Tonights Session - Why do we do Fast Reps.
The purpose of Fast Reps are to:
1 - Strengthen your heart
2 - Increase your anaerobic power
3 - To increase your speed.
4 - Improve your economy of running.
We are not looking to run at max pace, more like your 1500m pace, so the reps are 'fast' but not 'hard' as you will have enough recovery between reps to recover before your next run.
1 - Strengthen your heart
They strengthen your heart by increasing "stroke volume," which is the amount of blood that your heart pumps with each beat. The more blood per beat, the more oxygen you send by way of your bloodstream to your muscles.
However, the benefit occurs during the recovery interval, when returning blood creates an increase in pressure within your heart. This happens because your heart rate (the measure of the blood being pumped away from your heart) drops more quickly than the rate at which previously pumped blood returns to your heart—this stretches your heart chambers, which adapt by increasing in size, which in turn leads to an increase in stroke volume.
2 - Increase your anaerobic power
Short reps help build your anaerobic system, for the first part of a distance race, when you accelerate off the start line, your energy requirements increase immediately. Your
aerobic system can't increase its energy output as quickly. That's because you can't increase aerobic energy production until your lungs, heart, and bloodstream deliver a larger supply of oxygen to your muscles, this process that takes about 30–40 seconds. Until that point, you rely on anaerobic energy (energy produced within your muscles without using oxygen) to pick up the energy slack. Short reps combined with longer recovery intervals allow you to practice this 30–40-second anaerobic energy burn multiple times.
Thes reps help you get better at producing anaerobic energy, and you get better at buffering the fatigue-producing by-products that accompany it. You'll be able to charge off the start line without fear of running short of energy in the first quarter-mile or staggering to the mile mark when the by-products of un-buffered anaerobic energy production begin shutting down your muscles.remember the hydrogen ions!
3 - To increase your speed.
These short reps also recruit 100% of your available intermediate muscle fibres and about 80% of your fast-twitch fibres. This allows you to strengthen fibres that don't get used during either distance runs or longer repetitions, but which will be recruited in a 5K race.
The result is improved leg speed when you need it most longer distance races.
Good luck and enjoy tonights set!
Arete Coaching Run Session Thursday 1st
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