From: watanabe@sunflower.cs.uiuc.edu (Larry Watanabe)
Subject: Re: Stamina
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 18:10:59 GMT

exukds@exu.ericsson.se (Kishore D. Sadani) writes:

>In article 26082@crpmks.uucp, billb@crpmks.uucp (Bill Bochnik 
> (Info Systems)) writes:

>>Any ideas for increasing stamina for aerobic type activities (bike riding, 
>>stair mater, etc) beside the obvious of exercice, exercice, exercise?  I do 
>>the stairmaster as a warmup (10-15 min) before doing the weights.  My intent 
>>is to lose some weight while toning and building up some mass (not a lot).  
>>It seems 
>>that my weight training goes well (can do more reps or higher weights + 
>>feel like I'm doing something) but my stairmaster workout is not improving.
>>Iconcentrate on doing it correctly (form) but it does not seem to help my 
>>stamina much.

Bill, I don't think weight training does anything for your aerobic endurance
since it relies primarily on anaerobic metabolism.
(but of course it is excellent for your strength! and with higher reps, 
probably good for muscular endurance). 

Thus, you are doing 10-15 minutes of aerobic exercise. This is 
too little to experience a training effect.

You need to do at least 30 minutes of aerobic activity, and keep
your heart rate at about 130-180 bpm to improve your endurance.
Less than 130 bpm, and the exercise will not be intense enough.
More than 180, and you may not improve your cardio-vascular
fitness because you may be working anaerobically.

>However, inorder to increase stamina, there is a technique
>common to jogging,  called WIND SPRINTS..

Wind sprints are a form of interval training, which has been shown to
enlarge the heart faster than simple overdistance training. 

>Since I too work out on the Stair-Master, here is what I have been
>doing to increase my stamina. I normally step for 15-18 mins but,
>instead of going at a steady pace, I increase my pace, and go all
>out, for 30-45 secs, after which I return to my normal steady pace.
>I try and repeat this two to three times towards the latter half
>of my workout (I divide my workout into 3 sections with 5-6 mins
>for a warmup). This has helped me tremendously. 
>I have noticed that my breath recovery is very quick and within a
>couple of minutes I am back to normal.

This is also known as fartlek (no jokes, please) training or
training at varying speeds. 

>Also in my opinion, If you are trying to lose weight, it is more
>beneficial to break your aerobic exercises down into sections 
>of 10-15 min workouts, with rest in between sections, rather than 
>30-45 min "killer" workouts.

I think modern training theory emphasises quality as well as quantity
of training. The quality is measured in percent, i.e. if you could
run a certain distance d in time t for your best time, then running
distance d at time t + 15% t would qualify as 85%.

But usually in order to do a higher quality workout, you need to have
a lower work rate (percent time spent exercising during interval 
training). If you do a lower quality workout, you can achieve a 
higher work rate.

In general, doing higher quality workouts will improve speed at the
cost of endurance, and lower quality ones will improve endurance
but not speed. But I don't think there is any Olympic medal yet
for stairmaster :)

-Larry Watanabe

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