Dr. Emily Cooper uses a computer device to monitor the performance of Olympic rowers Nate Johnson, left, and Jordan Malloch at Green Lake. Johnson and Malloch will compete for the United States in the two-man 500-meter canoe event in Athens later this month.

So they called Dr. Emily Cooper here in Seattle and asked her to come down and work with them. Cooper is no expert on optimal canoe strokes, but she takes the scientific approach to training, and she had worked with the racers on Green Lake over the years.

Malloch, 25, and Johnson, 27, are elite athletes with an obvious goal, but Cooper says the same principles that help them can apply to weekend warriors and people simply doing the best they can.

After arriving at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Southern California, Cooper assessed how each was using oxygen, at what point each was moving from the aerobic to anaerobic phase and at what stroke rates the readings kicked in. From there, she set up a training protocol based on heart-rate zones.

Although the men compete as a team, they were at very different points in their training schedules. Because of that, they had different training needs.

"They still need a lot of endurance, but a lot of power, too," Cooper says. "It's a delicate balance. If they overemphasize anaerobic training, their aerobic stamina may decay and they will fatigue. What I saw on the test results, it was obvious to me what we needed to do. They are a team, but they were so different. They are both really smart, too, though."

And talented. The men eventually cemented their spot in the Athens Olympics with a second-place finish at the Pan American championships. They compete Aug. 23.

"We're going to make it to the finals, which is the top nine, and see what happens from there," Malloch says.

But to get there, Malloch needed to build power for the start and end of the race, which is between four and five minutes long. So Cooper had him perform high-intensity intervals. She had him lengthen the periods of rest between them to make sure that when he was exerting himself he was training his anaerobic, not aerobic system. She had him take concentrated carbohydrate gels that would serve as the furnace for his power workouts.

Johnson, who had been injured earlier in the year, was an opposite case. He needed more endurance training, which required longer workouts and intervals, shorter periods of rest, and a different heart-rate-zone workout than his partner.

While almost none of us will need to reach peak performance or be able to devote as much of our lives to exercise as the Seattle duo did, we do want to find and maintain our health, lower blood pressure, lose weight or achieve a host of other goals. That means, according to Cooper and other health professionals, we have to exercise smarter.

The VO2 max testing that Johnson and Malloch go through measures the volume of oxygen that can be consumed while exercising at maximum capacity. Cooper's company, Fremont-based Seattle Performance Medicine, and other exercise specialists use physiological tests to help develop fitness goals and specific heart-rate-zone training.

Malloch says everyone could benefit from such an approach:

"A person may think he or she knows his or her body, but even as a trained athlete, I still need empirical data about where I am. That's where testing and heart-rate monitors come in. You can say, 'I ran hard,' but what is hard? Maybe you didn't run as hard as you thought. Maybe you didn't need to. Maybe you needed to run easier, but longer. Finding the answers can be hard."

Cooper recently worked with a former runner who was an insulin-dependent diabetic in his 50s. He just wanted to run again. He did, but only after he had patience forced on him.

"He wanted to work hard right away, but we wouldn't let him," says Cooper. "We wanted him to train in certain heart zones and work on his core and balance. He said he didn't feel he was working hard enough and asked if he could go harder. I said no. People tend to want to move too fast."

Cooper offers these tips, which may not get you gold, but may help you make the most of your time and maintain a program.

• Start with small steps.

• Integrate those steps into your lifestyle, and make them a priority.

• Add increments after becoming consistent.

• Don't overdo.

• Build habit, then diversify.

• Fight impatience.

Richard Seven is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff writer. His e-mail address is rseven@seattletimes.com.

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