Endurance & anaerobic metabolic systems
If you want to categorize the term endurance, you can do so based on time. I also assign the energy supply to the time intervals, i.e. which metabolic systems are primarily responsible for endurance. This is important to know if you want to train and eat specifically!
Very short or very long exertions are almost exclusively anaerobic or aerobic. For all non-Latins and non-Greeks : aero means air and in this case oxygen. Anaerobic means the cycle of energy provision without oxygen, aerobic with oxygen consumption.
The anaerobic energy supply always involves a strong load, otherwise this type of metabolism would not even start. We differentiate between two major systems: the creatine phosphate cycle for super short exertions (e.g. maximum starts, single repetitions) and the lactic acid-forming carbohydrate cycle (e.g. short sprints under a minute). The latter is technically called lactic glucose degradation or lactic glycolysis.
Now we will soon know what it means when athletes write: “The lactate shot into my legs!” 🙂
So remember for hard, short loads:
- Creatine phosphate stores only last a very, very short time; then the lactic acid glycolysis starts as a motor; initially both systems work in parallel
- lactic acid glycolysis works until the lactic ACID has changed the cell climate so much that the power plants of our muscles can no longer work at this level; performance drops and a different metabolic cycle inevitably starts, which initially runs in parallel again
- Lactate is broken down again with less stress or during regeneration, BUT
- If we push ourselves to our limits, so much lactate is produced that at some point we actually have to stop exercising because then no other metabolism will work
- Lactate tolerance can be increased through training sessions with maximum loads and a targeted diet
You often hear that anaerobic glycolysis always comes into play when there is not enough oxygen in the bloodstream during exercise. That would mean that we are suffering from a lack of oxygen!!! However, insufficient oxygen saturation in the blood is more likely to lead to dizziness and fainting than to anaerobic glycolysis!!!
It's more like this when we want to achieve great performance in the sense of short, hard stress:
- anaerobic glycolysis starts
- The organism has to work so quickly that there is no time to metabolize oxygen , because this is a slow process.
For me it's time to GET A AIR 😉 . In the next article I will introduce you to the aerobic metabolic systems and how we should train in winter...
Ps: The front image comes from the ZWIFT training platform - training on the roller becomes a simulated bike ride on the screen 😉
