AW promotion: INSCYD is an advanced tool which helps you analyse and plan your performance

What is INSCYD?

INSCYD is a unique training tool that gives athletes and coaches a diagnosis of their physiology and training using metrics otherwise only previously available to elite athletes.

Armed with this information, the creation of highly detailed individual training plans is possible.

Human performance labs, (national) federations and coaches of different sports use INSCYD for lab and field testing. It is agnostic when it comes to the kind of testing and data you use: it can use measured VO2-, lactate- and/or GPS measurements and you can adapt the testing protocol to your demands. INSCYD makes sure it calculates a large number of physiological metrics using innovative algorithms that have been scientifically validated to prove their accuracy. This ease of use makes INSCYD a much more accessible analysis tool.

The Running Power-Performance Decoder

INSCYD’s latest feature is called the “Running Power-Performance Decoder” and it eliminates the need to go to a testing lab to gather physiological and performance metrics. It captures all the data you would get in a lab and more, in a simple real-world test. Lab-level analysis of your body’s performance is now possible with just a GPS watch.

The runner completes a test protocol of four intervals using just a GPS watch. By performing the intervals outdoors, test results are more relevant to training and racing environments, compared to treadmill lab tests. In other words: there is no loss of accuracy due to projecting lab treadmill data to outdoor running.

What it measures: the metabolic profile

Up until now, physiological testing in the field was mostly restricted to determining the athlete’s anaerobic threshold. You needed lab diagnostics to provide the VO_2max or other relevant information like fat & carbohydrate combustion rates. With the PPD-R you capture all the data you would get in a lab test and field test combined.

But there is more, as INSCYD is the only physiological assessment tool that captures aerobic and anaerobic (glycolytic) performance – aka VO_2max and VLa_max. Since athletics depend heavily on glycolytic (anaerobic) performance, VLa_max is a vital metric in finding the most effective training levels. INSCYD provides the only scientifically validated measurement of this glycolytic power on the market.

Decoding athletic performance – an 800m run

Here’s an example of how INSCYD can give you a better understanding of the required metabolic profile an athlete should have for a specific race. Imagine you want to run 800m in 1:43 (min:sec). With an average running economy, this requires an energy equivalent of 120 ml VO2 per minute per kilogram body weight. Of course no athlete has a VO2max of 120 ml/min/kg. As a result, a significant portion of the energy has to come from anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolism.

Assume the INSCYD test results show that you have a VO2max of 80 ml/min/kg. You will reach this VO2max at the end of the 800m race. The energetic gap caused by the VO2 taking time to rise is mostly covered by your super-fast non-lactic energy system (creatine phosphate system). As a result, there is “only” an equivalent of 40 ml/min/kg VO2 that should be covered by another energy system.

This energy will come from the (anaerobic) glycolytic system. Whenever this system produces energy, it also produces lactate. Therefore, the lactate production rate is a direct marker for the energy production rate. That is why VLamax (maximum lactate production rate) is the anaerobic (glycolytic) brother of the well-known VO2max.

To cover the equivalent of 40 ml/min/kg of VO2 you need to accumulate a minimum of 0.14 mmol/l/s of lactate per second, resulting in a lactate concentration of approx 16 mmol/l at the end of the race. However, to actually produce that amount of lactate in such a short time, you need a higher VLamax: 0.6 mmol/l/s. That is because fatigue (e.g. acidosis) will cause you to only be able to use a fraction of your VLamax.

For comparison: world class marathon runners have a VLa_max in the ballpark of 0.3. But if you want to run 100m in sub 10sec you need a VLa_max in the ballpark of 1.0. So the 0.6 in the example here is slightly on the upper end.

Example wrap-up

To run a fast 800m race, you need a good combination of: running economy, VO2max, VLamax and the fraction of VLamax that you can use. You can improve all 4 of those performance determinants with training.

Even though those performance determining factors are known to coaches, it wasn’t possible to access the athletic performance at such a detailed level – until now. At best, you could measure some of the metrics in a lab, but not where it matters: on the field. This is different now with INSCYD. With INSCYD a coach may now carry out very simple field tests using GPS data only or lactate measurement or even VO₂ analysis (when available) and create a full 360° metabolic profile of an athlete.

This profile contains all the metrics listed above and furthermore:

• VO2max (maximum aerobic power)
• VLamax (maximum anaerobic power) and the fraction you can use
• Anaerobic Threshold (FTP)
• Running economy
• Lactate accumulation and recovery rates to set prices interval training
• FatMax (intensity at which the runner burns the most fat)
• Fat and carbohydrate utilisation at any intensity (kcal/h and g/h)
• Estimated available glycogen stores

Especially the fat and carbohydrate utilisation information is proven to be very useful in other sports like road cycling and triathlon. It helps athletes and coaches to prescribe precise fuelling nutrition strategies for races and training to avoid running low in energy when it is needed.

For coaches wanting what is probably the most in-depth testing tool available on the market today, INSCYD provides an easy-to-use solution to help maximise every element of their athlete’s training programme.

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