Most people assume that MAS is a singular session or a couple of sessions, which it absolutely isn't. Look, it is maximum aerobic speed is an intensity measure. So the concept, so maximum aerobic speed, it stems from the original research done in velocity, looking at velocity of VO2 in actually with middle distance runners. Welcome to the PASY Performance Podcast. The podcast that dives into the philosophies, ideas and practices of some of the best practitioners in high performance spot. This episode of the PASY Performance Podcast sees me speaking to Nathan Heaney, who is the Conditioning Consultant. He recently wrote an article on Sports Myth, which went down an absolute dream on maximum aerobic speed, MAS, versus tempo training. The pros and cons for both, when he uses either why he uses one over the other, at what points in time, etc. etc. So it is this that framed this conversation, and we dive into the nuances of that article. So what is MAS? What are the misconceptions around MAS? How can we use it to individualize conditioning for team sports? How is it best done? Then we have a little chat around tempo training. What actually is tempo training when people talk about it? Where's the influence come from for tempo training? What are the positives? What are the negatives? And where does Nathan sit when it comes to both these modalities for developing aerobic capacity in team spot athletes? So if you're interested in increasing your, or improving the conditioning elements of your program with your athletes, take a listen to the next hour. It's an absolutely fantastic episode. This episode of the PASY Performance Podcast is sponsored by Play. Play is the leader in high performance, athletic flooring and strength equipment globally. So with offices in the US, Australia and the UK, Play provides an end to end experience by collaborating with organizations through their own proprietary formula to create world class environments for coaches and athletes. Play's achieved 18mm rubber and attack turf have been the cornerstone of elite training facilities for now over a decade with the addition of the new icon X Rack Range. Play once again set to elevate the industry. On the 23rd of April 2022, Play will be hosting their first UK lab of the year in collaboration with Love for University. Play will be joined by some exceptional speakers from elite sport industry and academia with a huge breadth of knowledge experience. Listeners and supporters of PASY Performance Podcast are able to obtain an exclusive 20% discount using the code sports mid-20, when registering at playercademy.com/play-labs-lofbra. And this episode is also sponsored by Hocking Dynamics. Hocking Dynamics is the world's first wireless force plate testing system. The Hocking Dynamics system is built for coaches to test in the real world, not just in the lab. Capture reliable data on all your athletes in a matter of minutes and monitor their progress in the cloud from anywhere in the world. The Hocking Dynamics force plates are wireless, portable and trusted by teams at every level of sport. Integrating force plates into your athlete monitoring program has never been easier or more affordable. If you want to see the Hocking Dynamics force plate system in action, head over to their website HockingDynamics.com to schedule a demo or for them on Twitter at HockingDynamics. So without further ado, over to the episode with Nathan. Nathan Haney, welcome to the PASY Performance Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you. Thanks for having me, Rob. We're looking forward to the chat today. My pleasure. Like I've done this, remember I've got been a common theme over the last few months. People write an article. It goes down really well. We get lots of discussion and then think how good this be as a podcast and build it out. So this is probably the third or fourth I've done like this. So it's firstly, thank you for writing the article. And secondly, thank you for following up with the podcast. But if anyone doesn't know who you are, Nathan, would you mind just giving it a bit of a run through of your back, brief background. And then we'll dive into the MIS tempo conditioning stuff. No problems. So pretty conventional introduction into sports science and strengthening conditioning. So much to my, my family's disbelief. I went down the path of sport and S&C over accounting, which is what they were pushing me to do. But I'm certainly glad I did. And I guess as part of my introduction into the area, I just studied at a university in Melbourne. But I think one thing that was quite pivotal for me during during that process was I had a really influential lecturer who sort of engaged me to do subsequent subsequent study. So it was a directed study and then a subsequent honest thesis. And it was during that honest thesis phase. So it was a pretty intense year of learning. And probably when I reflect on it, my absolutely my steepest learning curve throughout my career, my S&C journey. And that honest thesis was conditioning related. So it was investigating the efficacy of using the YoYo IO1 test to assess aerobic fitness and determine MAS. And I guess this was underpinned by when I was a, I guess alongside this, I was completing an internship at the Victorian Institute of Sport. And I was looking at the conditioning application across a myriad of different sports. And I was sort of looking at it going, I think there's probably a better way to do this. Like I wasn't that impressed with what was being implemented. And that sort of led me down this, you know, this journey, I guess, of conditioning application, which now has been sort of 12 or 13 years, 13 years, I guess in the making. So that kind of started me off on the conditioning related journey. And I always had a passion for team sport. And obviously I grew up playing a lot of it. And in Australia, our big sports are certainly team sport orientated. So I always thought in the back of my mind, I thought if I, you know, given conditioning is a little bit underappreciated. And I sort of recognised that as a very young and impressionable S&C coach at the time. I thought, well, if I make it, I guess a bit of a niche of knowledge, it might make me more employable. And certainly it has helped in certain roles over the journey as well. So beyond that, I guess when I reflect on the start of my career, obviously that the study was one aspect to it. But my actual working career started at the Victorian Institute of Sport. So I was there for nine years. And I worked across a multitude of different sports. That was an awesome foundation for me because unlike a football club or rugby club here in Australia, you actually are responsible for almost every facet of their S&C and sports science program. So the fact that you've got that type of exposure, it sort of enables you to refine your skills and improve your knowledge. But also it gives you really good context as to what areas you actually really enjoy and what you're passionate about. So I thought that was a terrific grounding for me. At the back end of my tenure there, I certainly had always harbored an aspiration to work in football. So for us, it's Australian rules football. And interestingly, over the journey, whilst I was at the VIA, so I applied for a few jobs at different AFL clubs and got knocked back, citing a lack of AFL experience. Eventually, I got some sort of more sub-a-lead football experience and then happened to secure a role within the AFL Elite Junior Pathway, which is, I guess, a bit of a unique setting here. So I worked there for nine months and then for tutorsly for me, from there I went to work as strengthy and in-efficient coordinator at the Adelaide course for three seasons as well. So that was up until about 2019 and then sort of life changed. So I was our first kid and my wife and I both made the decision to relocate back to Melbourne. And in doing so, I secured the head of athlete development and performance role at Xavier College, which is where I am now. And that's been an amazing experience. I've loved it. It's obviously very different to the preceding role at the Cros. But I'm really lucky that I've landed at a school that is one of Australia's leading private schools, which has a really, really strong sporting pedigree. And has a, and provides a cell phone, I guess, the production of elite sportsmen that span, you know, the school is 140 years in age. So I'm really fortunate that I've landed there. And then I guess the last point on sort of who I am, I guess the, in 2020, Melbourne was in the groups of one of many COVID lockdowns. And with the encouragement of my wife, I started the conditioning consultant business. So for me, that was absolutely outside of my comfort zone. I'd always been very much low to go down the social media route. Like I just didn't feel comfortable. I didn't feel overly comfortable with self-promotion, I guess. But after some prompting for Kara, we decided to do it. And I'm incredibly glad that I have. And I know I hated her advice because.
I guess fundamentally there is a really really big gap between people's conditioning and strength training knowledge like that is absolutely apparent and for me I've been lucky enough to lecture at the Australian Strength Initiative courses so the level one and level two courses for over 10 years so I'm seeing younger aspirational, impressionable SNC coaches all the time so I've seen tens of thousands of them over that period and it is very very obvious that this is the case. So for me the conditioning consultant business was about providing a better platform for education for young SNC coaches and sports scientists and athletes and coaches so I think it's certainly proven really successful the engagement with the content has been great and whilst again it is probably niche in the sense that SNC is a really broad area and some people sort of play conditioning scant regard the people that are interested in it and invested in that area have you know from what they've told me have got a lot out of the content so long winded, Rob but that's that's that's me. That's great and that's why you're here today mate because I think it is a huge gap. It was a huge gap for me it is a huge gap for me it's a huge gap for the 95% of strength and conditioning coaches out there because the big focus is on the S rather than the C of strength and conditioning and I'm in the midst of that 2019 Nathan questioning what's going on with it with the first ball and thinking what am I going to do I'm in the midst of that now so I definitely relate to that but I think one the best place to start just jumping off the back of that kind of final point of it been lower down the list in terms of that the priorities for education with strength and conditioning is to outline the importance of aerobic conditioning as a as a modality and as a requirement for team sport athletes I think that needs clarifying I think that's still surfaces every now and again with the different types of training I think so I think that is pretty the best place to start is okay absolutely fine so it is pretty obvious and very clear that aerobic fitness is important for the vast you know the vast majority of team sports however it is worth noting that it's importance and emphasis within an SNC program does depend on the game and the competition demands of each sport so that's obviously something you've got to understand before you go down the process of devising and implementing a conditioning program so when I break it down and I think of sports that have certainly a high running requirement and of which I think of Australian rules there's a whole host of you know Irish sports that have a big running load even sports like both rugby codes definitely soccer hockey all those sports they do have a really significant aerobic fitness requirement so when I sort of look at breaking down the benefit or the importance of aerobic fitness for team sports there's a few layers to it so I'll sort of work through them so the first one for me it it absolutely influences or positively influences high intensity running and sprinting and what I mean by that is there's really good research to show that at that the ability to recover from high intensity actions which then has a positive impact on your your ability to perform high intensity running that in turn positive impacts impacts coaches ratings and perceptions of player performance so there's some really good studies that have shown that it increases an athlete's ability to get to contests and as such their level of their a level of involvement in the game is improved so if you're not getting near the contest or near the ball you can't you can't have an impact on the game so that's a really clear one for those people that are afraid with GPS utilization work rates are really common measure so aerobic fitness is very positively associated with work rate so meaning as aerobic fitness improves your work rate capacity improves so and and work rate is used to describe intensity and or effort for for team sport groups so then we when we break down work rate a little bit higher work rate is associated with increased game involvement then that leads to increased number of disposal so that's particularly relevant for Australian rules football and then the other thing that's worth noting on work rate is for a whole host of different sports work rate depends on the positions within the sports all the teams all the all the all the groups so for example in when we look at Australian rules football midfielders which are sort of the guys that were congregate around the ball a lot they often have the highest work rate and unsurprisingly they have the highest aerobic fitness requirement so again once you break down and analyse the actual sport you can start to work out well which positions and or sports have a have a much greater aerobic fitness requirement and that's obviously really really important Dan Baker and I put together a paper back in 2015 looking at normative MAS values across a multitude of different sports so it was clear based on that paper that the measure is valid and reliable for for for for it's use in terms of training prescription but then also ascertaining and determining what the normative values are for sports both at the elite level but then also when we work back and start to go well what are the aerobic fitness requirements for an under 16 footballer under 18 footballer under 21 footballer and what are the expectations for certain positions when you get to the elite level so provided that provides practitioners and coaches with a really clear framework across both female and male sports in terms of what they should and how they should approach their aerobic conditioning when they're working with sports so that I think that's a pretty good summary the only one I've probably haven't touched on enough is it's important for recovery so recover this is probably largely misunderstood so think of recovery as too fast too fast it's so the first one is improved recovery within training sessions and games so if you imagine you were tracking someone's oxygen consumption or heart rate in a training session once they've ceased a training drill how quickly can they recover from that drill or conversely they're in a game their ability to transition and get involved in the game and then there's a lowling play how quickly can they recover from those high intensity actions which then enable them to perform the next action so that's really really important and then the one that's again probably not understood well enough and not emphasised enough is improved recovery between training sessions and games so for me I regard that as like a big that those if you don't have adequate aerobic fitness or you're not adept aerobically the cumulative effect of being unfit or not as aerobically fit as you need to be has a massive impact when you think about the course of a preseason or an entire in season period when when it is shown and Tanya Gallow based out of North Melbourne footy club a few years ago did a great paper that showed for every second there was a decrease in 2k time so meaning sorry a slower 2k time so they'll less fit there was a subsequent increase in session rpa so that would just compound over the course of whatever the season is preseason in season so I think that there are a few layers to how I think about why aerobic fitness is important for team sport athletes. Was that Tanya Gallow? Yes, perfect, perfect I'll write it down. So why do you think aerobic training has got the bashing or contemporary to continue to get the bashing that it does do you think it's the kind of long slow running that people generally associate with this type of training? Yeah I think that's spot on Rob I think it's I think it is underpinned by a couple of factors so one aerobic I guess aerobic training is probably synonymous with endurance athletes for starters so and that makes sense you know that the training a lot of the research that I've based my I guess my work of does stem from middle distance research but the beauty and the challenge for practitioner is to work out how to adapt good research and filter it into your environment and that's what I've done with I guess the my approach to team sport athletes I have used this a lot with endurance athletes and it works incredibly well as well but I think I guess to back to the original question was it is synonymous with I guess endurance athletes and then the unsurprising because they are physiologically based athletes and they need to have elite aerobic fitness to compete so then people associate that with continuous running or really long intervals that type of work and then people go well that doesn't suit my group of netballers or or rugby athletes so we don't need it we don't need it and that's when I guess people tend to revert to other methods which we'll talk about a little bit later so I think that's that's probably one of the key factors and then I think it's it is largely underpinned by what we alluded to initially there's just a misunderstanding of aerobic conditioning so people are the uninterested they pay its scant attention certainly scant attention in regard to how much investment they will put in for their strength training program so then those the combination of those two things means that people go well you know aerobic we don't need it I'll just do some tempo runs or I'll do some fart leg runs and that's good enough like that's all we need so there's just I guess a much I guess much less emphasis and much less care I would say placed on it in some circles cool right we're going to dive into the the meat of the conversation which is much more aerobic speed to ABS and tempo running and that was like I said right at the start was the basis of your article very balanced view with a nice little well lots of takeaways at the end so Suddenly the best part is. to start again maybe quosh some misconceptions around this but what is MIS and probably even more importantly what isn't MIS based on the misconceptions that I've mentioned? Yep and this is such a key point because I've been involved in the occasional Twitter spat with with with other coaches and practitioners and generally most people assume that MIS is a singular session or a couple of sessions which it absolutely isn't. Look it is maximum aerobic speed is an intensity measure so the the the concept so maximum aerobic speed it stems from the original research done in velocity in the looking at velocity of zero to max within with middle distance runners so that's you know that's the gold standard measure but clearly the application of velocity of your to max is limited in a team sports setting because there's a whole host of the issues with it you don't have a you don't have access to a lab it's expensive it's onerous it's time there's lots of time constraints blah blah those things mean that the concept maximum aerobic speed is introduced and hence why it's been used so well across certain sectors so when we think about maximum aerobic speed and it's and it's major benefit I guess we can break it down into a few steps so the first step is the identification of what test provides you with the most valid and reliable MIS measure but alongside that we're also looking at determining and assessing aerobic fitness so that's that's almost like first step that you've got to do from there once we've conducted the test we had determining maximum aerobic speed so the nuance behind that does depend on the test you use but again that's beyond the scope of today's podcast we're then user to prescribe training effectively and then we then the beauty of this method and model because it is so objective is you can really really stringently analyse your sessions so for example I'll often look at what I've prescribed how the athletes have performed the session and go okay how accurate was my prescription what wriggle room do I have what progressions can I make beyond this session so it's a really clear and provides me with a really clear and objective overview of I've had or approached the training so I think that's the that's probably one of the I guess the key differentiators which is really misunderstood it is not a session is is an intensity measure used to prescribe objective conditioning and I think the one thing I mean you may mention this there's tools out there that'll help practitioners use that intensity measure to go what kind of adaptation do I want and how do I how how far above that do I go how far below that do I go and there's like I say tools out there that can help that prescription side as well absolutely absolutely and I think that's where when we think about the actual hip prescription that it is for some people it is very overwhelming like and that's feedback I've got from a lot of people like that they'll get to writing a strength program and they it's sort of they they know exactly what to do their it's second nature to them they understand the the training variables that they've got to manipulate when it comes to conditioning prescription a lot of people get to it and go the sort of left scratching head going off I don't really know what to do and especially when you throw for what people perceive initially is at a complexity with the introduction of maximum aerobic speed they are sort of left a little bit wanting and don't really understand so absolutely there's a multitude of different tools available so if we think about the you know that first step of the process which is determining an accurate maximum aerobic speed value depending on the test you use there's a multitude of different regression equations available which help irrespective of the test you use help you to a list set and ascertain the most accurate MAS possible within the constraints of your environment and then from there you can be much more confident with your prescription so I think the the the I guess the major point behind that is I completely acknowledge that in some settings and I've been involved in these myself even though you're the expert in the area you don't always get the final say on the test use for fitness testing you know some sports have a there's a particular cultural significance with a certain test so they're low to change it so as such it might be a deep test or a time trial variation there there are equations available which help tidy up the determination of MAS which you need to do first and foremost before you even bother prescribing training using MAS excellent and you mentioned in the article about Eurofit and one of the downbakers articles that maybe got taken out context and misunderstood would you mind just explaining that for us so I think people will have heard of that and a lot of people will have read the article however many years ago it was yeah and then again I hope my article didn't come across being critical of then it was a great article on a terrific overview of maximal aerobic speed and how it can be used I think what happened though which is through a no-fold of dance people said because we eroded in such a way that it was really simple to follow which was which was the white I got why gained so much traction most people thought well I like this concept I'm just going to implement it as he's written it so really all they did was go okay maximal aerobic speed I'm going to implement it and it's two different types of sessions it's either the Eurofit method or the all the work with active recovery method which is 170 the rectangle so from I've had countless people come up and say to me that they are prescribing M.A.S. and it is just one of those two sessions but more often than not it is the Eurofit method so and I think this is where some of the I guess the misunderstanding around its use I think this is where a lot of it stems from because if you approach it like that you have done maximal aerobic speed the concept and the training tool a massive disservice so I often see people that have really strong track and field backgrounds they're often very anti M.A.S. and that's fine like everyone can have their own bias and their own approach and training philosophy but largely for most of them it's underpinned by this I guess this sort of misunderstanding so I think that's that's that's a really key point and then I think the other point that is that is worth highlighting is there's two trains of thought from people too they either think the method or the concept is either way too fatiguing or not fatiguing enough which again highlights the lack of understanding of it as a concept because the beauty of M.A.S. much like when you prescribe using a percentage of RM or when you use velocity for strength training you can change it you know if you if you want to reduce the intensity of a session reduce it by two and a half percent reduce it by five percent you've gone from a high intensity stimulus to a moderate intensity and that might be suffice so again whenever I hear those arguments it's it's clear for me alarm bells go off and I think well they just don't understand the concept and I think the probably the starkest example I can provide and this comes up a lot when I conduct those ASC A courses and also when I've conducted a lot of consultancy through TCC I often see practitioners try and implement M.A.S. but have very limited practical experience doing it so it's great that they're trying but they'll prescribe a session with a 10% M.A.S. range so like that completely defeats the purpose of the prescription because the whole point of prescribing objective conditioning is that it is accurate and effective so that would be akin to prescribing strength training with a 10% RM differential which people would never do so again those like those layers of of misconception just permeate the industry so I think hopefully you know by virtue of some of these articles and I guess platforms such as TCC there's obviously a few others out there that also provide really good reputable conditioning related information but hopefully we can slowly change the perception that around M.A.S. and its application not saying that it's the only way to do things I absolutely that's not the case and I'll talk about how I've used tempo later in the podcast and it's an awesome tool to use it just has some limitations when we talk about aerobic fitness adaptation would you mind giving people a little bit of a guideline or maybe guidelines of how we can use percentage of M.A.S. to hit different physical adaptations yeah I think yeah that's a good question so I think probably the easiest way to break it down is if we break session types down so if we think about long interval for example so think anywhere from one to four minutes I'm not going to go into the thresholdy type intervals because again I don't think it it'll sort of resonate that strongly with your audience but if we think of started with long interval as a as a as the first interval type think of one to four minutes generally the range there is 90 2 and a half percent M.A.S. all the way through to 100% so you've got sort of a seven and a half percent M.A.S. range that caters for three to four minutes differential so that gives people a bit of a guide as to the nuance and then when we start looking at short interval this is where it does get a lot more complex because there's I guess a couple of layers to it so if we think about shorter aerobic interval we're looking at sort of
two to one, three to one, work to rest ratios with this type of approach. And by virtue of that, we are looking at an MAS range of about 97.5 all the way through to 105 at the top end 110. But that's that's very rare. And then once we move beyond one 10% MAS, we start transitioning into something entirely different. That is called short super maximal high intensity interval training. And that's when we're looking at prescribing above one 10% MAS. And then once we do that, we then introduce another concept entirely, which I use a lot. And I've, you know, I've recorded a webinar on VOT for TCCC. And that is obviously anaerobic speed reserve. And I guess the main rationale for that is if I reflect back on my time at the VIS. So probably about 10 years ago now, I was doing exactly what I've sort of spoken to you about. And I've been, I was prescribing some short super maximal hit with a hockey group. And I'd sort of worked through sequentially using a relatively linear periodization model with the conditioning, got to this conditioning type. And I sort of was watching, I was running the sessions. And I was noticing that there was lots of shuffling. I was having a shuffle players up and down groups a lot, much more than any other session. So I was sort of scratching my head thinking, why am I doing like, why am I having to do these? This is sort of unlike me, I don't have to change it too much. I kind of, I feel like I'm pretty confident with my prescription. Anyway, I sort of got on to the ASR concept, which really at that point in time, there was a scarcity of available research on. So this was back in 2013. And there was, it being used a little bit for performance prediction by, I guess a few track and field groups. And then mountain be shared had looked at a little bit more, but more through tolerance to high intensity interval training. So then I looked at it for the purpose of guiding super maximal hit prescription. And I found that despite, when you, you know, despite looking at, if you looked at the average distances for the group, they were basically, there was no difference. But one thing that became really apparent when I implemented the ASR concept with this type of conditioning is that it resulted in a much more consistent stimulus. So what I mean by that is for players that were identified as fast or slow, this concept accounted for that much better. So for example, the faster athletes definitely were, you know, they were forced to run more distance in the, in those specific repetitions and those sessions. And then conversely, the slower athletes were forced to run less distance. And once I implemented that approach, and I've, you know, written a paper on it, the stimulus I was imposing was much more consistent. And I wasn't having to shuffle the players around all the time. So I found like that was an awesome avenue for me to use. And since then, I've, you know, whenever I've gone into this phase of all this type of conditioning prescription, it is my go to I would never prescribe using just the percentage of MAS for that type of conditioning. So very long we did answer Rob, sorry, to your original question. But it gives us, I guess we're sort of broken down the sort of the main conditioning types that people would use for MAS. And then obviously there's, there's one that I've kind of left out. And that is the short anaerobic super maximal work or otherwise known as speed endurance work or tempo work. And again, there's a few different avenues for that. But I guess we'll, we can cover that a little bit later in the podcast. Absolutely. I had Phil Scott, who's England cricket SNC coach, and he came on a couple of weeks ago and outlined his use of anaerobic speed reserve with England cricket with really good results. So you guys should definitely, definitely talk on that. But it seems to be getting some traction. Maybe a lot different from the environment that it was in 2013 than anaerobic speed reserve. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's, I think it's, there's a couple of layers to I guess I, Garith Sanford obviously did some great work. And I remember back in about 25th and I caught up with him in Melbourne for coffee to chat exactly this concept. So he, I guess I, you know, he sort of saw the original work that I did and he's absolutely expanded upon it immensely, which is, which is awesome to see. And he's taken it. And absolutely another level. And he's looked at it with, with elite in like middle distance runners, which is awesome to see. And then obviously he then introduced that speed reserve ratio concept, which I think definitely has a lot of value. I guess the complexity around that is obviously you're sort of self selecting your, your ratios. But that's fine. I think it's, I've kind of looked at it. I've done that for a few of the squads I've worked with. And absolutely, I think there's, there's real benefit in going through that process where you sort of differentiate between more aerobically dominant, dominant athletes versus more anaerobic athletes. And then, you know, as per that original research I did, you have a big cluster in the middle where you can sort of throw quite a few different options at them and they'll, they'll respond accordingly and, and, and tolerate, tolerate a wide variety of training really, really well. So yeah, it's, um, it's certainly more popular. And I think, um, and I think it's, you know, with good reason, I think it's, it has really good effect and can be used across a wide variety of training types that are often used with, with, with a wide variety of team sports. So the second half of this podcast, we have a chat around tempo training. What it is, what adaptations we can get from tempo training, how it compares to using M.A.S. for aerobic development. So a fantastic part to coming up with Nathan. This episode of the Pacey Performance podcast is sponsored by Kitman Labs. Kitman Labs is sports first technology company to offer a complete solution that includes innovative analytics and advanced athlete management platform that is supported by a team of sports, technology and data science experts with over 200 years experience. Kitman Labs is leading the evolution of sports performance, partnering with over 150 elite teams across the NFL, NHL, MLB, AFL, EPL and championship rugby. Through advanced statistical analysis, rigorous scientific research and unparalleled industry experience, they've architected the world's only analytics platform that helps sports teams to truly harness their data and uncover the influences behind performance, optimization and injury risk. 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[email protected] to find out how Hydro BFR can give your athletes a competitive edge. And now back to the episode with Nathan. So for the next 20-ish minutes, we're going to dive into the murky area of tempo training, tempo running, about a first one to ask you to just clarify, because there's a lot of, we seem to talk a lot about misconceptions, a lot of misconceptions around what tempo training actually is. It was something I spoke to Gareth about when he came on and did a two-part podcast on an aerobic speed reserve and condition as a whole. When people read, team sport coaches talking about tempo running, tempo training, what do they actually mean? Yeah, so it's a good question. And I would say so, by and large, they are people are referring to the traditional track and field distances that would be used. So think of 100 metres, 150 is 200 is 250 is around, but most commonly, they sort of sit between 102 metres, 102 metres rather. And they are, I guess what I would describe as controlled rhythm-focused high-speed runs that are completed over those distances. So probably one of the, I guess one of the key points that I often see with their application is that they are relatively subjective with their prescription. So meaning there's not a little, not a lot of differentiation or adjustment in speed that people should run based on their speed profile. So when we're at the cross, we use these a lot and we use them through, I guess we use them for two, I guess, supposed benefits. So the first was exactly what I've discussed. When the guys were warming up, we wanted to induce a controlled high-speed run to at least at controlled high-speed running. So to tick off our certain GPS metrics, but then also allow them to work on rhythm and control and coordination in an un-fatee state. So that was really important. One of the key aspects there was we would tailor their, say it was 150's, we would tailor the target time based off groupings of max speed. So it makes sense if someone's got a
someone's got a max speed of 36, they should obviously be doing the 150 at 70% or 75%, much faster than someone with a max speed of 30. So for me, that was one of the key issues I identified with tempo running application. The secondary use we used was, and I touched on this in the article, was when we think about, so there's quite a few sports where high-speed running is obviously fundamentally important, both from a performance but also injury mitigation standpoint. So for us, when we had some of our key training sessions in our specific preparation phase, we would have key high-speed running metrics that certain players have to meet, and that was based off the individual high-speed running profile. So let's just call it 500 meters for the sake of this podcast. So let's say at the end of the training session, a certain player, whilst our targeting 500 only reached 300, there was a deficit of 200 meters that we met with what we called short anaerobic super maximal hit. And that's where I prescribed like an example would be 3090s, so 1 to 3 worked to rest at mass plus ASR, and we basically did the number of reps required to bridge the gap. And it was tailored, so there was five different groups based on mass plus ASR rankings, meaning those that had high aerobic fitness and high ASR, they were obviously running the furthest all the way down to our some of our slowest athletes. And the benefit of that model was, it incentivized trying to tick off their high-speed running in training because there was definitely capacity to do that. So not every athlete had to do this. There might have been a subsection of like 10 or 15 who either had very lofty high intensity running bands or targets and/or athletes that just struggled to complete their training with the adequate intensity for a whole host of different reasons. And some of it might have been positioned. So that's kind of how we used the, I guess, that in a in a practical setting across two different prescription methods, one using percentage of max speed, where we have a more favorable, a much more favorable rest to work ratio. And then when we start to refine that and bring it back to a one to three, where your ability to recover from those efforts becomes more important, that's when I use mass plus ASR because I think the inclusion of your aerobic fitness is important because that fundamentally underpins how you recover from those efforts. And that was really, really apparent when we ran these sessions. From your experience and talk into practitioners probably across the world, is there a common thread of people not individualising and not been objective on the prescription of tempo and it's more subjective and athlete self-selected? In short, yes, I think that's absolutely the case. And that for me, that was probably one of my biggest gripes with its application was coming from quite an objective and I guess an analytical conditioning approach when I was, in some cases I sort of was almost forced to use this method a little bit. And I was happy to trial it and use it and again, I definitely said the benefit in it when used at the right time and prescribed in the right manner. But by and large, what I was seeing was a very subjective approach which then led to a very inconsistent stimulus. And then what I was seeing was really, really fast athletes that would benefit immensely from this work, they were having to do 150s in 23 seconds. Hardly challenging for them works out to be about 60% of their max speed. Whereas fast slower athletes were then trying to run with these guys and really stretching themselves. So there was a real disconnect in application. So I think the advent of really accessible GPS technology now and there's been good research that shows you don't need timing gates or you don't need to conduct spring testing to determine accurate max speed values for 10 sport groups provided you spread them quite regularly. So weekly, if you do that, then you can use the GPS data, the max speed data you get from your GPS through training and games to then just easily categorize the groups. And we did that really successfully. I do that currently at Xavier. So again, that's a junior program, but that's the type of approach we take. So if it's good enough for me to run there, I think it's absolutely good enough for elite sporting clubs to use. For those post training top-ups that you mentioned with the example of the 500-day and the actual 300, how many groups would you have, how many groups would you split the bigger group into to make it as individualized as possible without being overwhelming? Yeah, that's a really good question because that's where some people, I think, when they test and then determine MAS, whether it's mass only or mass plus ASR, that does bamboozle them. They're like, well, where do I start? How do I group them? So there's a few layers to that, but this to this specific question, we across a group of 45, we had five groups. So and that was probably enough, we could have stretched it to a sixth, and meaning we probably would have had one that was more frontended, so an even faster group. But in the end, we probably didn't need it because those guys were often hitting their targets. So it probably didn't warrant the inclusion of the sixth group. So yeah, five groups, and what we found was it was incredibly accurate. So we had in the 3090s, we probably had almost like a 50 or 60-meter differential between fastest and slowest group for the 30s. But the perceived exertion for those efforts was so similar, and it was because they were similar, like they were in terms of their mass plus ASR capacity, they were really evenly matched. So just meant that the guys at the front had the desirable combination of good aerobic fitness and high ASR, whereas guys at the end, they could have been really effective footballers for us, but they played different positions and they didn't have the same speed profile. So I think it was, I think it was a really good method, and again, it was something that we, when I was at the cross, we sort of conducted a few internal reviews, and this was a method we implemented off the back of one of them, and I thought we implemented it with really good success. Do you think with the influence of track and fields and sprint groups across the world that will see more team spot coaches look to the tempo type running as a way of conditioning? Is that something you see in or not? Yeah, yeah, I think there's definitely a bias in those, I guess people that, or practitioners that come from that background and or are mentored by people that have come from that background. You absolutely see it. Oh, right from Cisbook Nathan. Yes, yes, or all that. So, I guess it's, so absolutely, you do say that, and I think that's fine, but I think it's just acknowledging what the limitations of that approach are. So I think it's, as I alluded to in the article, it's not the panacea for conditioning development or physical development. It is, it's a great training tool to use at the appropriate time when you're seeking a specific adaptation. And unfortunately, again, I think one thing I really want to touch on here is when we think about adaptations for tempo running, I think there is a misconception that it is this panacea. So when we think about trying to use it for improving aerobic fitness, I think one thing that's really worth highlighting is that when we compare novice athletes versus intermediate and then advanced or elite, there's a big difference in window of adaptation. So what I remember that is you could run tempo runs for novices and they probably will get a pretty decent aerobic fitness improvement, but they'll improve, they'll improve from anything. It's not until you get to the higher end or an athlete with a much more, much more extensive training background and we are trying to eke out much smaller gains to help them achieve their goals and improve their performances, that type of work does not improve aerobic fitness anymore. When you look at the plethora of available research on aerobic fitness adaptation, it can't improve it because I want to fall work to rest ratio has never been shown in the research to improve aerobic fitness markedly and over a long period of time. So certainly those, there's some of the research that shows, for individuals work, but again, you've got a question, you've got to look, question the group, the training status of the group that they're using to approach with. So once you double be deeper into that, they're often, as I'm a looting to, novice or untrained athletes. So again, it goes back to the point that they'll improve from anything. But if we think about tempo for eliciting anaerobic adaptation, it's awesome. I just think it can be refined by a few different avenues and I sort of, the way I benchmark it is if the work to rest ratios one to two or one to three, I'll use mass plus ASR. When we go one to four and beyond, I think percentage of max speed is perfect. So I think for most people, that is pretty easy to do, even if you don't have max speed data, after you've conducted a series of flies over the course of a four-week period, it's pretty obvious who's fast, who's slow, who's average. So then it can be as simple as your 150s, what's your target time for the
the fast group, what is what's your target time for the average group, what's your target time for the slow group, they shouldn't be the same. I think this topic is a perfect example of social media, people with social media influence paddling a particular side of the argument and people jumping on that side, this could be for any topic in our industry, I'll probably any industry that is, but I think this in particular, because people have such a strong bias towards one or the other, and I think that probably adds to the confusion because people jump on the bandwagon, but maybe don't quite understand the principles and the science behind it, is that something you'd agree with? Absolutely, absolutely, so I think it is, yeah, I think there is a lot of that, and I think it's often the loudest voices in the social media space, I guess a proponents of this type of training, so I mean that's their prerogative, that's their training philosophy, but I guess for me the objection to that was that they don't actually understand what MIS is, so and that's again another argument for another day, but I think it's important that before people pick a particular side, they actually appreciate and understand what both sides offer, so I think that's where I think with the invite to do the article for you, hopefully I was just able to provide an overview of what MIS is quite accurately, and hopefully this podcast sort of adds a few other layers onto that, so that people can go, well, yeah, I'll consider using maximum aerobic speed, I've got a better comprehension of what it is, I know how to determine it, I have a bit of a feel for how to prescribe it, I'm going to trial it and say how it goes, you might not like it, that's fine, but at least you've, you've got a better appreciation and understanding of what actually it is, I think that's really key, so it's sort of, I think for most people when they look at strength training principles or plyometric principles, I think people are happy to refute them after investigating them more thoroughly, whereas I feel with MIS, it is, we don't do that, we don't like that session, and again, this is, it goes back to the point that it's it's not a session, it is, it's an intensity measure used to prescribe objective conditioning, and at the point I really wanted to make clear in your article was, it can be used right across the intensity spectrum, so you can prescribe active recovery runs with it, you can prescribe steady state runs, I've prescribed people, I've prescribed people marathon, you know, marathon events using a percentage of MIS as a bit of a guide, underpinned by critical power and critical speed of that concept, so all the way through to the short super maximal stuff that we've spoken about, so it is, it's an incredibly versatile tool if you know how to use it. I think one thing that gives me comfort, I knew it would do based on our back and forth on email on the article that you wrote, is that you've outlined, this is the benefits of this, this is the benefits of this, this is how I would use one and the other depending on the adaptation that I want, here's my balance view, that may not get you the 100,000 follows on Instagram because people want to see someone down the hill of one particular, you know, one particular side, but I think listening to someone like yourself who has that balance view does actually does both, which is like, wow's it, wow, crazy, is yeah, like I say, it gives me comfort, so thank you for that, thank you for that, giving some some balance in this conversation. And yeah, thanks Robin, I think it's, clearly I use MIS a lot, so I'm obviously a big advocate of its application and its use, but I think the point I was really trying to make for you is if aerobic fitness is a key goal for your team, your squad, your sport, whatever it is, there are, it is a really viable option to help you achieve it and one thing I haven't touched on in the podcast, which is one of the, I guess one of my, one of the most important aspects of its application is the consistency of stimulus that it imposes and it induces, so for me when I think about the biggest challenges associated with team sport groups and that this spans all the way from sub-a-lead groups all the way through to elite, there's always a disproportionate amount of athletes in relation to coaches, it obviously gets more decent advantages and more challenging at the sub-a-lead level, so for me the ability to prescribe something in a really effective both physiologically and time, the ability to prescribe something that at least it's a good stimulus doing that, but then also more importantly it's a consistent stimulus across the group and I reflect on again another example from the VIS where I ran, I was working with a hockey group, that same hockey group I referred to earlier, over two identical preparations, run over two consecutive years, so the first preparation was where we used a traditional MAS guided approach for conditioning, so pre-post testing, the stimulus, it resulted in a really significant improvement in aerobic fitness which I was really confident at wood, but the really key thing was the consistency of adaptation was as I expected, so the standard deviation was quite low relative to the percentage improvement, the following year changing coach, I guess a more European style coach, so he was big on using small-sided games, so I sort of said well we had good success with this last year, anyway, that was fine, we eventually got to a point where he was a staunch believer in this and I thought this is a really good opportunity for me to try something different, let's say how it works, so we used live GPS tracking to provide targets for athletes, if they didn't meet targets they did top-up conditioning, so I tried to make it as engaging and as accountable as possible and unsurprisingly at the end of the intervention, some improved, some regressed, so the whole point of this is that when you think about other methods that are a bit more subjective or a bit harder to monitor and control objectively, the byproduct of that is that you get a much more scattered outcome and there's much more variation in your results, so for me when I think about team support application that is definitely not what you want, and when we think about the use of the speed reserve ratio, the whole point of that is to come up with training methods or training types that suit the profile of the athletes, which then hopefully in turn result in good adaptation for them, they're not doing things they don't like and that discourages them from engaging in the activity, so yeah I think for me that's one thing that I probably failed to mention at the start and I think it's so critically important when we think about conditioning application for team support groups. Perfect, so good. You mentioned a few resources as we've gone along, but is there any particular resources that you would direct people to go and read, I'll go and watch, I'll go and listen to when it comes to this kind of topic? Our condition is a whole for that matter. Yeah, yes, yes, so there's, it's a really good question. I mean I've read a lot of their scientific literature, so there's a lot of people that aren't that interested in that, so I think there is a couple of key articles in that that are absolutely worth reading, so there's obviously the Mutton Bechette and Paul Lawson reviews that are that they've done an amazing job of really succinctly covering really I guess more complex topics, but they do in quite a succinct manner, so I'll admit if for people that haven't got a great comprehension of conditioning, they can be tough reading because they're laden with acronyms and the like, so they take a bit of rereading I would say and that's coming from someone who's I think well versed in the area, so they're great resources for people to use and then I guess obviously there's Dan Baker's article which is a I guess a more simplified version, I guess I'm biased, I think the content I am producing through TCC or the Conditioning Consultant Instagram page, I think is really valuable and I try and create content that sort of suits both team sports but also endurance athletes, so I've created like a bit of balance there but there probably is a bit of a bias towards team sport application, I don't know I think that's probably that stems from I guess the followership of the page now, it definitely is a it's kind of it's kind of morphed from what initially was probably more athlete-oriented like people looking for individualised running programs and things like that and training plans to coach education like the I would say 80% of our followers now are sports scientists, SNC coaches and I think the the probably the business has pivoted a bit more into education and I've recorded you know three workshops that are pertaining to conditioning application and then just earlier this year I recorded an aerobic speed reserve webinar which covered ASR application at both the elite and sub-let level because often people say the issue with ASR is that it's too hard to apply in a sub-let setting and I acknowledge it can be tricky when you don't have all of the available resources but I am that that webinar covered how you can do that really well at both.
a lead and sub-alit level. So yeah, that's, I guess, a bit of an overview of your Rob. Read the articles on your website clearly as well. That's another great option. And I did listen to the before I came onto this, I listened to the ASR podcast that you did with, he's a field squad. Field squad, correct. Yeah. So I listened to that. And again, that was really informative and it's great to hear, I guess, practical application of a concept. And again, I probably approached conditioning in a slightly different manner, but I certainly left that podcast thinking, yeah, I certainly, what I'd like to try a couple of different things. And I think some of his concepts that he covered in your, you know, podcast, I think when you think about transitioning through different phases of preseason and even in season periods, I think those more specific preparation phases, I think his approach is awesome because you would assume that guys have almost ticked off and met their requisite level of aerobic fitness. So then how do we maintain it through training methods and training types that are befitting of those individuals and those groups? So I really liked that and they got me thinking about ways I could tailor and tweak conditioning application in those, those two different phases. Perfect. Thanks, mate. Glad to enjoy it. Obviously 99.9 percent credit goes to Phil for bringing info, we just direct and things as I do. But last but not least, the conditioning consultant in scrimpage, which well the information is, what is that? Yeah, so the handle is at the conditioning consultant. So pretty easy to remember. But yeah, I've sort of touched on that a little bit, but yeah, I guess the overarching theme is providing information pertaining to conditioning for a wide variety of practitioners, coaches, athletes. So I've had amazing interaction since starting the page. So that's been, as I said alluded to it the start, I'm really glad I did it. Like I certainly went out of my comfort zone. And it's been like a bit of a labor of life in the sense that I never knew how long it took to create content until I started and I was like, wow, this is time consuming. Who would have thought like you kind of flick through Instagram thinking not even considering how long stuff takes to make? So it's been great. I've loved it. And I think one thing that it's hopefully done is for a whole subsection of people that I've engaged with. It's given them a much better appreciation of conditioning as a concept. And I often, often think about when I lectured those ACA courses and I love doing that because I love having an impact on younger impressionable SNC coaches that are coming through the Australian industry. I love the feedback I get from them that they often leave thinking, wow, this is the conditioning stuff you presented is so different to what I've been doing. And I love that because for some of them, it triggers, that's the trigger for them to completely revamp the way they approach it. So I think if you do that for a subsection of people, I have no doubt that what they're prescribing their teams, their groups, their athletes is going to be better for it. So or at least they're going to be much better educated as to when they should use different types of conditioning. So I hope via the conditioning consultant page, people just have a better understanding and appreciation of conditioning principles. But then obviously, what we've discussed today, a much sounder knowledge of the concept, maximal aerobic speed, but also then it's a subsequent application. Perfect. I think that's a great place to round up and just say thank you. Thank you for writing the article. It's gone down a dream, created lots of discussion, lots of interaction. And thank you for following up with the podcast and diving a little bit deeper into some of the topics. So Nathan, I'm going to let you go, crack on with your Friday evening, but really appreciate your time and look forward to keeping in touch. Thanks Rob. Thanks for the invite to do both. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. So yeah, much appreciated. My pleasure. Thanks mate. It's week two. See you Rob. Bye. Thanks to you, Ninh. To episode 420 of the Pacey Performance Podcast. Big thanks to Nathan for giving up his time to come on and chat through his recent article on Sportsmith and also dive a little bit deeper into some of the thoughts that he has on conditioning the aerobic system. So big thanks to Harkin Dynamics, Kitman Labs, HiTro and Play for Sponsoredness episode today. The podcast could not run this coming from without these guys. So I do appreciate all that support. Big thanks to you for tuning in. Would love any feedback you have on this episode, whether you agree or disagree with your MS person, whether you're a tempo training person, all feedback is welcome and we'll force chatting to you next week.
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