For athletes involved in endurance sports - or any sport that requires sustained high-intensity effort - understanding your Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS) can be a game-changer. While it's a concept often utilised by elite coaches and sports scientists, MAS is increasingly gaining attention among athletes at all levels. Knowing your MAS can help you tailor your training, improve endurance, and enhance your overall athletic performance.
In this article, we’ll dive into the science behind MAS, how it impacts performance in endurance sports, and why every athlete should be aware of their MAS.

What Is Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS)?

Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS) is defined as the lowest running speed at which an athlete reaches their VO₂ max - the maximum rate at which the body can take in and use oxygen during exercise. Essentially, MAS is the speed you can sustain using your aerobic energy system, meaning the system that uses oxygen to fuel exercise. At this speed, your body can supply enough oxygen to the working muscles to maintain activity without producing excessive fatigue. If you push beyond your MAS, you start using your anaerobic energy system, which doesn't rely on oxygen but causes a buildup of lactic acid. Lactic acid accumulation can lead to muscle fatigue and a decrease in performance.

​Atlas High Performance Centre is designed to help you achieve your unique fitness goals with a variety of expertly crafted programs. Here’s a detailed breakdown of what we offer and how each service can benefit you.

​When it comes to youth sports and physical development, many parents and coaches focus on skills training and general fitness. But one often overlooked yet highly beneficial area is sprint training. Sprinting isn't just about running fast; it's about building strength, coordination, and most importantly, confidence. Whether your child is involved in football, basketball, soccer, or simply wants to stay active, sprint training offers both physical and mental benefits that last a lifetime.

In this article, we’ll explore the numerous advantages of sprint training for children, including how it improves athletic performance and builds confidence - both on and off the field.

At Atlas High Performance, our Speed School sessions are all about getting athletes faster, more confident, better able to change direction and also improving their movement abilities on the pitch. We've taken the best parts of coaches like Les Spellman, Tony Holler and the guys at Speedworks and structured our sessions around that to give young athletes exposure to the best programme you can find. Here are 5 of our top exercises for increasing sprint speed and learning how to accelerate better.

In a world where we are inundated with data on a daily basis, fitness trackers are all the rage. From Garmin, FitBit, Apple Watch, Huawei, Samsung and everything in between. There's so much choice out there, it's difficult to decide whether they are worth it or not? What happened to a good old casio, eh? This article won't be designed to tell you which one to get as it's very much personal preference. This article is more about what you should know before you by one, what to know while you have one and the pro's and cons of potentially having a smart watch/fitness tracker in your life.

I'll start by saying I currently own a Garmin Forerunner 235 and it's perfect for what I need it for. Tracking HR on a daily basis & tracking my runs (when I decide to go for one). Outside of that it's just a regular watch for me. While fancy gadgets can be nice to have and they almost act as a status symbol nowadays, it's important to know exactly how to use the data that your smart watch gives you. "Not everything that glitters is gold" , as the saying goes and the same holds true for these. Hopefully the following will help shed some light on that for you.

As of this week, I am now a certified nutrition coach. Another feather in the cap as I start to build on my previous education. For anyone that knows me, I'm usually anti-certification because there's so many out there that it has started to become a bit ridiculous. If it doesn't help you get a job / progress you in your current role and there's no rationale for getting it, then is it really worth it? Anyway, that's not the point of this. I am now a certified coach in the area of exercise nutrition. I already has a pretty broad knowledge of the scientific principles and core underpinnings of nutrition but this is another step up. Like exercise & training, it's purposely planned towards building competency & confidence in certain exercises before loading them up in the hope of gaining strength, size or whatever your primary goal is. Nutrition should be no different, and if I'm being honest, it's definitely an area I've fallen down on in my coaching service in the past few years. That's all about to change.

After discussing energy systems as a whole and briefly introducing the phosphagen system - read about it again here if you missed it - we move onto part 2. This, in my own opinion is where things get confusing. Our main priority here will be to introduce the glycolytic system. This series of reactions happens WITHOUT the presence of oxygen. Here's where we introduce the famed lactate for the first time properly and talk about it - it is your friend not your enemy. If you can get a handle on this section, the rest of it is easy. This article is a bit biochemistry heavy so if you're not a fan of it, I suggest you look away now!

To be fit - "of a suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose" . So, before we can think about getting fitter, we must first define the required purpose effectively.

As a strength and conditioning coach & sport scientist, I'm well aware that people perceive my main role within a sports team or with a client is to improve 'fitness'. While this is true, the term fitness itself means so much more. Very rarely do people specify which part of fitness they want to improve or how they are going to do it. Getting stronger, faster, leaner, more powerful could also classify as getting fitter. For the most part though, and it's going to make up the majority of this article, we'll be talking about the commonly thought about 'fit'. Being able to run further, being able to run faster for longer, being able to do something for longer before being tired, also known as 'work capacity'. What is it, how do we define it properly but most importantly, how can we train it properly.

For years, during high intensity activity lactate or lactic acid in the blood is blamed for that burning sensation and not being able to maintain those intensities. While there's mild truth to it, lactate is not the enemy. It's a by-product of energy production during glycolysis under anaerobic conditions. Our bodies actually use this formed lactate as energy during this glycolysis cycle. Pyruvate is converted into lactate. This lactate is transported in the blood towards the liver where it is converted again to pyruvate for use in gluconeogenesis - the production of new glucose molecules from non-carbohydrate sources. At this point, glycolysis can start again.

The citric acid cycle, or the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA) or the Kreb's cycle as it's also known. The final resting place of the intial glucose molecule from glycolysis. At this point glycolysis has broken down glucose into pyruvate (see below). The citric acid cycle is another series of reactions with the help of oxygen that creates an abundance of products which are then used in the production of ATP molecules. We've seen via The Cori Cycle that in the absence of oxygen, pyruvate is converted to lactate and through gluconeogenisis new glucose molecules are produced for the continuation of glycolysis. When oxygen is present and in abundance, the citric acid cycle is used.