Most coaches and researchers are convinced that you have to do a series of short bursts of very fast speed training to improve long-term endurance, but they do not know why. The most offered explanation is that muscle fatigue caused by many hours of cycling is associated with a reduction in muscle fibers ability to contract with force. Now a study from France shows that short bursts of very fast cycling improve endurance for cycling competitions that take many hours, because the stronger you are, the less of your maximal effort is needed to get the same pressure on the pedals (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, January 2005).

Muscles are made up of millions of individual fibers. Each fiber is a single muscular thread that functions independently. When you contract a muscle, you contract only a small percentage of these fibers at the same time. As each muscle fiber fatigues, you lose the ability to contract that fiber. When enough of these fibers stop contracting efficiently, you lose strength and your muscles feel tired. However, stronger fibers take longer to fatigue because they are being worked at a lower percentage of their capacity. So stronger muscles can be exercised for longer periods of time.

Making each muscle fiber stronger and bigger, allows it to exert force for a longer period of time and therefore, increases endurance. The only way to make a muscle stronger is to exercise that muscle against progressively greater resistance, and that applies to each muscle fiber also. It is impossible to put great pressure on a muscle for a long time. When you do all-out fast bursts for a short time, you exert so much pressure that you have to back off after a few seconds or up to a minute or two. All-out sprints for a short period followed by resting and then repeating the sprint is called interval training. It makes the entire muscle stronger and delays fatigue.

Athletes in all sports use long and short intervals. Short intervals take less than 30 seconds and because you do not build up significant amounts of lactic acid in that time, you can do hundreds of repeats in a single workout. Long intervals take two to three minutes and are very damaging to your muscles. Because you feel burning in your muscles and become very short of breath, you can do only a few of these in a single workout. So athletes in all sports that require endurance do both long and short intervals to help them exercise longer.

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in Sports Medicine and three other specialties.

Dr. Mirkin's daily features on fitness have been heard on CBS Radio News stations since the 1970's. He has written 16 books including The Sportsmedicine Book, the best-selling book on the subject that has been translated into many languages. His latest book is The Healthy Heart Miracle, published by HarperCollins.

Dr. Mirkin is a graduate of Harvard University and Baylor University College of Medicine. A Boston native, Dr. Mirkin did his residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at Johns Hopkins Medical School, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, and Associate Clinical Professor in Pediatrics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He has run more than forty marathons and is now a serious tandem bicycle rider with his wife, nutritionist Diana Mirkin.