Stephen Littlewood joins this post for an expanded look at Cardiac Drift and breathing. Stephen is a retired Marine Intelligence Officer who specializes in ultra endurance athletes and has a great practice in Virginia doing gait analysis and metabolic testing.
This expands on our previous blog post identifying what Cardiac Drift is. Check that out if you aren't familiar with it first, then dive into more detail here.
In this episode you will find:
3:00 For clients using smart devices that show heart rate, when should they monitor for cardiac drift and how will they know if it may be affecting their training
5:03 Cardiac drift impact on interval sessions and importance of recovery
6:57 Cardiac drift is something that we can monitor and train for, and we discuss training methods to limit the negative impact of cardiac drift
9:20 Heat acclimation
10:50 Saunas and why I want my wife to let me get one!
13:00 Non-training things we can do including nutrition, hydration, weight lifting
13:45 Gear selection and why not to use sunscreen when running!
15:12 A visual test (other than urine) to test hydration
18:20 The use of breath training and how diaphragm is a huge part of the core!
20:06 Horizontal Breathing
21:40 Book recommendation - Breathing for Warriors
22:18 Talk about breath training devices
22:36 Book recommendation - Breath by James Nestor
24:09 Measuring resting tidal volume and benchmarking
28:14 How improving breathing will take stress off of the heart
30:10 $5 device to test breathing
33:01 Using metabolic testing with clients
Check out Stephen at https://www.ultraflunkierunningco.com/ or on Instagram @ultraflunkie
We have a great LinkedIn post showing one of our great tests for Thoracic mobility that you can check out here. Limited thoracic mobility can restrict breathing!
Here are some of the references mentioned during the interview:
Heat adaptations:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1566070216300078
Beginner breathing retraining:
https://www.thebreathingclass.com/breathing-for-warriors-book
Cardiac Drift at Rest: