Interesting link, thanks (though wow, they sure do bullshit-shine it up when they're making their sales pitch on it now).

There's definitely something to be said for movement efficiency. All the efficiency in the world still won't do much for a poorly conditioned athlete though–if I'm more efficient, perhaps I run faster at 100% effort, can cover more ground, etc. This likely means some reduction in how much I exert myself, but I'd say it's equally likely that I wind up exerting myself just as much, but with better results. You can't neglect conditioning. If you want to get into notions of conserving energy I think that's a little different than movement efficiency.

Rock on
Mike T Nelson
PhD(c), CSCS
http://www.extremehumanperformance.com

You *must* listen to this Gray Cook replay, at least as long as it is still available:

http://bit.ly/kb-gray

Where he talks about barefoot running as a self-limiting exercise, and describes how he works with top athletes (from Andy Roddick to the best NFL athletes in the Superbowl) to address underlying problems in their primitive movement patterns.

You can increase work capacity in at least two ways. Brute force increase your aerobic/anaerobic/lactic processing systems etc., or just be more efficient in using what you already have!

I was playing last night amongst a whole bunch of club teams in the Bay Area and it struck me how poorly most of the players moved. Not in terms of raw speed–there were runners here and there–but in terms of the quality, ease, and fluidity of their movement (running and planting to cut in particular).

I've struggled with this for months (years) but Gray Cook, Pavel, Mark Reifkind et al. have helped me make great leaps in being more efficient as an athlete, not just muscling it through like some folks I see.

Live strong and move well

I'm glad to see L. Wu's heart-rate monitor recordings which provide some corroborating support… Anyone else wearing monitors during tournaments?

Sean

If we accept that as true, then training age becomes even more important and it's apparent that choosing better "athletes," who've been working harder for longer, makes for better frisbee recruits than simply selecting on a skills basis. I don't know if that's a deal-breaking difference if we're talking about a difference of one or two years, but comparing a guy with only a couple years to one with 5+ might make it more apparent.

Two other thoughts that stem from work capacity being a yearly quantity:

1) Staying active/playing in the off-season (ie, playing over the summer/training regularly for college athletes, playing/training in the winter for club ones) has a big benefit to improving tournament fitness–you're continually improving your work capacity rather than letting it sag.

2) It becomes important to push through soreness in an effort to improve work capacity, but at the same time it's important to recognize that on a given team (esp. in college where I imagine there are greater disparities than HS or club) some guys will be better prepared to handle such a load compared to others. I'm definitely planning on getting a (brief) training history from next year's team so I can at least be aware of, if not outright account for, these differences.

I read recently that work capacity improves year over year rather than month over month. Looking back over the last year of my training data, this definitely seems true.

At regionals a few months ago, I burned 3700+ kcal in one day (about half an Ironman), and it looks like a chunk of that was in one particularly long game where I spent 23min in aerobic mode (< 168bpm) and 39min in anaerobic (> 168bpm, HRmax ~225bpm).

That said, on average over 10 games of heart-rate monitor data (Northwest regionals+sectionals) the active time does seem closer to 20 minutes (aerobic+anaerobic), with the harder games being predominantly anaerobic over aerobic.