If you glanced at the title of this article, you might have cringed. When it comes to
fitness, nutrition, weight loss, and overall health, many of us have trouble areas.
There are some individuals who have a glass of red wine with dinner every night.
Others skip the drinking completely on the weekdays, then start throwing a few
back on Thursday or Friday night, and keep it up until Sunday. Still others won’t
drink for two to three weeks, then have a weekend binge of a few dozen drinks or
so (you know who you are!). Finally, while there are scores of individuals out there
who don’t drink any alcohol at all and really won’t find this article personally

useful,
I encourage you (if you are one of those people) to read it anyways, and share the
information with someone you think it might help.

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It happens to most runners - that dreaded heart rate spike during what was supposed to be a long, slow effort. You’ve reigned in your speed, you’ve kept hydrated and cool, you’ve even switched your running tunes from raucous Van Halen to relaxing Mozart, just to keep that adrenaline rush at bay. But now your heart rate is racing and you ve strayed outside your recommended heart rate”zones” for your training session.

So what went wrong?

While running can do wonders for the cardiovascular system, it can also cause involved muscle groups to dramatically tighten. And this often includes vital inspiratory and expiratory muscles surrounding the ribcage, as well as the upper back, shoulders, and neck. So while a

tight or non-relaxed running posture might result in a trip to your massage therapist for a post-run rubdown, it will also invariably result in short and shallow breathing. To compound the problem, most runners have not been taught how to properly breathe in any activity, including running. In such a scenario, this “tight torso/shallow breathing” causes limited air intake and results in less oxygen availability for working muscles, which means the heart has to pump more of your subpar-oxgyenated blood at a faster rate in order for you to maintain your seemingly relaxed pace.

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When training for the bike leg of a triathlon, consistent stressing of the body’s lactate production mechanism is the key to achieving a faster race pace on the bike and a smoother transition from the bicycle to the run. If you don’t know too much about the lactate threshold, click here for a previous article on the topic. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to train at lactate threshold for long periods of time, such as the time required for completion of a 40K Olympic distance cycling time trial. This is because the body buffers lactic acid by combining lactic acid’s hydrogen ions with carbon dioxide (for subsequent transport in the bloodstream and removal as carbon dioxide at the lungs).

To blow off this CO2 and retain a physiologically normal blood pH, you must maintain a level of ventilation that can be quite difficult. In addition, that acidic burn just *hurts*!

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During triathlon training season, I perform this killer core routine after a forty-five minute series of anaerobic threshold hill climbing on the bike. But you can do it anytime, and receive huge benefits with a strong cross-over effect to triathlon: coordinated strength between the arms, legs and torso for the run, amplified hip power for the bike, and abdominal/low back endurance for the swim.

To focus on form, just perform this routine once the very first time you do it. Eventually, work up to three times through. The key to the routine is to maintain constant core tension by performing each repetition in a smooth and controlled manner. My favorite way to do this is a 3 count up,

3 count down for each rep. Do 10 reps of each exercise (per side for the single side exercises) before moving on to the next exercise with little to no rest.

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When training for the bike leg of a triathlon, consistent stressing of the body’s lactate production mechanism is the key to achieving a faster race pace on the bike and a smoother transition from the bicycle to the run. If you don’t know too much about the lactate threshold, click here for a previous article on the topic. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to train at lactate threshold for long periods of time, such as the time required for completion of a 40K Olympic distance cycling time trial. This is because the body buffers lactic acid by combining lactic acid’s hydrogen ions with carbon dioxide (for subsequent transport in the bloodstream and removal as carbon dioxide at the lungs).

To blow off this CO2 and retain a physiologically normal blood pH, you must maintain a level of ventilation that can be quite difficult. In addition, that acidic burn just *hurts*!

(more…)