Training Check-In with Phil: CRAZY VO2 Max and 5 min power increase

Summary
In this episode of the Training Babble Podcast, host Dave Schell and Dr. Phil Batterson discuss Phil's training journey as he prepares for an uphill running race. They cover the structure of his training, focusing on VO2 max work, the importance of consistency and adaptation, and the physiological testing that has informed his progress. Phil shares insights on nutrition, health markers from blood tests, and outlines his future training plans leading up to the race.

Takeaways

• Consistency is crucial for improvement in training.
• VO2 max has increased by 10% over the training period.
• Quality reps are more important than sheer volume.
• RPE allows flexibility in training intensity.
• Dogs can be great motivators during workouts.
• Nutrition plays a significant role in performance.
• Blood testing can reveal important health markers.
• Training should adapt based on performance feedback.
• Physiological testing helps track progress effectively.
• Future training will focus on race-specific efforts.

Transcript

Dave Schell (00:01.238)
Happy New Year and welcome back to the Training Bible Podcast. I'm your host Dave Schell and today we're doing another training check-in with Dr. Phil. Phil, how's it going?

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (00:08.665)
Dave, for having me back, man. It's been a year since we talked. Had to drop it in there, especially after you just introduced that Happy New Year, everybody. So that'll be the last one I do for this year.

Dave Schell (00:12.782)
Brumpsh.

Dave Schell (00:20.846)
That's right.

and then I'll post this in October or something like that. So if you haven't been following along, we've been doing a bit of an experiment where I've been kind of consulting Phil on some of his training as he prepares for an uphill running race. And then one of his goals was to hold 400 watts for five minutes.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (00:25.874)
Yeah, right

Dave Schell (00:49.538)
we've actually already achieved that this past week. And so that's pretty amazing. And so, yeah, I think let's just start by giving a very broad overview of kind of what the trainings look like up to this point and how long it's been.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (01:02.402)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. just to actually just to rewind just a little bit. So initially I was like, I think I'm going to be doing this race in May and those sorts of things. And I hadn't signed up yet. And then I think the last, like over the last two, three weeks, the registration actually opened up and I've been feeling fairly confident in terms of, you know, like, like my fitness and other things like that. So I signed up for it. So it's like, it's officially on the books. I don't know the exact.

Dave Schell (01:26.924)
Nice. Good.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (01:31.611)
dates in May, but it's the tiger claw ascent and it's going to be really fun. It's going to be two and a half miles with 2,500 feet of gain. So it's essentially 20 % elevation, the, or 20 % inclined the entire time. And the first, the first mile is like 1500 feet of gain. So it's like 30 or 40%. So it's going to be, it's going to be brutal. And I'm really lucky because I have, you know, that big hill in the back.

Dave Schell (01:46.755)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (01:58.339)
And now I just bought like an industrial grade treadmill that goes up to 40 % incline. Yeah. So it was, it was one of those things where for like my physiology testing business, I wanted to get a treadmill. And then it just so happened that somebody was, you know, selling one of these like commercial Nordic track ones for, know, like really, really deeply discounted. And I was like, okay, so I got it. Didn't realize it was 500 pounds and had to, had to essentially get like, like four.

Dave Schell (02:04.163)
good. Yeah.

Dave Schell (02:18.785)
OK.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (02:26.788)
extremely fit strong friends to come all the way up to my house which is like 45 minutes into the middle of nowhere to you know help lift the treadmill and get it all situated and if I ever move I don't know what I'm gonna do with the treadmill because it was a beast to put it put in and install Yeah, exactly it'll be it'll be a little extra add-on so somebody who is fit will have to buy the house after us but the the way that we've been setting up my training is

Dave Schell (02:32.717)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (02:42.624)
Yeah, comes with the house now.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (02:56.124)
Monday, VO2Max work for trail running. And that's the hill that we're talking about. Essentially, it's like 0.3 miles and 300 feet of gain. And it takes me anywhere between four and six minutes to do it, depending on if I'm doing one rep or if I'm doing upwards of four reps. And then I just walk slash jog all the way back down. It's about even rest, but...

Dave Schell (03:21.955)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (03:22.756)
It's more important to get the, in my opinion, it's more important to do the work than it is to have perfectly equal work rest ratios, especially for something like this.

Dave Schell (03:31.95)
And I think that's a good place to kind of pause real quick because I you being a physiologist and people hearing VO2 work, VO2 max work, right? It's not like you're out there. It's not like you're like measuring lactate or it's not like you've got your VO2 master on as you're doing this and like making sure it's like we've been working a lot off of RPE and we know that people can typically hold their VO2 max between three and eight minutes. And so you're just going hard.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (03:54.513)
Yes.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (04:00.954)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Dave Schell (04:01.762)
for three to five minutes and then easy to a point where you can repeat it. And you're not like down there like counting the seconds like, I can't go again until I hit here. It's just like, are you ready to go again so that you can put in an equal effort as a previous rep?

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (04:14.737)
Yep. Yeah, and the reason why, you know, in the lab, right, you have the equal work rest ratios is just because that's just a really easy way of stimulating VO2 max and then recovering enough to be able to keep that quality high. So the way that I view it is it's better almost to take a little bit extra rest to keep the quality really high because I'm attaining more time at or near VO2 max.

Dave Schell (04:30.637)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (04:43.067)
by doing that as opposed to, you know, running back down the hill, which is a crazy eccentric movement that's actually kind of tiring and then immediately hitting it and then all of a sudden going 30, 40 seconds slower. So my goal is to try to either negative split or stay kind of even within those, those uphill splits and then just rest until necessary. And what's funny is, dogs don't know how to pace themselves very well. So.

Dave Schell (05:11.66)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (05:13.212)
Like, so we'll do like the first interval and all four of my dogs will go with me and they'll be ahead of me. And then by the third interval, they're all, they're all, you know, barely getting across the finish line. And it's just, it's just funny because they are too getting a really, really good workout. And it's, it's been really good for them. So they're my, they're my running partners and it motivates me to keep going. Even when I'm super tired, I'm like, okay, beat the dogs. We can beat the dogs after two or three intervals. Here we go.

Dave Schell (05:23.757)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (05:37.518)
Exactly. That's awesome. And so, so that was the other thing. And I also want to bring into when you and I first talked and we think we had this on the last podcast too. I kind of mentioned that when I first talked to an athlete, like we're always looking for the limiters or the low hanging fruit and for you, it was staying healthy. And what's your pattern had kind of been is that like trying to

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (05:59.098)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Dave Schell (06:07.34)
hit that progressive overload and adding work like every week or, you know, like more time, higher intensity, more intervals, whatever. And so for us is just, and that's why the reason I bring this up is this is the reason you were hesitant to sign up for the race is because like when we first talked, it's like, will you be healthy for it? You know? And so that was our first job. And so, yeah, I think that's been really encouraging is that the way we've done it is like rather than

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (06:24.082)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (06:28.134)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Schell (06:36.942)
pile on work every week, it's just like, okay, let's give your body time to adapt to it and then do more work.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (06:43.413)
Yeah, and I think the cool thing about RPE based reps, so like having like a set distance that you're covering and then going by RPE is it gives you the wiggle room to be like, oh, well, I feel like shit today. So I'm going to go a little bit slower or I feel really good today. Let's see what we can do. And kind of, you know, like riding that line between. And that's actually, I've been thinking a lot about that lately because it's been something that's really, I think helped me. And it also helps me to monitor progress.

So even though we aren't increasing, you know, like volume massively, I'm still improving on, you know, like my ability to do three of these reps. Like for example, the first time I did one of these VO2 max workouts, it was just two reps up the hill. And I think I barely got like five minutes and 45 seconds or something like that. Now I regularly go under five minutes and I can do three reps in a row. And then yesterday I just did four reps in a row.

And I did like right around five minutes the entire time. And that was after lifting, like, you know, kind of doing like power cleans for like 60 bales of hay that my fiance needed me to move. So I was also kind of fatigued from that. and I feel good. Like I don't feel like, you know, I feel like if I, if I pushed it a little bit too hard, you know, one more day, then my back might be like, eh, but I know that because tomorrow I have.

Dave Schell (07:45.741)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (08:03.523)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (08:09.29)
You know, a zone two day coming up. I'm like, okay, well, my Achilles is kind of, you know, a little tweaky right now. So I'm just going to walk and it's just going to be, you know, pure like kind of recovery day, get out, feel good because it's more important to me to stay consistent than to get, you know, like a little bit better on my zone too, for example. and man, my, I tell you what, my fitness is crazy in terms of essentially only running two.

Dave Schell (08:31.043)
right.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (08:38.534)
maybe three times a week. And what we didn't say is that, you so I follow up my Monday VO2 max workouts with the Tuesday VO2 max style bike ride. And something that I had switched up just a little bit towards the end of the last block was I wanted to do hard start intervals where I tried to, you know, jack up the wattage to above 400, hold it for a minute and then kind of ease into, you know, something a little bit lower. First time I did that,

you know, failed pretty pretty spectacularly. Got to like the third, like the second or the third rep and it's just like, nope, this isn't happening. Same thing happened today, because I tried to extend the 400 that I did from one minute to a minute 30. First two reps were fine. Second rep, I got through the minute or yeah, the minute 30 and I was just like, yep, I'm done for today. I'm feeling pretty tired. So but again, it's like

Dave Schell (09:21.07)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Schell (09:32.002)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (09:34.657)
I take all of these as learning lessons and actually wins in the sense of I didn't feel like I had to, you know, try to, you know, push my way through this last rep because I already got two reps in and they were good quality reps at, you know, 400 Watts for 90 seconds. And, you know, and I was, and I was feeling tired at the same time. So, you know, like those are all things that I've really been working through. And not only.

is my running up the hill fitness getting better. went from four minutes and 37 seconds was my fastest ever up the hill. And then last week I retested it and I hit 407. So it was a 30 second PR. And now I'm playing with this idea like, maybe I could actually run the entire hill. I've gotten about halfway up. That's been my...

Dave Schell (10:16.718)
Yeah, that's significant. Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (10:30.182)
That's been the farthest I've gotten up, but I think for this next block, I'm gonna try to do a little bit more of that stress where it's like run and kind of pace myself in terms of running as far up the hill as I can possibly get and just like try to start to switch from power hiking to a little bit more running just to get a little bit more of that like economy, you know, sort of involvement. But not only is my running getting better, my cycling's also getting better.

I PR'd on my five minute all out test, went from 389 last time we tested to 403. I think like on Training Peaks it says like 400 even or something like that because it didn't start exactly. But on my C2 bike it says 403. So I was so pumped at that, man. Like, yeah.

Dave Schell (11:12.078)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (11:18.444)
No, that's significant. mean, that's huge. And I think just to go back a little bit, I think the important thing here that you were kind of highlighting is doing the quality reps, right? It's like, and that's what's hard to measure a lot of times. And so like, that's what doesn't show up in your peak power or your peak times and stuff like that. But it's like able to do more reps is huge.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (11:45.474)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Schell (11:47.468)
And that's what's going to matter into a race when you're getting tired and stuff like that. And so I think being able to see that progress as well, not just like how fast you're going up the hill, but being able to repeat that over and over again. It's super important.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (11:59.715)
Yeah, that's kind of my idea right now is the race is going to be between the fastest guys go 27 minutes or something, which is just absolutely absurd. then the middle of the pack would be 45, 50 minutes. So anywhere between 30 and 50 minutes is kind of the target. And I'll get closer to knowing what I'm capable of as I start to do more race-specific simulations closer to the race.

Dave Schell (12:26.657)
Right.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (12:28.621)
But I think as of right now, continuing to build out those repetitions going up the hill is going to be really useful because eventually they're going to kind of change away from VO2 max with more and more reps, it becomes more threshold. So it's almost one of those things where it's like, well, let's just keep adding more reps until it's more of a threshold workout compared to a VO2 max workout. then that's, you know, that's like an automatic sort of sports specific thing that it changes into.

Dave Schell (12:41.08)
That's I was just thinking.

Dave Schell (12:56.406)
Exactly. And so what that might look like is one, not writing, you're not running them as hard. So you're backing off the effort just a little bit and then maybe shortening the recovery as well. But that might be harder as you're running downhill or whatever, but it's like, that's exactly what I was thinking. It's like, okay, so we've, I gosh, we've had like 12 weeks of essentially VO2 max work, right? And, and a lot of times people would say like, you, do a block of

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:02.658)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:10.125)
Right.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:20.163)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Schell (13:24.494)
four weeks or whatever, but it's like, but if you keep progressing and you've got time, like we saw this during COVID, it's like all of a sudden you had all this time to train. It's like, great. We've got all this runway now. So let's just like keep hitting it until it stops progressing.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:27.682)
Yeah. My... Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:36.085)
Yeah. And my VO2 max has also gone up like 10%.

Dave Schell (13:41.602)
That's what I was really curious about. Yeah, so you've also, like you've done the field test, but then you've also been wearing the VO2 master and the Moxi and stuff like that. And so like what changed? You saw the global power, but then like what, like physiologically.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:43.991)
Yeah. Yep.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (13:52.309)
Yeah. So.

Yeah, it's really wild. think everybody, you know, kind of, you know, equates changes to VO2 max and direct changes in power. And that's absolutely not true. So my VO2 max has gone up, you know, seemingly gone up 10%, which is like, that's massive, especially because my VO2 max was already like, you know, mid seventies, just because I'm fairly inefficient, you know, just because I I'm not in the saddle, you know, three, 30,000 miles a year, you know, those sorts of things. but VO2 max being in the seventies.

Dave Schell (14:10.136)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (14:25.367)
It went up to almost 80, you know, up to this last time I measured it.

Dave Schell (14:30.414)
Yeah, so real quick, like are you measuring it on the bike or are you measuring it on the treadmill and is it different in those places?

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (14:32.142)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (14:36.194)
both.

It's both now and it's the same. So, so I didn't have a treadmill. So I wasn't doing running VO two max. I know, which is like, I'm really bummed that I didn't have a treadmill, but now I do. So, you know, now it's going to be the same. So, so we'll talk about the treadmill assessment that I do in just a second. but yeah, so now I have, you know, kind of multiple markers. do my five minute power, my five minute bike. and I wear the VO two master for that.

Dave Schell (14:41.826)
What about when you first started?

Dave Schell (14:46.774)
That would have been really interesting.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (15:07.75)
and I see, you know, what's my VO2 max, what's my average power, what's my heart rate, those sort of things. My VO2 max, like I said, has gone up about 10%, which is really, really crazy, you know, over the course of the last six weeks. And I'll have to look back and see what the first time it was, but I think it's even higher, you know, compared to where it was. My, I mean, we know my run VO2 maxes had to have gone up because I went from 437 to 407 going up the hill.

So at least from a performance perspective, that's happening. then, you know, probably VO2 max is going up as well. And then I do a three one test on the bike. And what's interesting about that is because there's accumulated fatigue leading up to, you know, like the end of the test. The first time I did it, I was only able to get up to 350 watts in terms of my max power output.

This time I got up to 360 because I started, I think I started at 50 watts the first time and I started at 60 watts this time, so it was like a 10 watt difference. But I was able to get a little bit higher. And my Vio2 Max in that case is a little bit lower just because it's directly correlated with how many watts you can actually put out. I don't know, I don't use Vio2 Max at the end of a 3.1 test as like a primary outcome just because

Dave Schell (16:11.809)
Okay.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (16:32.584)
I feel like the five minute test is more indicative of that. And the number's higher, so it's just more fun to talk about. But I, yeah, yeah, exactly. But I could go back and I could say, okay, well, you know, like it was, you know, say 70, you know, for the 360 that I did. And before that it was like, you 68 or something, you know, something along those lines. It's just another comparator. But then I did a,

Dave Schell (16:35.603)
I Exactly. Gotta get those vanity watts.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (17:00.796)
but, a run VO2 max test in the way, because I have the treadmill that can go up to 40 % grade. And I know that I'm going to essentially need to run five miles an hour in order to get like 30 minutes, for example, like during this race, I start, I do the test and I just ramp up to five miles an hour. And then I just start climbing a steeper and steeper hill. And my goal is,

to just see how far I can get in terms of how steep the actual hill can get. So this time I got up to 24 % and that was equivalent of an average of 82 milliliters per kilogram per minute. So I'm fairly confident that at least the VO2 Master is consistent in measuring my VO2 max day to day. Whether or not it's a little bit higher or lower,

compared to like lab base carts or other things like that, it doesn't really matter. Because I'm just trying to check if I'm improving or not and into what extent I'm actually improving. So that's really the big thing. And then with the 3-1 test and then the running incline treadmill test, I'm looking for zones. And I haven't analyzed my most recent 3-1 test, but my first one,

Dave Schell (18:04.163)
Right.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (18:27.752)
my zone two like boundary was like 210 watts. And for this one, or, then my second threshold boundary was 290 watts, something along those lines. And I think it's just like, it's either, you know, 200 watts and 280 or 300 watts. It's something kind of close to that.

Dave Schell (18:48.975)
Yeah, so I'm just looking at it and just based on my assessment, yeah, I asked you if you thought it was 200 and 280 because that's where I was kind of seeing it.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (18:52.882)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (18:58.697)
I thought you were asking about the assessment that you did.

Dave Schell (19:04.014)
No, no, I'm saying in the workout comment that you didn't receive a notification. But yeah, on your January 2nd test.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (19:07.72)
yeah, didn't look at that. So you sent me that, yeah, you sent me that fit file. Right, and I analyzed that for you. So that's where my numbers were coming from.

Dave Schell (19:14.318)
this morning. Correct, I, yeah, I'm talking about the test you did. I left you a comment on January 4th saying, I said, so would you call this 200 and 280? Yeah, exactly.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (19:22.833)
Yeah. Yeah, I didn't see it. I'm an awful athlete. But yeah, so 200 and 280, which again, you know, like the focus is really development of U2 max. So that number is going up and the other numbers aren't going down because you know, like I said, I changed the starting wattage just slightly. So yeah.

Dave Schell (19:48.524)
Yeah, yeah. And I like that brings up, I mean, this could be its own podcast. And I know that we're going to talk about this a little bit in a while, too. But it's like you mentioned it a little bit with the the fatigue with the VO2. like when you get to later stages in the step, right, there's there's some embedded fatigue there. And then also the starting wattage and the jumps, whether you're doing 10 watts or 20 watts, it's like all these little things.

can have an impact on the results of the test. And that's something I've started realizing over the last few months as I've started doing more tests and stuff. It's just like, yeah, it's kind of crazy. And so it's like my point being that at the end of the day, we're just trying to, regardless of how you're doing it, whether it's lactate or VO2 master or whatever, you're trying to get in the ballpark and there's gonna be like a plus 10 to 20 watt difference.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (20:18.952)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Schell (20:46.358)
you know, that you have to like just assume that it's in there.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (20:49.577)
Yeah. Yeah. And then that's going to change on a day to day basis too, because I do the way I do my testing weeks is I do my, performance markers early in the week. So then there's, there's presumably some level of fatigue. and then during the testing week, also had new years in the middle of that. So we went to a new year's Eve party and like essentially stayed up all night too. So like, you know, so there's some level of presumed fatigue that then happens when I do the, the ramp tests, you know, towards the end of the week. So.

Dave Schell (20:59.758)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (21:09.482)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (21:18.763)
The reason why I actually like doing it like that is because there's not many times in training where you're coming off of two days of complete rest and you're just totally not fatigued whatsoever. So I would rather have lower estimations and then give myself ranges that say, okay, well, you know, like during your threshold workout, this could be 280 to 320, for example, like if my, if my threshold was 280 or 300 and

Dave Schell (21:46.551)
Yep, exactly.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (21:47.507)
I had just done a cycling threshold workout where I was able to average 300 for three minutes with one minute rest. you know, so that's also indicative that, okay, well maybe on that day it was a little bit higher. so yes, that's, that's what I always tell people is like, we're doing physiological testing to get an estimate in a controlled environment, to see how things are changing over time. And then what we're going to do is we're going to use.

Dave Schell (22:00.525)
Yep.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (22:18.006)
ranges of target power output, target RPE, target heart rates to see where you're at on that given day. And that's also been really helpful for me. Because then it gives you the okay to be like, Oh man, my legs feel kind of heavy today, but I can still get a good effort in here. Yeah, so 280 it is. Which

Dave Schell (22:38.754)
Yeah, yeah, you kind of experienced that the first week where you'd had some pretty ambitious targets.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (22:50.24)
Yeah, we were like, we're going to do five repeats for the VO two max bike. And I got to three and I was like, no, that's not going to happen. And now it's actually just been three because I found that that is enough where I feel like I'm getting some decent work in without, you know, going overboard because that that's the game we're playing is we're, playing this game of, well, what's enough to elicit adaptation without going too far and, you know, allowing you to just be like a human as well, because there's some workouts, right?

Dave Schell (23:18.647)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (23:20.223)
that if you see them on paper and you're like, okay, that doesn't seem too bad, but then you do them and you're exhausted the rest of the day.

Dave Schell (23:26.402)
Well, and in my experience, I think the quote unquote type of athlete impacts that as well. over simplification, but right, like a fast twitch athlete versus what I like a diesel that I would, know, like different types of workouts are going to impact them differently. And like for some athletes doing subthreshold work just wrecks them and makes them super tired. And other people absolutely love it.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (23:32.341)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (23:45.054)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (23:50.506)
That's actually, think that's like, I think that's me actually, because when I do like come back and do my like zone two work, I actually almost feel more tired sometimes if I accidentally go to like, you know, like, if I'm at the upper end of zone two for the entire time, I'm like, man, feels like I'm pretty exhausted, you know, like it's not that day, it's like the day afterwards. So.

Dave Schell (24:04.044)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (24:12.908)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (24:14.569)
But I can do, you know, like the, VO2 max stuff has just been working really, really well for me. And then I'm like, okay, now I can just take it a little easy, you know, Wednesday and Thursday, because I do zone two work on zone two and active recovery work. That's I'll put both of those together on, on Wednesday and Thursday. And then I follow that up on Fridays with a threshold workout. And because I had been increasing the speed at which I was running uphill,

Dave Schell (24:27.843)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (24:43.948)
My, uh, it's my left Achilles tendon, you know, it was kinda, kinda feeling it a little bit. So I've been kind of bouncing back and forth between like bike and run and what I found. And this is, think what I'm going to go do going forward is I'm going to do half of my threshold workout. They're like the first set, like three by, uh, or five by three minutes on one minute off outside. And then I'm going to come in and I'm going to finish up the rest on the bike just so I can have.

a little bit more of that threshold stimulus without being, running too much. At least until the Achilles kind of fixes, not fixes itself, but the rehab and stuff that I'm doing for it kind of rectifies things.

Dave Schell (25:19.715)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (25:29.698)
Yeah. And then as far as next steps, I think, you know, like you said, the race isn't until May. So you've still got plenty of time. if it was closer, like if we were talking, the race was in like February or March, I would say now would be a time to like transition and start to do more race specific stuff and really like start to extend that. And like you said, do threshold and stuff, but it's like, because you're still experiencing gains in VO2, it's like,

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (25:38.333)
Right.

Dave Schell (25:58.432)
hammer that for another six weeks and see what happens, you know.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (26:00.19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, my newest thing that I'm adding is the fourth interval going up the hill. And then, so I'll do that. And then I'm playing around with the hard start intervals where I try to maintain...

Like 400 Watts for X amount of time. And then I kind of, you know, go back down. And the reason for that is because during my three, one, uh, you know, limiter assessment, I've been identifying that my respiratory system is limiting and I just simply don't want to do a rest, like, like just sit down and do respiratory training. So I want to stimulate the hard breathing in the beginning of that, and then try to work through it. And it's just something that.

You know, I've identified that I need to do, but at the same time, know, time is a thing that, you know, as much as we say we want more of and other things like that, I just like don't wanna make more time, you know, to sit down and do 30 minutes of breathing exercises, you know, during a day.

Dave Schell (27:10.754)
Yeah, that would cut into your second job.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (27:13.406)
Yeah, my my first second third jobs So

Dave Schell (27:16.398)
Well, awesome. Thanks for the update. I guess quickly, I know you talked about it a little bit. So what were the big changes you've seen so far? You talked about your times getting faster. You talked about the doing 400 watts for five minutes on the bike. So like, is it different than you expected? And are you surprised by the results so far?

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (27:45.485)
No, it's everything that I talk about on my podcast as well. It's like consistency, specificity, and progression. It really is one of those things. Consistency is so important for improvement. It's absolutely insane. We've now stitched together 12 weeks, maybe 13 or 14 weeks of consistency. It's just insane.

Dave Schell (27:59.286)
It's the number one thing.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (28:14.861)
I'm feeling, you know, like probably more fit than I really ever have. I also, so another, some of the other big changes that I've really made are I've been doing like monthly blood testing with this company called Rhythm Health. And it's, interesting. there's a lot of things that I kind of need to unpack with it, but one of the big things that I first noticed was my vitamin D and my testosterone levels were pretty low. And

Dave Schell (28:29.206)
Yeah, how's that going?

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (28:42.402)
That was most likely due to, you know, just always having low vitamin D levels. I was supplementing pretty heavily with vitamin D brought that up about like 30 or 40 % in the first month. that's helped me to feel more energized to get better sleep. My testosterone has doubled in that time as well. And I've also been eating more. So I did another thing that I do is a resting metabolism test just to see like how many calories I need to be eating per day. And.

Dave Schell (29:07.042)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (29:10.799)
it was kind of in the back of my head, well maybe I'm not eating enough. And sure enough, I was eating like 2,800 calories, which is still a decent amount of calories, but I really need like 3,600 to 4,000 calories a day. So I started eating more and I've gained like maybe one or two pounds over the course of 12 weeks, but.

My view to max has also gone up 10%. So I'm not too worried about that. Like, however, one of the numbers, one of the markers that's a little weird is that my LDL is actually kind of high. So I'm kind of working through that right now. And I don't know if it's because I am eating more like, you know, essentially overeating in a sense, because that does have a tendency to raise LDL. at the same time, I also have genetic markers that are raised that are like, you have, you know, genetic risk for.

Dave Schell (29:39.235)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (30:05.324)
atherosclerosis and other things like that. So that can be a little dangerous even though I have a really high view to max, which is, know, again, correlated with cardiovascular health and reduced risk of all cause mortality and all that sort of stuff. that's just, that's one of the main things that I think has been a huge game changer is just eating more in terms of performance and energy and getting stuff done and staying motivated and all of that. It doesn't like, yeah, it really, I,

One of the things that I just keep going back to is I'm just like, I do feel really fit and my numbers like match all of that. And everybody I talk to they're like, yeah, you're really fit. But at the same time, I feel like I'm an imposter or something like that. I'm like, I'm not actually that fit. you know? So, but I just say, yeah, well my performance is going up. Like that's not a fluke because you've stayed consistent. And it's really cool.

Dave Schell (30:48.579)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (31:00.015)
So I'm going to need to reevaluate and be like, well, what's my next like, you know, maybe it's a, maybe it's a five minute, or maybe it's a 10 minute, power, power goal that we, you know, kind of go to because that will get us closer, you know, towards the, you know, the, the race specific sort of stuff, or maybe it's a 15 minute one. yeah, do you, do you have any suggestions on like, like I like the idea of just keeping the five minute test.

but maybe changing it to like an eight minute one or 10 minute or something like that could be useful at this point.

Dave Schell (31:35.424)
Yeah, think it obviously it's not going to be the same test because like we're but as we get more specific it's like having that goal. I'm always a fan of like reverse engineering things and so thinking about like okay you held 400 watts for five minutes so like okay what percentage of that can you hold for 30 minutes and then like see that go up and like but breaking it down to chunks where it's like okay maybe you start with 10 times three on one minute rest and then that becomes

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (31:57.22)
Right.

Dave Schell (32:05.198)
you know, 10 times 4 and then 6 times 5 and eventually it's just one long 30 minute block at that, you know, so.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (32:11.023)
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's kind of what I was thinking and imagining too is like the, like, I see, you know, like we started with like VO two max stuff, and then I just see everything kind of morphing and changing until we hit like a point where it's like, yep, you're going to do a 35 minute race right here. And that's where, know, you do like the one continuous 35 minute interval or, know, like maybe it's your second one or something along those lines. And that's the cool thing is we have essentially like,

Dave Schell (32:29.539)
Yep.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (32:40.196)
three or four more testing rounds, you know, to kind of keep, you know, manipulating and switching that. And I think maybe we'll make a little bit more of a drastic jump after this next block in a sense to be, you know, okay, well, we've already established, you know, okay, Phil's got a high VO2 max now. So now we got to bring that second threshold up and, know, across the board. maybe it's two threshold workouts and one VO2 max workout or something along those lines.

Dave Schell (32:43.363)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (33:06.678)
Yeah, like VO2 maintenance. Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (33:09.006)
Yeah, yeah, a VU2 maintenance workout on Friday and then threshold, you know, sort of style, sort of workouts Monday and Tuesday. Yeah, cool.

Dave Schell (33:19.072)
Yeah, and I just want to point out, I think a lot of times we're...

Dave Schell (33:25.162)
like athletes will come to me and they're thinking about hiring me and it's like they've got a race in three months or something like that and what I'll tell people or people will say when's a good time to start with you you know and it's like my answer is always more time is always better to an extent like we don't want it so far out that you're getting burned out and stuff but it's like a lot of times people don't have this this opportunity

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (33:40.816)
Right.

Dave Schell (33:51.308)
because they have a race coming up. And so it's like, you're trying to quickly move through things, but it's like this opportunity to like, the sky's the limit. We can just keep working the VO2 and then once, like what we expect, what I would expect the next one, we're gonna see some diminishing returns. So let's say you jumped up 10%. So maybe next time it's gonna be like 3%. And the next, and the time after that, if we kept doing it, maybe it's gonna be more like 1%. So it's like shifting that. And like you said, it's like thinking about

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (34:15.857)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Schell (34:20.802)
we're talking about the power curve or the pace curve, like shifting our focus from the left end a little bit more to the right end and pushing that out.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (34:28.784)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's ultimately what we have to do for, you know, a threshold style race as well. Like we don't have to go all the way to the right, you know, side of the curve where it's like Ironman pace or something like that. But we need to really eventually focus on the development of, you know, true like second threshold at that point. And we haven't seen really any movement in that. And that's to be expected because, you know, when you're doing specific work, that's what you expect.

Dave Schell (34:41.622)
Right.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (34:58.479)
you know, specifically to be enhanced. But the way that I view it is that if you're building a house, like what I'm trying to do right now is make the roof as high as possible. And that's what VO2 Max is. And then the second floor is second threshold. So then what we're gonna do is we're just gonna try to push that shit as close to, you know, VO2 Max as we get closer and closer to the race. Because, you know, the higher...

Dave Schell (35:00.334)
Yeah.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (35:25.234)
percentage of your VO2 max you can maintain just the better outcome you're going to have especially with a race that's 30 to 40 minutes long.

Dave Schell (35:33.046)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's going to be right on the cusp of those two. The two systems is how I think of it, right? It's like where they overlap and stuff like that. But it's like, yeah, it's going to be kind of right smack in the middle there where you're wanting, you're kind of like pushing both of them to their limit.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (35:41.18)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (35:51.418)
Right. Yeah. And in the beginning too, like I think, or actually like the, test that I just did, you know, my, my second threshold running heart rate was still like, you know, 88 or 90 % of, you know, my max heart rate, for example. So there's still, there's still not that room, not that much room for it to actually like go up at this point. so continuing to establish and build that up.

just a little bit more, you will be good. And then, you know, starting to really ramp up and get better at those sustained efforts is gonna be, it's gonna be tough. But, cause short punchy efforts, like I can survive through. It's just that it's those like longer maintained hard efforts. It can be pretty rough. But.

Dave Schell (36:39.672)
Yeah.

Dave Schell (36:44.846)
sure you're in good spot.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (36:46.288)
Yeah, we'll get there when we get there.

Dave Schell (36:48.546)
That's right. Where can other people find you?

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (36:51.398)
Yeah. So, Dave and I have done a series of podcasts called fast physiology, where we dive deeper into all of this, you know, kind of physiological testing, you know, the science behind endurance performance and other things like that on my podcast called critical, the critical oxygen podcast. You can also catch me on Instagram at critical O2. that's really where I do a lot of, you know, my answering of questions. you can get in touch with me if you want to do physiological consulting, or, know, like.

interested in coaching or courses or other things like that, reach out to me there. And yeah, those are the two places that are actually best. And then my website is criticaloxygen.com.

Dave Schell (37:30.22)
Awesome. Well, thank you very much and excited to see your progress and excited to see where you go from there.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (37:35.88)
Yeah, thanks Dave for all your help. really appreciate it. Definitely wouldn't be here without the wise words from you and kind of reigning in my ego every once in a while. Because I think I really struggle with overestimating what I can do in terms of training. And that makes it so I have a propensity to get injured and other things like that.

Dave Schell (37:59.968)
Yeah, my pleasure. Awesome. Until next time, take care. Bye.

Phil Batterson, Ph.D. (38:02.749)
Thanks Dave.