Energy Pathways- Fat vs Sugar

I know I shouldn't type so much in one blog, but it is so hard to get these points and philosophies across without justifying them. It's your journey and I want this to be a trusted resource ...
SO please read all the way through and not on your phone while you are driving! Take the time to read and understand it so that you can apply it!
I cannot begin to explain the controversy that rests around fat burning vs. sugar burning. It has caused SO MUCH CONFUSION for EVERYONE!!! Even most trainers are confused about it at this point. So I will revert back to what a mentor of mine and Exercise Physiology Professor told me... Go by the latest research from Tier 1 research journals. DO NOT BELIEVE MAGAZINES!!! they are meant to sell the latest and greatest fads ... Sure there is some truth to some of the articles, but it is marketing at it's finest and written mostly by individuals that do not truly understand the science of the human body and go by what either another article said or what a company says about it own products which can be a little biased.

So I'm sorry to break it down this way again, but it's the easiest way to understand. I will try my best to make Exercise Physiology easy to understand.
First, you have to remember that only God can create energy. Right? Good!
On earth, all it can do is change forms.
In our body, how we fuel ourselves directly impacts what fuel we use for energy in any form...
Here are the FACTS!
We ALL have the same 'Energy systems' or pathways if you will.
First, you have to remember that only God can create energy. Right? Good!
On earth, all it can do is change forms.
As it relates to training, energy 'production' is both time and intensity related (technically it is related to nutrition also, but I'm not going to open that Pandora's box just yet). If you run/sprint as hard as you can, you can only do so for a very short period of time before you collapse, throw up, pass out, etc... On the other hand, walking or slow jogging allows you to go as long as you want (within reason). Why is that? These pathways, like the repetition continuum, do not switch on and off when one is exhausted. They are all always running at the same time, but one is emphasized over the other at certain times and is directly influenced by time and intensity.

So, this is what happens in energy production: 

YEEEAAA about that... right? My exercise phys. professor told us unless we are scientists we don't need to memorize the Kreb Cycle. I agree... look at how big those words are!
How many fat burner commercials explain their products and how they effect us on the cellular level? This diagram is probably top 5 if not the most important process that happens in the body! YOU CANNOT ARGUE WITH THE KREB CYCLE..

So here is a summary of what I believe is true about the anaerobic threshold and 'fat burning' vs. sugar burning!

The term 'Threshold' gives the connotation that it is a specific point, a magical point where your body shifts from aerobic to anaerobic production. But this isn't the case and I will try to explain. First, a little background on Anaerobic Threshold, or as it's also called, Lactate Threshold by some. There are two main avenues the body has to produce energy. One is the aerobic pathway where fat and sugar are broken down into ATPs which fuel the muscles. Then there is the anaerobic system which produces ATP from sugar in the absence of oxygen. Without oxygen, sugar is incompletely burned and lactic acid is left as the end product. This creates an acidic condition in the body that interferes with further exercise. (There is a third energy system, the Creatine Phosphate (CP) system at the upper end of the anaerobic pathway, which produces energy for very short periods but doesn't contribute a lot to overall endurance swimming, running, or cycling compared to the other two.)

Let's not think of your energy systems as having an on/off switch like a light switch. Instead think of them as having a dimmer switch. They are all on but at different levels and increase on a continuum. 

Conventional thinking is that aerobic energy production occurs during low and moderate exercise but when we pass the anaerobic threshold, we switch over to anaerobic energy production. This is not necessarily correct. 
Both aerobic and anaerobic energy production are occurring at all times in the body. 
          -At low intensity activity, aerobic energy production predominates and anaerobic production occurs at a very low level, low enough that the resulting lactic acid is easily removed and processed.      
          -As activity level increases, your aerobic energy production continues but your anaerobic system increases its contribution to energy production. 
          -Your anaerobic system doesn't suddenly kick in once you've reached some discrete threshold. It's on all the time. 
          -As you exercise harder, it's contribution to energy production increases and along with it lactic acid. 
          -As your intensity increases, your production of lactic acid outpaces your body's ability to remove it and you will eventually have to ease off and slow down.
Commonly, the anaerobic threshold is defined as the rate of maximum exertion you can maintain for one hour. Above this pace and you will build up acidity at a rate which will force you to slow down. 

Here is an example:
The rate of maximum effort is dependent on time. You can run faster for 1 minute than you can for 5 minutes, faster for 15 minutes than you can for 30, and faster for 30 minutes than you can for 60. This is because you can operate at and tolerate a higher level of oxygen debt and lactic acid for short periods of time. If you do a 15 minute time trial, you will be doing this at a more anaerobic level than if you do a 30 minute time trial.
If we redefined the anaerobic threshold as the maximum level you can work for 15 minutes instead of one hour, you would have a higher threshold value. At your hardest, fastest efforts, such as in sprints, you will be using your anaerobic system at it's maximum level. You are also using your CP system and you are still depending on the aerobic system as well because you are still bringing oxygen into your body, just not as fast as you need it to continue at that intensity.

SOOOO.... What the heck does all this mean?
Basically, when you walk, you are breathing in oxygen... It is then delivered to your cells and you expel carbon dioxide. So all that oxygen is being delivered to the cells and they have plenty for the amount of energy your are demanding.
When you are breathless, you are breathing in oxygen and most of that oxygen is coming right back out. What happens when you don't have enough oxygen? You do not pass go and you do not collect 200 dollars, you are forced to stop or slow down and recover. You cannot train yourself to be able to hold 'anaerobic intensities' longer than the amount of fuel your body has for them which has been shown to be pretty standard... What you CAN do is train your body to be more metabolically efficient, teaching your body to use the "aerobic" energy system predominantly at higher intensities.
THAT IS WHAT ENDURANCE TRAINING IS ALL ABOUT...STAYING POWERFUL!!!

Remember, you cannot stay powerful without a strong aerobic foundation.

I hope this helps! I will elaborate on how to train the energy systems later on.

Coach Lee

Know Thyself

Finding the problem:

People are GREAT at coming up with solutions. The issue is that we can't always identify the problem! Often times I catch myself thinking I am in better shape than the reality of the situation. So I do certain types of workouts that sometimes end up hurting more than helping. If I don't overwork myself, I will make up my own rules and skip steps... Here is a pictoral example:

So just because you found A solution, it does not mean you have identified the problem!

Anyone ever experience something like that? So I went ahead and made an equation that I believe works!

(Please tell me if you have seen this anywhere so I can give credit if it belongs to someone else)

(Scientific Knowledge - Subjective Feedback) + Practical Application = Desired Adaptation

God gave us science for many reasons. In this case, understanding the human body, what it is capable of and how to maximize performance. Do you even realize the unbelievable machines that we are? Do you know what you are physically capable of? There are so many instances where people achieve 'the next level' of human adaptation. It occurs every year with athletics. How much longer can we continue to break world records? Seriously... Michael Phelps? Is there going to be someone better than that guy?

So to briefly break down this equation:

Scientific Knowledge:

This is not the time to guess. If you go by 'perceived exertion' it is very likely that you will lie to yourself and not necessarily on purpose. It's the path of least resistance. Ever heard of it? We seek it mostly involuntarily to some degree every day of our lives. Instead, it's time to learn a little about what is going on inside of your body.
Knowing yourself requires testing yourself. To make these tests a little more scientific in nature, make them reliable/repeatable and valid! If you do not assess, you do not know where to start and where you can really expect to finish.

I'm a huge fan of assessments! It's what I do for a living. In my experience, most people have tons of great goals. However, they have no clue where they are emotionally, physically or psychologically in relation to their goal or how to actually get there... We tend to live in our athletic past. It's is important to know exactly where you are right now in your life and the circumstances surrounding you presently. Not 10+ years ago!

So when gathering knowledge about yourself, be sure to:

1. Make it valid... Measure same time, distance, heart rate in same conditions every time. Metabolic assessments are the way to go in order to take the guess work out of it!
2. Plan for it... Schedule your assessing throughout your training (usually every 4 wks)
3. Have a time budget... Know how much time you can give each week for it.
4. Have a financial budget... Know costs involved to achieving your goal
5. Find your support system... Coach/Team, Spouse, Friend, etc..We all need someone get over it.
6. RECORD IT!! you can get lost if you don't. And you will be amazed when you review it 10 years down the road I promise.

Subjective Feedback:
So in any world of achievement, there are different types of feedback right? Objective and subjective... The reason I choose to subtract the subjective feedback is simply because you have to listen to your body. As scientific as we can be, there still needs to be that subjective input. As you learn your body more, the feedback becomes more clear. You start to know what muscles are hurting and why. Sometimes a day off is better than "pushing through the pain". When certain parts of your body hurt for certain or uncertain reasons it may be best to break protocol. We can never truly predict with 100% accuracy what an athlete is capable of. This wonderful thing called adrenaline kicks in at some point and can change outcomes from time to time. Also, there is an emotional side to training and racing. Tons of overtraining happens when there is an emotional or psychological stress added to variable training intensities. So please..... Take yourself into account!

Practical Application:
What the heck is practical? I don think we use this too much anymore. Most of the time we (especially adults) over think things to the point where it is no longer simple enough to just go do. Let's take swimming for example... Every adult I take to the water to train has some difficulty understanding the word "relax". I believe Bruce Lee said this "the more relaxed you are, the more force you can produce". What would seem the most simple piece of this whole thing, being able to relax, becomes this analysis paralysis type pattern with the question "how do I relax?" well... Good luck with that.
The other part of practical application is training load. If you are in your first couple years of racing, be careful what you do to yourself. We are gluttons for punishment (remember the definition of endurance) therefore, we instinctively do more than we should sometimes. Mainly because in the endurance world there is always something to improve. So instead of trying to fix everything at the same time, we might want to think in terms of how long am I going to be participating in this game? And how do I build the right kind of foundation for both the level that I am at as well as the level I want to be? It's called Progressive Overload... Look it up.

Desired Adaptation: (just for the record... I don't believe we came from monkeys)
I think 'adaptation' is one of my favorite words. It has such a profound meaning in life and the majority of people don't really understand how to control it. Adaptation occurs whether we want it to or not, and is directly influenced by what we do across all areas of life. It does not discriminate. If you place any stress on the body it will adapt. Good or bad. We can teach ourselves to be very efficient at being inefficient if that makes sense. I often use my first car as an example. I had a jeep wrangler for about 9 yrs. Sadly, I had to trade it in because it was a hot mess and because of how I treated it. Sometimes I would race it off the starting line at red lights and the race lasted about 3.2 seconds. And let me tell you, a 2.5L 4cylinder engine on a jeep does not need to be doing such things. When I decided to trade it in it had about 186,000 miles on it. I figure about 50,000 miles was spent in mud or something like that which means that I put a ton of miles on my engine going nowhere. Too often we do this to our bodies and then expect the engine to last and perform at high levels.
When we place the wrong stress on our body it still adapts and makes it feel normal. I have this thing that I say to ALL my clients, "if it feels stupid, you are probably doing it right." So many of us have postural distortions that NEED to be fixed before we place high stress on those areas of our body. Before we try to set time standards as goals we really need to make a large effort to protect our joints over time. Your body will appreciate much more than putting high volume on it's engine when it's not firing on all cylinders. Besides, we are not the one's getting paid for our desired race outcomes. We have a 'normal' job to go to and a family to take care of right?

Coach Lee