and soon everyone realized there was something to it. Also, humans are weird. Even with the high amount of predictive power we have right now, something can always go awry.

Thanks!

Yeah, I recognize that measuring the outside forces can be difficult...and maybe impossible. I didn't realize that, in the short term, diet has so little of an effect on performance.

What about rest? If I don't get good rest, I'm a wreck personally, professionally, and athletically. Just last night, we had high winds here so there were LOTS of branches falling and banging on things, garage door booming, etc... I slept, but didn't get any deep sleep. The result was that it was like I stayed up all night. I was tired, listless, forgetful, and found it difficult to focus on basic things all day. There was no way I could lift heavy in the gym today. I tried that once and failed a rep and dropped 300+ lbs on to the guard rails. I didn't get hurt, but it was a loud lesson.

Being that many of us (up to and including Olympians) have day jobs and families (with related obligations). I would think that the energy expended there would affect a workout or training block.

Rest is important, no doubt about that. We consistently saw higher Rates of Perceived Exertion when athletes had low quantity and/or quality of sleep. Injury rates have a pretty strong correlation with hours of sleep, too. Yann Le Meur (@YLMSportScience on Twitter) posted an infographic stating athletes sleeping less than 8 hours per night have 1.7 times the injury rates. https://twitter.com/YLMSportScience/...09806636851201 (This is a pretty fantastic source of info, though it doesn't apply directly to cycling.)

With the data we collected, the amount of sleep "Normalized" out, or "averaged" out of the data. We had some athletes consistently sleeping 5 hours per night, while others consistently slept 9. So for every great session a player who slept 5 hours had, one who slept for 9 hours bombed out, and vice-versa. There were some sessions that were largely wasted, because athletes weren't recovering properly. Rest is a tricky variable, because it can work both acutely, and chronically. You can both feel bad for one session, if you don't sleep enough, and you can limit your ability to train with days, or weeks, of poor sleep strung together. I don't recall if we tried to look at differences between athletes who had equivocal rest quantities/qualities. That would be interesting, and I may pass it back to some of my old mates.

Also, to your last paragraph, we worked with collegiate athletes, so the stressors we were coping with were very different. We got lots of sorority drama, some homesickness for the internationals, and typical co-ed hijinks. I'm not convinced any of these are LESS stressful to the individual during the moment, but they're certainly not sweating an underwater mortgage, or getting henpecked at home, or whichever "adult" stereotype suits you. :)

Thanks for the link to Le Meur. I'll follow him. I love that kind of stuff.

I wonder if lack of rest affecting mental acuity and those lapses lead to injuries more so than simply lack of energy. I got my herniated disc when I was lifting only 160lbs and I went to rerack it with staggered feet (as opposed to even with shoulders) and released the tension in my abs before I set the weight on the rack. Pop. Basically, I forgot/failed to implement my reracking routine. I still feel it from time to time to this day.

But that was due to me not paying attention to form more so than not being able to handle the weight which was only 2/3 my body weight.

I agree that stress is stress. The stress that a college student feels about (classes, dating, social anxieties, etc...) are relatively the same as a 35 or 45 year old's stress about kids, mortgage, marriage, work, etc... It feels the same.

I think that 18-24 year olds are simply more resilient. Just look at how quickly they can recover from binge drinking :D But seriously. A 35 year old person's response to alcohol is probably significantly (and quantifiably) different than their 22 year old selves. Same goes for injuries. I once strained my back doing partner stunts with my girlfriend (cheerleader) in college (I wasn't gonna let her cheerleading partner have all the fun, hahaha). 3-4 days of 800mg Ibuprofen pills and I was good as new. If I suffered that same injury now at 40+, I'd be laid up for much longer with maybe lingering effects.

I think the same goes for nutrition, sleep, etc... I wonder if maybe YOUTH was picking up the slack for them :D

I wonder if your studies would yield more exacerbated (is that the right term?) results if the participants were older and didn't have the x-factor of youth helping them out.

Wait, I guess it falls to me to cite the experience of the most accomplished researcher in this field - I refer to Alberto Tomba, of course: "I used to have a wild time with three women until 5 am, but I am getting older. In the Olympic Village here I will live it up with five women, but only until 3am."

Almost assuredly it is. If you consider that muscles fire 100% on neural signaling, any sort of neural fatigue will impair performance. I found an article that studied the effect of caffeine on Navy SEALs rife accuracy during Hell Week. With large doses of caffeine, they went from shooting abhorrently to shooting badly. There was also a good study, and I think I'm remembering this correctly, that compared two groups of athletes rate of force development (RFD), with the experimental group performing math equations prior to lifting. They found significantly lower RFD compared to the control group. PROOF THAT MATH MAKES YOU WEAK! And that mental fatigue is real, and doesn't take a lot to break you down.

It's suggested that EITHER coordination of muscle firing is impaired (fibers fire in the wrong sequence), or that control of the muscles is reduced, and the wrong force generated. For example, an athlete is trying to make a "cut" move at the end of practice, and their knee buckles, snapping the ACL. Did the knee fair because the athlete was tired? Absolutely. But more specifically, did they put their foot in the wrong place? Or were their muscles incapable of generating enough force to stabilize that joint region? There are a lot of people that see the later as the cause of this, and it's a very strong argument, but there isn't yet a consensus.


Hehe Binge drinking. :love:

To answer your question, there are a few caveats: I am assuming we have a time machine, and some magic. I am comparing athlete-to-athlete at 22, and 42, assuming they've stayed active and physically healthy between the two test periods. Based on what I know about these athletes, if we used the exact same program on the 22 and 42 year-old versions, only a few of the 42 year-olds would survive. Out of the 20 or so I worked with, I think 2 or 3 would have the physical resilience and tolerance to volume to survive that same training program. They're freaky athletes. That said, it wouldn't be impossible to find out the percent decrease in physical ability between the two age groups, and write a new training plan that is scaled to that decrease. Comparing these allometrically scaled plans I'm unsure there would be a large increase in injury rates or severity. I've been wrong before though, and masters athletes are not at all my specialty. Take that with a big grain of salt!

There are two concepts at work here, one is "training age" and it references your total time spent training. Example: We have two 35 year old racers; one has a training age of 25, the other has a training age of 7. The first racer has been competitive since he was 10, while his compatriot didn't get competitive until he was 28. If all else is equal, the first racer should be more likely to be injured, because he has >3x the cumulative fatigue. The second concept is "Maximum Recoverable Volume. (MRV)" My former colleague, Dr. Mike Isratel, has created this idea that each individual has a set amount of work they can do, before they see detrimental side effects. Dr. Isratel is/was a bodybuilder/powerlifter/wrestler/MMA strength/power sport guy so his examples are all related to squatting or deadlifting. The idea is the same for bikes, though. You can only do so many TSS per month before you get slow, or sick.

I hypothesize, and don't know if there's enough evidence to back it up, but there certainly appears to be a similar limiter on cumulative fatigue. At some point, you stop responding and adapting to the training stimulus, and stop getting faster. If cumulative fatigue is a possible factor in age-related detrimental performance is purely my conjecture!

Again, a really long-winded explanation to say that it isn't specifically being young, but mostly having low levels of cumulative training stress, which is typically a symptom of being young.

I just heard the Bobby Lea is now eligible to compete in this years Olympics.
Reduced ban allows Bobby Lea chance to race in Rio - VeloNews.com

Here is a CO2 inflation chart
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=506983

[QUOTE=gycho77;18570918]Here is a CO2 inflation chart

My next buy is a CO2 inflator (for the road) - fellow club members tell me the lowest cost CO2 cylinders can be found at Walmart. I've never seen anyone inflate their track bike tires with CO2.

CO2's are awesome for quick flat repairs while on a ride.

A couple of things to keep in mind are that they don't work so well in the cold, so if you're on a winter ride you're better off carrying a pump.

Also, a small size cartridge will get a road tire up to pressure, but it won't stay there. I forget why, (I used to know, honest) but the air pressure from a CO2 cartridge bleeds off over time. I'm always suprised when I check my tire pressure the next morning after using a CO2.

Paul

There's really no need to use them at the track, as there always seems to be a pump handy.
[QUOTE=700wheel;18571023]

CO2 is super temperature sensitive. Kinda the opposite of Nitrogen. It's a good idea to let out all the CO2 from a repaired tube and refill with air once you get home.

Training tip
Get an used car tire and tie it on to your seatpost lol
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=507432
It's a joke:p

[QUOTE=1incpa;18571162]CO2's are awesome for quick flat repairs while on a ride.

A couple of things to keep in mind are that they don't work so well in the cold, so if you're on a winter ride you're better off carrying a pump.

Also, a small size cartridge will get a road tire up to pressure, but it won't stay there. I forget why, (I used to know, honest) but the air pressure from a CO2 cartridge bleeds off over time. I'm always suprised when I check my tire pressure the next morning after using a CO2.

Paul

There's really no need to use them at the track, as there always seems to be a pump handy.
Rubber is much more permeable to co2 than n2. ~80 n2 in the atmosphere means that tires pumped up with air maintain pressure much longer than ones with con.

[QUOTE=wens;18577577]Are the molecules small enough to seep from the tube faster than what goes in by regular pump?

I have no idea why, I just know the empirical effect. Molecule size seems like the most lonely explanation, and my next guess would be polar vs nonpolar molecules, but I really don't know.

[QUOTE=tonski;18577724]I think wens is closer to the cause above. Not sure about permeability but even if it's close to the same a bigger concentration gradient = more driving force for mass transfer (ChE speak). :)

Interesting stuff. The one on bike injury I've had I thought had a similar root cause, poor muscle coordination in a high force situation. Motor paced F200, fatigued (probably dehydrated) & poorly warmed up = hamstring pull. In the cycling literature the impact of improving function of the neuro-muscular system vs. cardio does not seem very well understood or studied. Can you train it, how? What are the best methods for improving CNS function, protocols?

You can certainly make changes to your neuro-muscular coordination on the bike. You can do over-geared efforts, and under-geared efforts to change some of the firing sequences, and change your most effective cadence range. Your example highlights the conundrum in identifying specifically how we can identify root causes of injury. Was it fatigued muscle tissue that couldn't produce the necessary contraction? Did your potential dehydration delay the conduction of neural signaling?

Based on what I can find in my library of research is lots of contradictory information about coordination. I don't have an exhaustive collection by any means, and this is not an area I'm intimately familiar with, so don't put too much stock in what I'm going to say. What I've been taught, and a bit of what I've observed, is that strength training improves coordination. With regard to the lower limb specifically, the more balanced the quad:hamstring ratio is, the less likely an athlete is to be injured. In the context of being a track sprinter, I think the best thing is to chalk one injury up to bad luck, and focus on getting stronger/faster, and maybe use some occasional "coordination" drills, as a recovery exercise, or a low-emphasis training day. It certainly doesn't seem to be a limiting factor, and thus, in my mind, isn't worth investigating.

I'm willing to guess that it was a eccentric contraction.

If it was, it was probably due to being clipped into a fixed-gear. As you were misfiring your muscles (contracting when you should have been non-contracting) the crank pulled your leg and lengthened it.

I've had this happen when doing rev-outs on rollers and trying to slow down.

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Now I need to learn German

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babel fish...

I think he was interested in the audio

I'll have listen tonight and will post if anything interesting to report.

Don't joke. This was how I improved my standing starts by quite a bit.