There is a lot of smart teams out there and they don't have a problem finding ways to gain an edge!
You are not a rock, nor are you the above plate, a rock and the plate doesn't engage in metabolic activities. Your not a combustion engine, but your air flow is as important!
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Tour de France champion Alberto Contador has been suspended from cycling for one year and stripped of his 2010 Tour de France victory, officials in Spain said Wednesday.
Only living cells can do metabolic activities, yet restrict their O2 and you will reduce the chance for them to move.
It's the cell's capacity to extract and transform energy from its surroundings is much like a NASCAR motor that allows you to move when you step on the gas. One of the rules in NASCAR, you can't use superchargers like F1 cars, etc...
Yes, internal combustion engines are examples of machines that convert chemical energy (gasoline) to heat. That heat is then converted to mechanical energy. Higher the heat, more power produced.
So a car has a mixture of gas, the human has foodstuffs, mainly (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) only carbohydrates can be degraded w/o direct O2.
There is a difference how a motor and living motors work. Biological engines cannot convert heat energy to other forms, such as mechanical energy, in biological systems, heat is released as useless component of reactions in which other forms of work are accomplished. So its best to have your engine fine tuned, you waste about 80% to heat. So the smallest adjustments makes a difference on a bike.
The study of exercise physiology is very much in its infancy compared with other sciences. It is however bustling with activity, regarding the limits of human potential, mostly how people think.
The bottom line, it's about the thermodynamics, stating that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Human physical activities in life and athletics needs energy, as it acquires, converts, stores, and utilizes it, it is the key to understanding how your motor works.
Energy flows from solar energy (sun) to producers (mainly plants) to consumers (man), it is part of a web of organization in nature. Understand that matter is anything that occupies space and has mass. It includes the solids, liquids, and gases around you and within your body and its on the move i.e. heart is always on the move...
In the world of biological, first, energy is not created; rather it is acquired in one form an then converted to another. Next, this conversion process is very inefficient, so much of the energy is released in non usable form, heat.
Energetics seems abstract, especially when you learn that thermodynamics doesn't tell you much about the time it takes to complete a biological process. A biological process is a process of a living organism, their chemical reactions or other events that result in a transformation.
In other words, you are a bag of chemicals.
However, if you can understand that the ability to do exercise, depends on the conversion of one form of energy to another, then it starts to become apparent i.e. a better flow of O2 makes a difference.
By far, the three most abundant elements in living things (visual balloon) are oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.
Let's be clear, VO2 is a function of O2 transport (a cardiovascular parameter), a measurable factor i.e. restrictor plate sizes ports being smaller move less O2, whereas endurance is more dependent on muscle mitochondrial capacity. The maximal ability of mitochondria in muscle to consume O2 is several times greater than the ability of the circulation to supply O2. So think of the cells having lungs and they need to breath (in & out) not be choked. Having severe difficulty in breathing because of a constricted or obstructed like your throat or lack of air.
VO2 is probably must limited by arterial O2 transport (fuel lines). It should be clear that max O2 consumption (VO2) is limited by capacity for arterial O2 transport, which is, in turn, limited by max cardiac output (less volume). It's not just about air flow. You can't over look other functions such as hormones and substrates, removal of wastes, acid-base balance and temperature regulation all depend on the circulation. But air is a big one.
Fatigue results from the depletion of key metabolites. Metabolomics is the systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind. Fingerprints like muscle creatine, ATP, muscle glycogen, liver glycogen, blood glucose, and arterial as well as muscle O2. Without adequate levels of each of these, "high rates of work" with muscles cannot continue.
During contraction in athletic competitions as we know them, muscular fatigue usually appears to the be peripheral due to fatigue of the muscles i.e. legs. The accumulation of particular metabolites that are not moved hinder continuance of exercise. A type of choking, and poor work., yet producing heat. Overheating causes blood flow redistribution away from muscle and liver, more dehydration, fluid and electrolyte redistribution, CNS dysfunction all screw up your homeostasis. Human homeostasis refers to the body's ability to physiologically regulate its inner environment to ensure its stability in response to fluctuations. The car motor uses air, water, oil, and other fluids to regulate its heat.
The heart is not thought to fatigue and cause reduced exercise power output. It's a pump not unlike the pump that brings water to plants in a field. It's stroke volume is however important as it moves life giving water to the ditch.
So think of the single cell as a plant in the field. Each cell type has a characteristic shape and organization. All cells have a interconnected system of bundled fibers, slender threads and lattices (like a screen) and it moves. Many fibers are permanent, they are the filaments in skeletal muscle cells, which are the basis of contraction. They hold things together and only pull.
Did you know? You can't push a rope!
It's very hard to change your physical make up. But you can change your brain, learn things that are tangible or concrete i.e. like opening the air ways for mountain stages like I think some have learned by using drugs.
A motor has an intake and has to have an out-take. I bring this up because, if we open up the intake, push more air into the motor is makes more power. If you restrict its air flow, you lower its chance to really get going. On the other side you have to remove the waste to make room for the air & gas mixture. Does a supercharger make more hp, yes! Does removing the waste make more hp, yes, but not like the intake. In the body, the waste can even build up and shut you down.
This happens with a poor bike fit. If you can't get good air, you also lower your chance to remove the waste. You might as well say you have over choked your motor!
So how can we make a human get better air? Open the pipes! Beta-1 refers to heart, Beta-2 refers to lungs.
If we can open the air ways we get more performance. So the question becomes is everyone on the same level of natural measurements?
So your in a race. Is it fair to use drugs, knowing they can open you air ways?
Are you moving correctly? Is your bike setup allowing you your best movement? There is no question, there are ways to get you breathing better, it just seems many of the fit ideas don't address this.
So now the question becomes, is it fair to have a tent at your home that builds more RBC's. Should not everyone have one of these if they are in the same race? Should everyone be running the same gas! Why should one person run a gas that is hotter than the other person?
Perhaps, a complete atmospheric hypobaric bus or motor home should be used to keep your RBC's up?
We know that hypobaric chambers can be used by athletes to imporve their athletic performance.
No time for media! Everyone to the bus, now!
You have a mt. stage in the morning, so you might as well be at your best!
Air contains about 21% oxygen, the partial pressure of 02 is progressively lower w/ increasing elevation.
Any reduction in the pressure of 02 entering the lungs will cause a change in the pressure gradient and hence a reduction in the amount of 02 being carried to the lungs. Hypobaric chambers are necessary to acclimatize the body to such conditions which are experienced at high altitudes.
Hypobaric chambers are also used to enhance physical endurance and gain considerable health benefits. Increased physical endurance leads to an increase in the production of red blood cells. Research has shown that being at a high altitude even for four hours a day, can stimulate a hormone erythropoietin, which causes more red blood cells to be produced.
Due to the increase in (RBC) red blood cells, more 02 is carried in the blood to the muscles causing them to work at a higher level, thereby increasing your aerobic capacity. After using the hypobaric or altitude mask, tent or some kind of chamber, your performance is increased as the increase in RBC count carries more oxygen and nutrients to the muscles where it is converted into energy for improved athletic performance. Also these red blood cells transport waste material such as lactic acid away from the muscles i.e. like after a race.
An effect is the increased oxygen transport capacity of the blood. Under normal atmospheric pressure, oxygen transport is limited by the oxygen binding capacity of hemoglobin in red blood cells (4 O2 to 1 RBC) and very little oxygen is transported by blood plasma.
Because the hemoglobin of the red blood cells is almost saturated with oxygen under atmospheric pressure, this route of transport cannot be exploited any further.
Oxygen transport by plasma, however is significantly increased using as the Hyperbaric stimulus.
Living things must be capable of transporting nutrients, wastes and gases to and from cells.
To cut off this transport process will shut you down.
Even a single-celled organisms use their cell surface as a point of exchange with the outside environment.
Multicellular organisms have developed transport and circulatory systems to deliver oxygen and food to cells and remove carbon dioxide and metabolic wastes.
If you didn't know, sponges are the simplest animals, yet even they have a transport system! Seawater is the medium of transport and is propelled "in and out" of the sponge by ciliary action. Simple animals, such as the hydra and planaria, lack specialized organs such as hearts and blood vessels, instead using their skin as an exchange point for materials. So an increase in the caliber of any vessels moves more matter.
The size of the living animals vessels, limits the size an animal can attain. To become larger, they need specialized organs and organ systems, larger vessels if they don't have it, put a "supercharger on them can get more air" or change the mixture of gas.
What does this all mean? If you can make your legs more like your heart, getting more air & gas for ATP, they do a better job of working at the cell level. Just understand that about 50% of potential chemical energy released from foodstuffs is captured in the chemical intermediate ATP.
Now you can start to understand how important it is to have the correct use of your legs. Too high or too low doesn't seem like it matters, but it does. Just a few millimeters in the wrong direction can send you into oxygen debt.
I think everyone knows that you have to have a huge blower on a motor to make super hp. I think most are aware that in the responses to exercise that respiratory events are at times inadequate to provide the ATP necessary to sustain work.
That said, aerobic metabolism has been well understood, the role of glycolytic (anaerobic) metabolism has not.
So, in most cases, a human that is well trained can remove lactate several times greater than a untrained individual. At about 60% of Vo2max blood lactate levels begin increasing dramatically.
Lactic Acid
A lactic acid test is a blood test that measures the level of lactic acid made in the body. Most of it is made by muscle tissue and red blood cells. When the oxygen level in the body is normal, carbohydrate breaks down into water and carbon dioxide. When the oxygen level is low, carbohydrate breaks down for energy and makes lactic acid.
Lactic acid levels get higher when strenuous exercise or other conditions-such as heart failure, a severe infection (sepsis), or shock-lower the flow of blood and oxygen throughout the body. Lactic acid levels can also get higher when the liver is severely damaged or diseased, because the liver normally breaks down lactic acid.
Very high levels of lactic acid cause a serious, sometimes life-threatening condition called lactic acidosis. Lactic acidosis can also occur in a person who takes metformin (Glucophage) to control diabetes when heart or kidney failure or a severe infection is also present.
