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Anaerobic and Aerobic Contribution in Sports

July 26, 2005 11:11 AM

Paul Chek is one of the very best trainers. I have several of his books. In his article Cardio Training: Paul Chek's Perspective on Dr. Mercola's web site, which I have read for years, Paul has a table adapted from Siff, et al Supertraining showing the contributions of the three important energy pathways in sports. Scroll down to Table 1 and see just how much aerobic training is overrated in sports. As all good exercise scientists know, the aerobic system recharges the anaerobic system. I think that is its primary function.

Chek also rightly notes the modest cardio demands of ancestral life. Humans are highly energy efficient in walking, but fairly inefficient when they run. So, our ancestors most likely were walkers and sprinters. The Ache walk and trot and then sprint when they are hunting peccaries in the forest. Pretty much like a lot of sports, basketball and baseball come to mind.

This is a power law pattern of effort and frequency, of which I have written before. Tennis is almost a perfect power law sport. The length of time once the ball is put into service until the conclusion of the point, taken over the course of a game is a perfect power law. Most points are decided quickly, fewer intermediately, and a few are very long. Recall the Venus v. Sharapova point that went about 100 plays before it was decided. But most points were over fairly soon. The frequency of the time intervals declines as the length of the interval increases by about f = t^(-alpha). The value of alpha is around 1.7 I recall.

As to aerobics and heart health, I, as you know, am very skeptical. Dudley White was President Dwight Eisenhower's physician. He long ago noted the absence of cardiovascular disease among Americans, and other populations, until sometime in the 1950s. Hunter gatherers do not suffer from cardiovascular disease when they live in their original ways. When they move into cities and live the Western Way, they soon develop diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

One of the mysteries is why cardiovascular disease developed so rapidly in the US from 1950 or 1960 on. Some blame vegetable oil, others starches and processed foods. All seem to be at least participants in the process. On the other hand, cardio disease shows the pattern typical of a new pathogen taking up a new host. Since the early sharp rise there has been some dampening of the disease and rates are now a bit lower than at their peak. This is a classic pathogen/host invasion and then accomodation, much like small pox behaved among early farmers 10,000 years ago.

Dr. Le Fanu has an intriguing hypothesis that this pattern may be due to chlamydia bacteria invading the vascular system. I won't go into that here, but it is consistent with the dramatic rise, peak, and then decline that is fairly typical of an pathogenic invasion and then accomodation. In other words, it could be a pathogen, or any of the other sources that people speculate about, such as vegetable oil, saturated fat, starches, processed food, etc. Problem is, there is nothing aerobic exercise is going to do about any of these.

· Evolutionary Fitness

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Posted by: Flower Online [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 12, 2006 2:22 AM

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