Why is your performance limited in the heat for a robotic?
And I'm guessing, is it limited to strength athletes too?
Yeah.
So the, the in general, um, heat within a muscle can actually
improve muscle performance, increases, enzymatic activities.
And, um, a lot of other aspects of the muscle performance can improve.
So really in strength athletes, if body temperatures really is
elevated, That you may not see any real difference in, in performance.
We see this in sprinters and others as well.
Um, if their body temperature is too high where they're actually having
some, uh, have to really, really thermoregulate and they're having some
other things, their sprint, their power may be, there might be some slight
change, but it's pretty minimal because their bouts of exercise are so short.
Once you get to longer distances.
And I do a lot of work with track and field being here
at, uh, university of Oregon.
And, um, we, uh, look at people around, right.
Brightness are hitting the 800 meters and beyond distances, or we're
talking, you know, anything around most to, to anything longer than that.
Then you start seeing these small documents and performance.
Um, as you get hot as with heat, the longer you go, the more.
You can have bigger depth deficits.
And so, um, the 10 K as the marathoners in the 5k is, and certainly in
cycling world, you know, most of our there's very few, except that track
cyclists are being very extreme bouts.
So the, the real thing that happens is your.
Muscles need oxygen right in the, we deliver that through, by bringing
more blood to that, to the muscles.
And that's why blood doping works.
X, Y every, every goal for a train cyclist is to try and increase
oxygen delivery to the muscles.
And then we can utilize that.
So anything that's pulling that auction away from the muscles, oftentimes
going to decrease performance.
So you're getting a competition between thermoregulation getting a competition
between trying to deliver more blood to the muscles, more options than muscles.
Then you can have a competition that's going to be set up.
And that's what usually decreases performance.
There's mental sides of it, too.
People don't like to be hot and, uh, extremely hot and they feel more fatigued
as part of our defense mechanisms to make sure we don't over cook it right.
And get injured.
So there's a lot of different factors that can play in, but
definitely the longer distances are going to be more effected by heat.
And then what happens?
How does your body actually cool, because I think this is misunderstood,
right?
Yeah.
So, um, things interesting, you know, you always try to explain this to my
students when I'm working in my class.
And that is, uh, the first thing is that only 25% of the energy we
create gets turned into actual work.
The other 75% really is about us converting, uh, all that energy usage
and it gets the by-product is heat.
So anytime you do exercise, you're gonna, you're gonna get.
An increase in body temperature is going to rise.
So the way we dissipate that heat is, um, is through our blood.
This is the first thing that happens.
We use, uh, the blood perfuses our muscles there's where like, uh,
increases the temperature in the muscles that then gets carried up to our core
and out to our skin and our skin.
We then have the interface between our body and the environment.
And so we can raise our skin.
Uh, temperature by having, uh, the increase in skin, blood flow, and
then we have the sweating mechanism.
So the important thing about sweating is that, uh, is linked to the rise in skin,
blood flow, um, mechanistically and.
We have to have evaporation of that sweat.
So if you're on your trainer in your garage and you're recycling away
and you're having pools of sweat dropping down, every drop that comes
off, that not cool you at all, you have to have that phase shift from
a liquid to a gas that takes energy.
That energy comes from heat and the heat was generated
from your muscles originally.
So to keep it simple, you go from the muscle generated, the
heat generated in your muscles is carried by the blood to the skin.
And then when the evaporation of sweat occurs, that takes that same heat
and dissipates it to the environment.
So how much does then just having a cool room?
Cause I hear a lot of cyclists or runners be like, Oh, it was
only 50 degrees in the room.
So of course I was cool.
Right.
Yeah.
So, um, I challenge any money to go into 50 degree room and then do one of your
really hard, uh, trainer road workouts.
Um, you will be sweating.
You'll be too hot if you, unless you have no convective cooling of the, of the fan.
And part of the problem with that is if, and you're not even if
you're in a cool room, right, then, then the, at least a skin to air
temperature gradient is a little bit.
Better or a little more than it would be if you were in a warm room.
So you got a little bit extra cooling, but you're going to create this bubble of
humidity around you without having that convective movement of air across your
skin to blow that humid airway you've got dry air, you have dry air and wet skin.
Then you can evaporate humid air wet skin, very the lab operation.
So does this get, does this, this get difficult then for athletes and like, uh,
like a hundred percent relative humidity?
Like an extremely hostile environments
or humid environments.
Absolutely.
Humidity is, is the really, really hard thing for humans.
Humans were, can do really well and can tolerate re markably high
temperatures, even during exercise, um, in a very dry environment.
As soon as it becomes more humid, then it gets much, much worse.
And I've done personally done a number of races.
Um, Born in Costa Rica.
So I have a real love of the country and the people, and there's a race down there.
A lot of roots that they lost a piece of Doris, the routes, the cookies, the doors.
And, um, I went there kind of as a heat expert and to go do the race.
And the first day is now it'd be brutally tough.
I prepared in my chamber to get ready for the heat.
Um, had a couple of setbacks on that and I won't go into the details
on, but I was still pretty ready.
Um, I was not prepared to the humidity, um, and absolute in
the jungle on the first day.
There was no air movement at all.
I was going three miles an hour tops, I think, and carrying our
bike to the mud for periods of time.
I've never been so miserable and hot and slow in my entire life.
Um, and so that's almost entirely because of the humidity.
It's just brutal.
Brutal.
Yeah, I can relate.
I did that when I went to a nationals in Sartell, Minnesota, I'd never dealt
with humidity and it was crippling.
My runs were absolutely terrible and I couldn't figure out what was going on.
And then, you know, later put it together.
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