HOW YOUR BODY BUILDS ENDURANCE

To be successful at cycling and I don’t mean just competing in races, I mean to be able to increase the distance you ride and to increase the enjoyment you get from each ride. With this in mind you need to build your body’s endurance levels. This week we are going to look at how you can do that and to help you learn to train more efficiently and effectively.

Firstly we look at how we build endurance: once we have an understanding of how we function we will look in more detail at training with heart rate zones. Then we will be ready to look at time efficient training and the two main ways we can successfully build endurance (see ‘Basics of Modern Training’).

How the body builds endurance and cardiovascular performance

There are 3 main components to cardiovascular performance.

1) heart rate – how many beats per minute.
2) Stroke volume – the amount of blood pumped per minute.
3) Heart contractibility – the forcefulness of each contraction.

As you improve each of these 3 areas the amount of blood supplying the muscles increases. This in turn improves VO2 max (the amount of oxygen you can take in, process and use).

The blood is used by the muscle cells mitochondria to provide energy to perform a contraction. These mitochondria use the oxygen supplied to them by the blood to breakdown carbohydrates or fats which manufacture ATP (or energy). As you increase mitochondrial density, more energy becomes available allowing you to perform for longer.

Put simply, if you increase the amount of oxygen you body can take in, process and deliver to the muscles which will be used in the synthesis of ATP, endurance will improve. We will look at how to boost mitochondrial density when we look at training intensity.