[Michael]

I want to understand the connection between base training and all the other elements of improving fitness.

I realized recently that my fitness has been plummeting over the past few years because being time crunched has led me to focus on high intensity events rather than the naturally slow paced distance events I used to do on my own that previously established a small base inadvertently.

I am now in my 6th month of carnivory (only way I can eat high fat without relapse I’ve found) and I want to know what is different about building a base with: high fat + cold exposure + sunlight + near IR + circadian alignment. Ueli Steck said if takes 5 years to build endurance and presumably that meant base training. Do these things get the same results in 3 years, or is it that 80% of the aerobic base improvements of maximum individual potential can be built in half the time? I know people on sugary high carb diets who are more fat adapted than me just because they have a huge aerobic base.

I can see all the blogs and papers talking about benefits of fasted or fat burning training with AMPK, PGC-1a etc, but that does not give me a good sense of what I can expect with months of base training. Is it simply that while LCHF, I will be able to go for longer in zone 2 efforts (while aerobically deficient, then zone 1 for base) than I would otherwise and get a stronger training effect from that or are other aspects?

I just want to get my aerobic base to the point where I can mountain bike ~12 hours per day or be bagging peaks for many days at a time and I want to know how much faster that can be by essentially getting more leveraged adaptations to base training.

Posted originally in Barry Murray’s FB group, The Connected Athlete, in case anyone else is there. https://m.facebook.com/groups/486866895180210?view=permalink&id=526685447865021&comment_id=526784821188417&ctoken=526685447865021_527114301155469&ft_ent_identifier=526685447865021&gfid=AQBrK_xRsyXSO-F_&notif_t=group_comment_mention&notif_id=1557239820750521&ref=m_notif

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on May 7, 2019 at 3:14 pm #21644

Michael:

Building that aerobic base that Ueli was referring to does take years. I have known of one world champion who saw improvements in his pace ar aerobic threshold for 10 years using the same base building approach of lots of sub AeT training volume before adding too much intensity.

A LCHF diet can help jump start this process but as you can see in your friends who eat HC, fat adaptation is also strong effected by aerobic base training volume. Once you are over probably around 16 hours of aerobic base work in a week then I’ve seen (with many athletes I’ve coached) that diet makes very little difference in fat adaptation.

Be patient and don’t get too caught up with the stuff you mention: cold, near IR, circadian alignment etc. These things might work but none of the top athletes I work with or have ever worked with have used them and some are the their sports highest level. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Put in the volume week after week, month and month and you will see the changes you seek.

Scott