Sitting in a corner office at CU-Denver's Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy Center is the Basque-native and US-resident, Dr. Inigo San Millan. Dr. San Millan is one of the leading medical professionals focusing their knowledge towards maximizing endurance performance.
He does this by performing a battery of physiological tests, including VO2 max (which he believes is highly overrated in endurance sports), and lactate blood concentration (which he believes is the best indicator of endurance sports performance), and also leads a revolution to measure blood values and parameters to eliminate the tendency for overtraining and fatigue with athletes.
Not only does he perform any or all of these tests, which range from $150-$350, but he also consults with the athlete as to how to incorporate training, rest, and diet into their athletic program.
We captured a few video clips from our visit to his CU-Denver office earlier in the week and were quite amazed with all the athlete personalities on his wall. They included: Alberto Contador, Joseba Beloki, Saunier-Duval, Astana, and ONCE cycling teams.
The biggest difference between San Millan's tests and standard cardiology-based tests is his protocol of working the athlete at 10 minute watts/kilogram stages. He explained how two athletes can be the same after four or even six minutes at a particular effort however a definite distinction can nearly always be seen at the 10 minute mark. Therefor, his final numbers are not as large as you might hear elsewhere.
For instance, the highest VO2max he has recorded with his protocal was Antonio Colom, a cyclist for Team Katusha who placed 5th at this year's Paris-Nice stage race. Colom recorded a 72 mil/kg value. Most Pro Tour riders, he believed, slotted in between 62-68 mil/kg values. These are a far cry from the "sexy" values we've all heard about Scandinavian nordic skiiers and professional cyclists boasting and he believes it is in part because of the shorter testing protocol administered.
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