The 5 components of fitness and lactate
If you have a coaching program with us, you will be aware of terms such as 'muscular endurance' and 'lactate'. What do these mean to you though?
The term fitness means many things to many people, but it is recognised as consisting of:
- Muscular Endurance
- Muscular Strength
- Motor Skills
- Aerobic Capacity
- Flexibility
In order to make each session that you do specific, these terms are used to describe what it is that you will be focussing on. This allows us to structure your season and to work on weaknessess.
A 6th term is used within the coaching and this is 'lactate'. The idea of these sessions is to work on what is termed your lactate threshold. Put simply, this is the point at which your body can't metabolise (remove) waste (lactic acid) faster than it is being produced. We therefore want to increase this limit so that we can work harder, but not fatigue. For those after a more scientific explanation, a detailed page can be found here. We have to use these sessions sparingly however as they cause greater muscular damage than long steady efforts, and may interfere with our training if used too frequently.
- Muscular Endurance - The muscle's ability to sustain an effort over a period of time. To give an example, you would expect a marathon runner to have greater muscular endurance than a 100 metre runner.
- Muscular Strength - The muscle's ability to exert force. As an examply, you would expect a 100 metre runner to have greater muscular strength than a marathon runner.
- Motor Skills - The ability to perform a task. Improving your swimming technique would be an example of improving your motor skills, or improving your bike handling.
- Aerobic capacity - The maximum volume of oxygen that can be consumed by muscles through exercising. We would expect a world class cyclist to have a greater aerobic capacity than a weekend warrior. His Vo2 would probably be higher, and his body would be more able to use the oxygen.
- Flexibility - The range of motion that a muscle can go through. Flexibility is important to us as athletes as it decreased the likelyhood of injury. Cycling is reknowned for shortening the hamstrings, and this is why stretching is so important to us. If you imagine a string of pasta. When cooked and therefore more flexible, the pasta is far less likely to snap than when it is uncooked and stiff.