This year’s Advanced Coaches Series’ lectures at the USRowing Annual Convention focused on physiology for the coaches. This article was written by Kris Korzeniowski. Although it is a few years old, it is still a good primer on the basics of physiology. This is part two of the article.

The goal of any training program, including the national team training program, is to address both components of the aerobic process – transportation, or the ability to get oxygen from the lungs to the muscle cells, and utilization, or the ability to efficiently use oxygen in the process which creates energy in the muscle cells. In Part I, we discussed the transportation system and how workouts can be specifically designed to strengthen the heart and therefore bring more oxygen to the muscles. Now we want to address the second component – utilization. Our goal is to deliver as much oxygen as possible to the muscles. Once there, we want the muscles to be able to convert, or utilize, the available oxygen at maximum efficiency.

We know that it is possible to develop the transportation system which will deliver much more oxygen than the muscles are able to utilize – to convert into energy. That’s why a good balance between these two intensities (transportation, utilization) is very important. In order to improve the ability of muscle cells to utilize oxygen we should:

Improve capilarization – The large tubes are the muscle fibers; the small white cylinders are capillaries.

Capillaries are basically extensions of the arteries. So, since the arteries carry the blood to the muscles, the more capillaries surrounding the muscles, the more oxygen available for them. On the left side you have an untrained person – he has three to four active capillaries around each muscle fiber. He actually has more capillaries, but his regular day-to-day activities require that he only activate three to four. Well-trained athletes will probably require more capillaries, and that is why utilization workouts are so important.

Improve oxidation potential in the muscle cells.

Oxidative potential is improved by increasing the number and size of the mitochondria – “power plants” of the muscle cells – and by increasing the quantity of oxidative enzymes.

Both goals can be achieved by low and medium intensity long-distance workouts. Because we are talking about the muscle system, and very peripheral areas, we have to focus on a very specific group of muscles – the muscles used in the rowing motion. It is highly recommended that utilization workouts be specific rowing motion workouts.

Typical utilization workouts used by our National Team Are:

Low Intensity - 60-80 minutes; heart rate 140-160 bpm (65-75% of maximum heart rate); stroke rate 18-24 spm.

Medium Intensity - 45-60 minutes; heart rate 160-175 bpm (70-80% of maximum heart rate); stroke rate 20-26 spm.

These workouts can be done in many different ways, alternating stroke rate and time. For instance, try 60 minutes of continuous rowing alternating; 4 minutes at 18; 3 minutes at 20; 2 minutes at 22; then 1 minute at 21. These are great workouts for learning rhythm, feeling the boat and improving rowing technique if the rowing stroke is executed correctly. They can also have a very damaging effect if poor rowing stroke is repeated for 60 or 80 minutes.

The only other information you need to design your program is monthly cadence for each type of workout. To figure that, you need to decide when you want your athletes to peak. Let’s use the National Championships in June as an example. If you want athletes to be at a comfortable 36 spm cadence in June, then your transportation workout for June should be rowed at 32 – 36. Then you need to back up from there -0 34 in May (transportation workout 30 – 34); 32 in April (Transportation workout 30 – 32); 30 in March (transportation workout 28-30); 28 in February (transportation workout 26 – 28), etc. Remember to increase the cadence gradually, step-by-step. Figure out what cadence you want at your peak and then allow four weeks for each cadence. Leave your athletes somewhere to go – if they are rowing at 40 spm in March, there is no room for them to push themselves and no way for them to improve their capacities.

In recent years, there’s been controversy and considerable talk about anaerobic threshold – or AT for short, although Dr. Fritz Hagerman of Ohio State as far back as 1972 presented an AT testing procedure for the New Zealand Team.

WHAT IS AT?

You are rowing very slowly, and then you start increasing your pace very gradually. Up to a certain point you feel comfortable – you can talk, and you can increase your speed very easily. Then comes a point from which everything suddenly starts to be more difficult. You can’t talk anymore, and you start “to pay” for every additional effort. This point is anaerobic threshold, the point where you are not able to produce energy aerobically anymore. At this point, you go into anaerobic metabolism and start to accumulate lactic acid. One millimole (mMol/liter) is the measure of a unit of lactate in one liter of blood. It is considered that up to two millimoles is pure aerobic effort. Four millimoles are at the exact border between aerobic and anaerobic effort. Fourteen millimoles is the theoretical exhaustion level. According to the literature most often cited, threshold blood lactate content is 4 mMol/liter. The pulse rate at AT is usually between 85-90% of maximum.

If an athlete’s total capacity is the sum of his aerobic and anaerobic abilities, then it would seem to make sense that an individual with a higher anaerobic threshold could perform more work aerobically without accumulating large amounts of lactic acid and therefore, without getting too tired. Some very well-trained athletes have ATs of 85 to 90% of VO2 max. With this knowledge, we all jumped on this AT concept and said, “O.K., we’ll work at AT and we will get faster.”

But when we tried to define AT for each individual athlete, we ran into trouble. Unfortunately, there isn’t a really good, practical method to calculate AT. One method would be using a gas analyzer, which is expensive, difficult, and not very practical. Theoretically, we should be able to figure AT from the relationship between the increase in intensity and heart rate (Prof. Conconi’s test) and due, in my opinion, to the inconsistency of heart rate monitor performance; very often we cannot find the point with any accuracy since the numbers are jumping up and down. Which point do we pick?

Today the actual benefits of knowing AT is a topic debated among coaches and scientists quite frequently. Some use heart rate at AT as a reference to define the intensity heart rate of all the other types of workouts, contrary to the commonly accepted percentages of maximum heart rate. Others try to lift AT through specially designed workouts, although we know that all utilization medium intensity workouts also improve AT.

In our training program, we use one typical AT workout – 3 x 20 minutes at 28 – 32 at 85% pressure. We checked this workout with Dr. Hagerman and found that the lactate concentration at the end of each piece was a maximum 4.5 mMol/liter. Personally, I believe that AT training can help athletes be more efficient. They can produce more energy before they go into the painful anaerobic area, but I would caution coaches against overemphasizing this feature in their training program.

Athlete capacity and his or her ability to utilize that capacity are often two very different things. Technique and the ability to feel the movement of the boat both play a major role, as, obviously, does the athlete’s psychological approach to the race. There are a lot of physically large athletes who impress coaches before they ever get into a boat. Once they do, they may or may not meet our expectations. To use a favorite label of mine, some of the physiologically impressive athletes are “marshmallows.” For example, some larger women rowers have unbelievable VO2 max – 5.4 liters. They were born with great capacity. Olympic silver medal single sculler Anne Marden tests lower at 4.8. Now I don’t want to race against Anne Marden – she will kill those big marshmallows! Why? Because she uses 100% of what she has; the larger woman with higher VO2 Max and AT may use only 80%.

It’s important to remember as well that regardless of an athlete’s capabilities, a sincere commitment to year ‘round systematic training is essential. It is so easy to decrease physiological capacity by not training – something that takes a long time and considerable effort to build. Once again, there are considerable differences between countries, training methods and approaches.

For instance, look at the Abbagnale brothers (Italian 2+) – six gold medals in the last eight years. They take no days off. After the World Championships, they went home and rowed 20-kilometer workouts. In the meantime, some of our athletes take a few months off after each World Championships. So, in effect, that creates a slight drop in physiological capacities every year. After four years on the National Team, they are actually decreasing instead of increasing their capacities.

It’s important to know aspects of physiology, and it’s great to have these capacities, but simply to have them is not enough. As rowers, we must first row well, then race well.

The author would like to thank Thor Nilsen, Italian National Team Director; Professor Sigmund B. Stromme, Norweigian College of Physical Education, Dr. Frederick Hagerman of the USRowing Sports Medicine Committee and illustrator Sturla Kaasa, whose materials have been utilized in this presentation.