Pushing The Envelope

“When will it ever get easier”, the question hung there waiting for an answer.
This was about forty minutes into the Tuesday night Boot Camp when everyone was either a light shade of purple or deep maroon.
“I have been doing this for years and it seems to be getting harder”.

I decided I needed to respond; I have a background in exercise physiology and the answer will not be reassuring.

There are two components that must be addressed in responding to the question.
The first component has to do with Sparta.
Sparta can easily see when people are coasting.
Sparta can make the exercise routine as hard or as easy as she sees fit and I don’t anticipate a sudden feeling of seasonal warmth to suddenly cause her to change the routine into Slipper Camp.
It is called Boot Camp for a reason.
Sparta can put three grueling leg exercises in a row, she can add laps, she can follow the heavy bag with mitts and she can knock out any station that provides a little breather.
There are enough combinations of stations that Sparta could challenge even the best trained athlete.

The second component that needs to be addressed is Maximal Aerobic Capacity or Maximal Exercise/Work Capacity.

Maximal Aerobic Capacity or Maximal Exercise Capacity is usually expressed in the amount of oxygen used per kilogram body mass per minute. It is usually determined during exercise such as cycling, running or even Boot Camp. The intensity of the activity is progressively increased until the subject is exhausted. The average value for a 20-year-old female is between 32–38 ml/kg/min; for a 20-year-old male it is 36–44 ml/kg/min.

The last time I looked, I didn’t see that many twenty year olds in our class.

Training can improve Maximal Exercise Capacity but the amount of improvement is highly individualized and inversely related to the initial level of fitness. A sedentary person may experience as much as a 25 per cent increase in VO2 max after only 8 weeks training; a highly trained athlete may experience as little as a 5 per cent or less improvement in the same time.

The key phrase:

There is an upper limit of oxygen consumption beyond which training has no effect. This limit seems to be genetically determined and may be reached after 18–24 months of intensive endurance training and it must be remembered that Maximal Exercise/Aerobic Capacity does decline with age.

Most everyone has been training in Boot Camp for more than twenty four months and many of us are getting older as each year passes. (A few, left un-named appear to be avoiding the aging thing). So it suggests that most of us are probably at our maximal aerobic or maximal work capacity and each little change in intensity will dramatically affect how we perceive the level of work.

But here is the bright inner lining; all in the class have increased their exercise capacity and are working at levels far above the average person. Some in class may be approaching levels as high as 60 ml/kg/min.

It is estimated that Lance Armstrong is the best endurance athlete in the world and his maximal exercise capacity is somewhere around 80 to 100 ml/kg/min.
He increased his capacity by 7% over 7 years of intense training and added another estimated percentage by reducing total body fat which is another way to increase work capacity by a few percentage points.

So to sum it all up, unless Sparta changes the class to Bed Room Slippers Class it probably won’t get any easier, ever, unless we can keep peeling the total body fat down to extremely low levels and achieve higher levels of maximal work capacity.

Unfortunately age and genetics are working hard against us.