Does anyone have access to Cell, it would be great if you could share the pdf.
It would be interesting to know what happens after four weeks. Maybe these researchers can be on the science of getting faster.
Here is the summary of the study:
Exercise training positively affects metabolic health through increased mitochondrial oxidative capacity and improved glucose regulation and is the first line of treatment in several metabolic diseases. However, the upper limit of the amount of exercise associated with beneficial therapeutic effects has not been clearly identified. Here, we used a training model with a progressively increasing exercise load during an intervention over 4 weeks. We closely followed changes in glucose tolerance, mitochondrial function and dynamics, physical exercise capacity, and whole-body metabolism. Following the week with the highest exercise load, we found a striking reduction in intrinsic mitochondrial function that coincided with a disturbance in glucose tolerance and insulin secretion. We also assessed continuous blood glucose profiles in world-class endurance athletes and found that they had impaired glucose control compared with a matched control group.
I find this bit sort of interesting. I would assume that itās quite important to know when they were tested (rest week or training block) to know whether that has any relevance at all though.
Sure, but thatās a simplistic view, specifically in light of the information highlighted by the article. My point is that you might get 90% of the gains (or higher) in V02 with very little of the metabolic cost the researchers highlighted during week 3.
Well if always being slightly short of your full potential as an athlete is your goal, sure.
But then again, if your goal isnāt to be as good as you can be, why do VO2max intervals in the first place? There are certainly far more pleasurable ways to spend your time, both on and off a bicycle.
Yeah thatās right! Why bother training! Just imagine what you could do with all that free time! You could even learn how to communicate without sneering condescension. Wouldnāt that be fun?!
Really interested to hear what others take away from this.
For me:
Theyāre not trying to study an optimal workout plan - they were trying to study what happens in the mitochondria of people doing super-overloaded exercise. So they ran these folks through a program of increasing intensity loads that they was purposefully excessive and looked at what happened to their mitochondria. The glucose stuff comes in because thereās been a chicken/egg thing in the metabolism literature with mitochondria being funky in Type 2 Diabetes - are the mitochondria funky in T2D folks because the glucose level is too high, or is the glucose too high because the mitochondria are funky? So they say, āhey, here we have people where we made their mitochondria mad through exercise, and now their glucose tolerance is worse.ā So that points to a directionality.
And then they thought, āwell, if we messed with peopleās mitochondria by making them work hard for just a few weeks and that gave them changes in glucose tolerance, whatās going on in elite athletes?ā Iām not a metabolism person, but Figure 7D, it looks like the elite athletesā blood glucose differences come from 1) their bodies ālettingā them sit at lower glucose for longer during sleep/before breakfast, and 2) peaking a little higher around lunchtime. It doesnāt seem crazy to me that endurance athletes end up training greater tolerance of hyper/hypoglycemia, by running glucose stores down a bunch from time to time, and by fueling with super-purified sugars. I donāt actually know what the T2D version of this graph looks like, but Iād be surprised if itās the same, and also surprised if these differences translate to HA1C differences.
And donāt forget the exclusion criterion was commitment to more than 5h weekly endurance training and/or regular high-intensity training. Tbh I lost my interest in the study when I read this
