The real limited factor of your performance is muscles?

Did you already read my latest blog post ‘The truth about the Norwegian Method’?

If you haven’t read it yet, please click here to read it first, otherwise you would not understand what I’m talking today.

Marius Bakken wrote in his book ‘For most runners, the real limiter is not the cardiovascular system. It is the muscles’.

Although I don’t agree with him perfectly because how well your muscles loosen up or stay soft without limiting your performance depends on how good function your mitochondria have and how great number of mitochondria you have and how dense your capillary is.

All these things are connected with your cardiovascular system. This is the reason why I don’t agree his opinion completely.

But he’s right. I mean, he points a very good point out.

Frist of all, he writes in his book that our lungs and hearts recover well only a few hours after workouts and get ready for another workouts, but our muscles, tendons, ligaments do not recover so quickly, the real problem is not our cardiovascular system but, our soft tissues including muscles.

From this point of view, he is 100% right.

Also, he points out that if our muscles are too tight (he expresses it as a muscle tone), we cannot perform the best and our performance is lower than our cardiovascular system ability. He is also right 100% about this.

Also, this is the reason why you should not train by number but based on your physical sensation. Easy run should be easy enough to loosen up your muscles. Very often researchers and scientists say that if your heart rate is lower than 65% (or 60%) of your maximal heart rate, that training does not have any effect on your improvement, so run harder than that.

Well, I don’t agree with them because the most important thing about easy run is recovering from moderate workouts and hard workouts. So, if you need to run that slow pace to loosen up your muscle, run as slow as you want.

And second, even if it doesn’t have any effect on your cardiovascular system (I don’t believe this too though because all joggers run faster than non-joggers), easy run trains your muscles somehow.

Anyway, there is no doubt that muscles affect our performance in training and in races so much especially in training because usually we stand on the start line of races with fresh legs, but not in training, right?

So, we need to create a smart training plan if we want to reach our limit.

Today, I want to tell you two important things about the relationship between muscles and race performance based on my experience as a coach and athlete.

First, even if you have good cardiovascular, if your muscle nerve system doesn’t used to the fast speed, you cannot run fast on a race day especially in middle distance races.

From 800m to full marathon, most your performance is determined by the maximal aerobic power output. And your maximal aerobic power output is almost correlated with your 3000m or 5000m race result.

So, basically if you can run 3000m or 5000m fast, you can run 800m fast and also half marathon or full marathon fast.

Roughly speaking, there is no exception.

However, even if you have good maximal aerobic power output, if your neuro-muscular system (Your brain, kinetic neuron, sensory neuron and muscle fibers) is not used to 60 seconds per 400m pace, you are not gonna run 1500m 3:45.

Also, although your moderate run pace is correlated with 3000m or 5000m race pace, if your neuro-musclar system is not used to fast speed, you are not gonna run 3000m or 5000m fast.

Again, the fact that your moderate run pace is very much correlated with 3000m or 5000m race performance does not change.

However, here’s my point.

My moderate run pace is 3:40/km and your moderate run pace 3:50/km and in this case, I am able to run faster at a 5000m race than you do usually. But I cannot say that I’m 100% sure.

If your neuro-muscular system is used to faster pace well than mine is, you are going to beat me. And it very often happens.

Or, just like Marius Bakken says, when both of us stand on the starting line, if my muscles are tighter than yours, I’m gonna lose.

On the other hand, aerobic resistance is very much important in longer races like in half marathon and full marathon.

Basically, if you are able to run 5000m fast, you are able to run fast in full marathon too.

However, very often your legs do not move well anymore after 30km. And many people say ‘Oh my gosh, glycogen is depleted’.

But how do you know that?

It could be that muscles glycogen is depleted.

But from my point of view, simply their muscles cannot resist the impact of hitting the ground anymore in many cases.

In a sense, one of the biggest goals of long runs is that your muscle resistance is not a limited factor for your marathon race performance.

But the fact is, many amateur runners miss out the importance of muscle resistance to the impact of hitting the ground and as a result, their marathon race time is much worse than their 5000m race result.

And the reason why the intensity and volume of long runs is important is because the total impact of hitting the ground is determined by how fast and how long you run.

Meaning, even if you run long, if the pace is too slow, your body does not get enough resistance for races.

While if you run enough fast, if the distance is too short, you will not get enough resistance for races.

And if you run too fast and long at the same time, your body can’t repeat it often and/or adapt to the training stimulus.

The golden zone is 30-40km at 80%-90% of your race pace.

For most people, the distance is more problem than the intensity because 80% of marathon race pace is pretty slow for most people. It’s easy to run faster than 80% of your marathon race pace.

So, basically increasing the distance of long runs gradually is one of the key factors of marathon preparation.

Also, many amateur runners underestimate how effective short interval is because very often they say ‘Short interval with relatively long recovery doesn’t increase VO2Max according to Dr. Jack Daniels’.

Well, first of all, it is not true. You can improve VO2 Max with short interval with relatively long recovery.

And second, you should think about your neuro-muscular system before you think about VO2 Max. No matter how good your VO2 Max is, if your neuro-muscular system is not used to using chop sticks, you cannot use chop sticks well, right?

Just like that, no matter how good your VO2 Max is, if your neuro muscular system is not used to the fast speed, you cannot run smoothly.

Very roughly speaking, there are only two factors from 800m to full marathon. Those are speed and endurance.

And you can train your endurance by doing moderate run, easy run and easy to moderate run. So, in speed workouts, you should train your speed first.

And later we try to combine speed and endurance to produce speed-endurance.

Very roughly speaking, this is the basic formula of training.

Thank you for your reading and I hope this information helps you a lot.

Lastly, if you want to learn more about how to run faster, please click here to download my free E-book ‘Three things you should know to get faster dramatically without any injuries and overtraining’.