Triathletes, average folks learn from performance labs

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ David Holmes looks like the kind of athlete you'd expect to find in a human performance lab. The amateur triathlete breathing into a mask, wearing a heart monitor and running on

Monday, June 20th 2005, 2:15 pm

By: News On 6

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ David Holmes looks like the kind of athlete you'd expect to find in a human performance lab. The amateur triathlete breathing into a mask, wearing a heart monitor and running on a treadmill is a trim 160 pounds with about 7 percent body fat.

Fitness newbie Mike Pierce, however, seems a little out of place. Weighing in at 265, the 36-year-old salesman, wants to lose 50 pounds.

But both are finding benefits from the performance lab at Meredith College. Typically the domain of grad students, research projects and super-athletes, a few of these labs are opening up to the public.

``There are lots of recreational athletes out there trying to gauge where they stand in fitness, people who are trying to get started on a program and can't quite get a handle on what they're doing,'' said Kim Rostello, who opened a lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1982.

At Appalachian State University in the mountain town of Boone, N.C., where Lance Armstrong has tested, ``We're always flooded with people,'' said lab director David Nieman.

Such labs that are open to the public are still a rarity though.

Chris Eschbach, a triathlete and assistant professor of exercise and sport science, runs the lab at Meredith College in Raleigh. He advertises his 3-year-old operation in a local running magazine and on the Web.

``If you just train, you're going to become more fit. This is just an added tool for the analytical type of person,'' Eschbach said, explaining the appeal to the average weekend jock.

For example, both Holmes and Pierce found out from a round of high-tech exercise that they've been making the same mistake: training too hard when they should take it easy and not hard enough when they should push themselves to the limit.

Eschbach says that while a lab assessment isn't a magic pill, it can provide information that helps make time in the gym more effective.

The testing is performed on either a treadmill or stationary bike, moving in stages, from very easy to the grueling. A respiratory mask measures oxygen and carbon dioxide levels; heart rate, blood pressure and blood samples also are collected at regular intervals.

The test results show how much oxygen is consumed, an indication of cardiorespiratory effectiveness.

Eschbach also tests for the lactate-threshold training zone, which indicates at what heart rate someone is training aerobically _ when the muscles use oxygen for prolonged, less-intense activities _ or anaerobically _ when the muscles don't use oxygen for energy, such as weight-lifting or sprinting.

Then he interviews the client to get details about a typical workout and suggests how to improve that workout.

For those without a lab nearby, Eschbach offers this quick test: Examine your heart rate at a set workload each month, then see if you have a lower heart rate over time. A lower heart rate indicates an increase in the heart's efficiency.

Mike Martino, an associate professor of exercise at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Ga., who taught once Eschbach, said too many people concentrate on weight training and do as little as 10 minutes a day of cardiovascular work.

Both are needed, the former Olympic swim coach said, and the lab results ``might open your eyes to seeing what kind of cardiovascular shape you're in.''

For Holmes, tests on both the bike and the treadmill showed that he needs to slow down on his long bike rides and increase the intensity of his shorter rides.

``I want to close the gap between when your lungs give out and when your legs give out,'' he said.

In his case, his legs give out first so Holmes wants to increase their tolerance to lactic acid, which builds up in the intense, or anaerobic training, contributing to muscle fatigue.

Pierce discovered that even though his body fat is higher than that of triathletes, he had one thing in common with them: He worked out at the wrong heart rate.

``I was either working out way too hard or not hard enough,'' says Pierce, who hopes to run a 5K one day. For now, his goal is to ``get to the point where I go jogging and not have to stop every three or four minutes.''