Dr. Kilgore and I did a preliminary case study in 2009 to determine if there was a correlation between oxygen saturation (in this case a lack thereof) and conditioning improvement. Kilgore himself was the subject and we had very interesting pre and post data points. He had been on a strength program for five or six months and the case study was a four week conditioning storm that included one day each of squatting, pressing, and deadlifting per week. We were still active with CrossFit at the time, and there are a couple benchmark workouts we used as tests. However, the four weeks consisted of carefully programmed conditioning workouts that wouldn’t have been possible to do had Kilgore not been so relatively strong.

Kilgore posted about this on his fitness related blog a few weeks ago. Let me know if you have any questions, and if there is a question for Kilgore, then I can probably have him jump in here and answer it. I’ll elaborate in this entry throughout the day if necessary.

“Questioning the Fit” post by Kilgore that includes the pre/post .pdf sheet.
—–

This post is perhaps one of the most relevant and important things to be put on this site, so I guess I’m going to have to explain why.

1. Dr. Kilgore was 50 years old in the first run of this case study. He had zero conditioning adaptation. After having an important surgery that halted other things in life, he was on a strength program for about half a year. Thus, he was as de-conditioned as you can get. We repeated the case study a SECOND time about a year later. Lon was equally de-conditioned (the last time he did conditioning was the first run through of the case study) and he was weaker (hadn’t been strength training up to the second run through as he had the first run through).

2. What we were specifically looking at was trying to bring down his oxygen saturation. The hypothesis was that this is a relevant metric for inducing a stress for improved adaptation. It may not even be an important metric, but there aren’t many that are testable regarding conditioning. The way I have thought about is that if we achieve a significant desaturation of O2 (in this case, we were shooting for at least a 4% reduction, hypoxemia in normal circumstances at sea level), that creates a deficit in substrates. A significant deficit in substrates is something that the body isn’t used to (especially in Lon’s case), so it must go through the adaptation process. In other words, O2 lowers (and whatever else that may be going on that we can’t easily measure), the body freaks out and goes, “Holy shit, we aren’t used to this, let’s improve the relevant physiology so that we can handle this same work load in the future or, god help us, handle a higher work load.” We show that in four weeks this was a very significant method of stressing Lon’s body to hugely increase his ability to do work.

2a. No, we aren’t saying the results are generalized to a greater population. We aren’t stupid. However, there are many people that have attained very good fitness or conditioning levels with high intensity exercise. Most of us have seen this work before, but never really quantified it.

2b. No, we aren’t suggesting that 02 saturation is a giant cog in the metabolic process. However, I think that it should garner relevant attention.

3. The pre/post tests were done in a specific order. I just realized that all of these aren’t in the document, so I’ll do my best to elaborate.
We tested ‘strength only’ with the lifts. We tested ‘endurance only’ with the run and row (although in retrospect, I would have increased the rowing distance from 1,000m to 2k or 2.5k to improve the relevancy of the test). Then we had an assortment of conditioning workouts from CrossFit. One was solely calisthenic based (“Cindy”), one was calisthenic and lifting based (“Diane”), and another was completely implement based. If you look at the first page of the document, you’ll see vast improvements in the tests that are included and Lon did not do worse on any pre/post test.

4. You’ll notice his results weren’t as good after the second run through. Lon and I are of the opinion that since he wasn’t as strong, he wasn’t able to push as hard in the workouts to achieve similar stresses.

5. More importantly, in order to achieve greater stresses strength was necessary. If you don’t have adequate stress, you aren’t able to push as hard or as long, and therefore can’t impose an adaptive stress on the system. Furthermore, if you are weaker, you are going to be a helluva lot more sore than if you were stronger. Lon experienced this firsthand, and during the first case study, he even said, “I couldn’t imagine being able to do this not being as strong as I am.”

6. Yes, Lon go weaker during the first phase, but what do you expect? He was squatting once on Monday, pressing once on Tuesday, and Deadlifting once on Thursday. This case study along, with my observations of the CrossFit class I had on similar programming, clearly showed me that this wasn’t enough strength training to improve strength, let alone maintain it. However, that point is relevant to the person(s) on a given program. If someone required significant conditioning increases and was already strong, they could achieve significant conditioning adaptations in a very short amount of time.

7. This case study has many limitations but it creates many questions. If you look at it from a hard science perspective, then there needs to be follow up research. If you look at it from a practicality and experiential standpoint, you know this kind of thing is already happening. There are certain requirements that will make it so:
7a. The program is very, very carefully programmed.
7b. Each workout must achieve an intensity level that is a ‘significant stress’. Recovery between these bouts of high intensity should be minimized over time. In other words, higher outputs and minimizing recovery are the goals. You can’t do this in workouts that are longer than 15 minutes — you can’t sustain such high outputs that long. Most workouts Lon did here (and what I would program) are under 12 minutes with the majority around the 8 minute mark.

There are many more conclusions and questions that I can draw from all of this, but I won’t spoon feed you any more. I’m open to productive discussion.