[mtnscape1]

Hello Scott:

I was reading your Max VO2 myth article and you refer to training economy. I searched the site and “googled” the idea as well and found some other references and I think I understand it, i.e. it is moving efficiently (although it seems like it must be more), but want to confirm that and ask how do you train economy for alpinism? Is there an article coming that will address that?

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on February 3, 2018 at 4:02 pm #7955

I think the actual term I used was ‘running’ or ‘movement’ economy. Economy and efficiency are related in sports science but not the same. The exact definition of economy is the energy it takes to move at any given speed. Economy incorporates both a technical efficiency component as well as a metabolic efficiency component.

Think of the technique involved in swimming for instance. A good swimmer is moves more efficiently through the water and so used less energy per meter than a poor swimmer. For metabolic efficiency you can think about fat being the principle fuel or carbs being the main fuel powering the movement. Fat burning is more ‘efficient’.

So, when we think of the economy of an alpinist we think of that person being able to move over moderate to difficult alpine terrain with less energy expenditure then some one with lower technical skills. This requires lots of technique work just as the swimmer had to to do to hone his technique. And we can think of this alpinist as being highly fat adapted so that he can move for many hours without incurring much metabolic stress.

I hope this helps.

Scott

[mtnscape1]

mtnscape1 on February 3, 2018 at 4:56 pm #7966

Thank you Scott. I think I am missing something still. When I read your response I think, okay keep working on fat adaptation for metabolic economy and work on the technical economy as a alpinist by covering more and more alpine terrain to build technical and aerobic efficiency. But then when I re-read the article I am a little confused by the example given of the World Cup XC skier who just couldn’t crack the top tier due to a lack of race pace economy but once you and he trained his race pace economy began winning the big races. That would seem to make my strategy be missing some element. That racer would have covered tremendous amounts of terrain at race pace. Was he just not fat adapted then? Is that where the gain in economy came from? Thank you for your time and knowledge Scott.

[xcskier]

xcskier on February 5, 2018 at 10:52 am #8005

For running there are several ways to improve running economy:
http://www.suunto.com/en-CA/sports/News-Articles-container-page/5-proven-ways-to-improve-running-economy/
Running some uphill intervals is also a good way to improve it.

[mtnscape1]

mtnscape1 on February 9, 2018 at 9:12 pm #8061

Thanks for the article XCskier. I am working on a number of those points and am trying to move at a higher stride rate.

[xcskier]

xcskier on February 15, 2018 at 1:25 pm #8119

Here’s an article discussing weight training for
improving economy for endurance athletes:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-016-0604-z