FEATURES

Understanding the Human Energy System...

Saturday, 15 April 2017 23:10

By Mark Turner (teamusa.org)

ATP, ATP-PC, ADP, Krebs, glycolysis, phosphorylation, ATPase, lactic acid, lactate, pyruvate. All of these and more are important biological and scientific terms and descriptions that underlie endurance training protocols. However, they and the processes they describe can make the average age-group athlete's head spin. So what is actually necessary for endurance athletes to understand about how the human energy system works?

Very few of the athletes I coach want me to get so detailed in my discussions with them about their training that I start to sound like their high school biology teacher more than their coach. That being said, a basic understanding of the human energy system, or more accurately, the three energy pathways of the human body does help in explaining such simple ideas as: Why easy days should be easy or why low heart rate aerobic sessions are just as important as key higher intensity workouts....

The concepts that I want my athletes to grasp are simple. First, I want them to grasp the basic difference between aerobic and anaerobic work. Then within the anaerobic energy pathways I want them to distinguish between the glycolytic and phosphagenic systems. While the average age-group triathlete does not need to have a full grasp of the chemical formulas that accurately describe what is occurring, they do benefit greatly from a better understanding of the role of two key players: carbohydrates, or more simply sugar and lactic acid, or more correctly lactate. Athletes also benefit greatly from understanding some basic math in the following form: 9 is greater than 4. Why is this important? Because most age-group athletes are unaware that both 1 gram of carbohydrate and 1 gram of protein have 4 calories each while fat has 9 calories per gram.  READ MORE