|
Everyone knows what "aerobics"
means. All the pencilnecks
chime in, "With oxygen!"
Proudly, they strut around with big woolen socks bunched up down
around their ankles (calfs too small to support them) and new cross
trainers. "We're in
shape!"
And it has become sorta "in" among
powerlifters to greet (out of shape) fellow lifters whom they hadn't seen
for a time with the tongue-in-cheek salutation, "Lookin' kinda 'aerobic'
these days, eh pal?"
That's
gotta be the ultimate dig!
But except for a gym-hardened few,
the work "anaerobics" has little meaning to people, except for a possible
fleeting cognition relating to "opposite of aerobics." Yet, did you ever stop and reflect
upon the fact that virtually 95 percent of everything you do in your
powerlifting life is anaerobic?
So how come so much emphasis is
given to aerobics? The ol'
ticker, my friends. Your
heart. But, whatever added
lifestyle benefits that are accrued from the tedium of
aerobic training -- that anaerobic
training can't do much more efficiently and effectively -- is beyond
me. But (as you know) I'm
hard-core. Power. Mass. No skintight leotards for this
iron freak!
Enough tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. I don't mean to debate the
relative merits of anaerobic training versus aerobic conditioning. What I'd like to do instead is
discuss the benefits of improving your anaerobic power in order to
maximize your limit strength.
Who Knows? Maybe I'll start a whole new
fad! Imagine! Generations of li'l iron
pumpers! The joggers will be
looked upon as "strange" for a change.
Anaerobic Strength:
Let's get real specific for a
moment, and define in more exact terms what I mean by the term "anaerobic
strength," and how it relates to poweerlifting specifically.
During a heavy set, your energy
requirements are met in large part by metabolic processes which do not
require oxygen consumption.
Thus, your muscles' consumption of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
begins to exceed your ability to resynthesize it. Other metabolic processes must
take up the energy slack.
_________________________________________________________
Portions of this article were
excerpted from Dr. Fred Hatfield's new book, "The ABCs of Hardcore
Bodybuilding (In Press), Contemporary Books, Chicago.
In the process of this sort of
anaerobic work, a tremendous oxygen "debt" is incurred.
The phosphagens (ATP and creatine
phosphate -- CP for short) are your immediate sources of anaerobic
energy. However, the
phosphagen pool is very limited, and can only sustain (at best) a brief
anaerobic burst of muscle contraction. Most of your anaerobic energy must
come from some other source.
That's glycogen -- sugar stored in your muscle cells.
So far, the above discourse is
pretty straightforward.
Easily understood by any dedicated iron freak, right? But to understand where most of
your anaerobic energy comes from you'll have to understand lactic acid (La
for short) far more fully.
Glycogen breakdown (to resynthesize
more CP and ATP) produces much of this caustic substance. Let's explore a few key reactions
involving La.
Energy during Maximum Muscle
Contraction:
How long does an average maximum
lift take? Maybe 2 or 3
seconds, right? Well, by the
time you've maximally tested your muscle's strength of contraction for one
brief second, you're already into the third stage of muscle energetics --
the glycolytic stage.
Within 1.26 seconds of maximum
contraction, for example, 80 percent of your muscle's ATP is derived from
CP degradation, and 20 percent from La production. And, by the time your muscle has
contracted for a period of 2.52 seconds, fully 50 percent of your ATP
comes from La production (Eric Hultman & Hans Sjoholm, 1983).
By the time you've contracted
maximally for six seconds, your power output has begun to decrease despite
the fact that your muscle's CP content is still at least 65 percent of its
basal level.
Continuing beyond 6 seconds, your CP
content diminishes, your ATP diminishes, and acidosis -- a build-up of La --
begins to severely hinder work.
It's pretty obvious, then, that your
inability to generate maximum muscle contraction after six seconds or so
stems from a multiplicity of factors rather than from a depletion of any
single energy source.
Anaerobic Strength Defined:
Anaerobic strength, then, can be
defined in lay terms as your ability to continue to perform maximum muscle
contractions over time (i.e., throughout a given set). Fatigue is often very
misunderstood. Fatigue used
to be thought of as a decrease in intracellular pH resulting from La
accumulation (Hill & Kupalov, 1929).
Not necessarily. By 1970, the view was that
decreased creatine phosphate was the main contributory factor in fatigue
limiting maximum force output (Spande & Schottelius, 1970).
More recently, with the aid of
nuclear magnetic resonance imaging techniques (NMR or MRI), it was
discovered that a decrease in a muscle's tension-producing ability was
directly proportional to increases in hydrogen ions and of free ADP (a
metabolic by-product of ATP degradation) rather than resulting from either
La concentrations or CP content (Dawson, Gadian & Wilke, 1978).
Two Swedes, Eric Hultman and Hans
Sjoholm, reporting their research at the International Symposium on Human
Muscle Power (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 1984), believe that
anaerobic power -- the ability to continue maximal work -- stems from
several factors, including:
1. Decreased ratio between ATP and ADP
2. Decreased muscle pH
3. Depletion of ATP (by as much as 60 percent)
The
biochemical processes that bring about fatigue, according to Hultman and
Sjoholm, are 1) the formation of, and 2) the breakdown of the muscles'
actin-myosin cross-bridges.
The cross-bridges are activated by
the breakdown of ATP molecules.
ATP breaks down into ADP and P, giving off energy in the
process. It's that released
energy that ultimately causes the cross-bridges on the actin-myosin
myofibrils to "contract."
Muscle contraction, then, is a result of thousands of microscopic
cross-bridges grabbing, releasing and re-grabbing their way across one
another causing the actin and myosin to "slide" across one another.
What stops
this cross-bridging are (to repeat):
1. A lowering of your intramuscular
pH -- your cellular environment becomes too acidic from the buildup of
lactic acid. Lactic acid
activates other enzymes within the cell that are supposed to assist in the
energy transfer system of the cell.
2. The regeneration of ATP is slowed
below a critical threshold necessary to maintain contraction. You're using up your ATP too
quickly during intense muscle contraction for resynthesized ATP to be
effective in maintaining contraction.
How Can You Improve Your Anaerobic
Strength?
Mind you, all of these enzymatic
reactions are taking place in seconds. Pushing heavy weights for 10 sets
of 5 reps (for example) reduces your intracellular environment to a junk
pile of metabolic wastes and enzymatic poisons.
The critical question for
powerlifters wishing to maximize their training efficiency is whether
there is a way of improving their anaerobic power. There is. You can delay the processes
involved in fatigue, you can amplify your limit strength level (providing
the net effect of making whatever work you're doing less taxing), and you
can speed the recovery process markedly. It's best to do all three.
Here are some pointers:
- Pay attention to your mineral balances, especially your
calcium/magnesium and sodium/potassium ratios.
- Ensure that you've adopted a
long-term commitment to sound nutrition, as it is only over time that you
can achieve efficiency in intramuscular energetics;
- Use branched-chain amino acids to
assist in maintenance of an adequate amino acid pool (blood-borne aminos)
for protein turnover during and following training.
- Inosine is known to activate
enzyme activity (specifically, pyruvic acid) allowing cellular activity to
progress until more ATP can be biosynthesized;
- By far the most important way to
improve anaerobic strength, however, is to engage in high-intensity
training of the white (fast-twitch) muscle fibers. That's where most of the enzymatic
activity is taking place, and where your anaerobic powers are the
greatest.
- Highly trained powerlifters are
known to be capable of tolerating lactate levels as much as 30 percent
higher than untrained individuals.
The mechanism presumed to contribute to this improved tolerance is
"motivation." However, it's
just as certain that improved ability to 1) improve ATP/ADP ratios, 2)
resynthesize ATP and 3) reduce lactate buildup will contribute to improved
anaerobic power as well. That
takes high intensity training supported by sound nutritional
practices.
- The use of buffers -- alkaline
substances -- to reduce your blood acidity can assist in improving
anaerobic power, especially in untrained or out-of-shape athletes. The longstanding buffer of choice
is sodium bicarbonate -- baking soda.
- Substances that scavenge ammonia
(a toxic by-product of amino acid breakdown) appear to assist in rapid
recovery both during and following intense training/competition
- Kinotherapy -- active rest during
the recovery phase following intense training -- causes a compensatory
effect in the fatigue centers of the central nervous
system. Simply, exercise
antagonistic muscles mildly during rest periods (e.g., electrical
stimulation on triceps following a biceps workout).
- Massage therapy, performed
properly, can facilitate recovery in several ways, such as reactivation of
peripheral circulation, resorption, decreased muscle tension and
elimination of toxins.
- Several other techniques such as
oxygen therapy, chemotherapy,
psychological therapy, acupressure, ultrasound and a host of other
potentially rejuvenating techniques.
It seems to me that if you're
serious about becoming great in powerlifting, you'll begin to get
acquainted with your most important attribute -- your anaerobic
strength. It is this
attribute which will give you the edge you need in gaining limit
strength.
And then you will discover that the
true secret to improving your training efficiency is your ability to
RECOVER! | 
Frederick C. Hatfield,
Ph.D.