What is lactic threshold




















You know, that burn you feel in the middle or near the end of the race? And when you try to run faster, it gets more intense, so you end up having to slow down? Lactic acid is a byproduct that our bodies produce as an additional source of energy. In order to catch up to the demands of intense exercise, your body will produce lactate otherwise known as anaerobic energy. This excess lactate creates its own byproduct of hydrogen ions that make your blood more acidic, making it harder for your muscle fibers to contract properly.

Which is pretty frustrating, considering your body was only trying to help you out — it just tries too hard, sometimes. Your lactate threshold is essentially the fastest speed that you can run that allows your body to produce and clear out lactate at an equal rate, keeping your blood lactate levels steady Magness, It indicates the point where your body switches from using aerobic to anaerobic energy. As you can see, at rest, there is minimal lactic acid production, but as the runner begins to pick up pace, the lactic acid begins to build up.

Once the runner surpasses a certain intensity, the lactic acid spikes to unmanageable levels. Ultimately, the goal is to hit your lactate threshold and maintain that speed without tipping the scales in favor of excess lactate production.

That way, your body will be able to train at high intensities for a longer period of time without feeling the burnout. The purpose of lactate threshold training is to keep your lactic acid production at a relatively controlled level, thus allowing you to maintain faster paces with no spikes in your blood lactate levels Daniels, Your training should be intense enough to increase your lactate level just before the point where it begins to spike. A continuous tempo can contribute to building confidence with your running, while cruise intervals break up a long tempo into smaller intervals and allow you to complete more volume.

Below are a few suggestions for tempo variations based on your level of running experience. Of course, while the type of tempos you do are up to you, they both come with their own potential benefits.

In the lab, we measure lactate threshold by drawing blood at intervals during an incremental exercise test. This test is performed in a similar manner to VO2 Max testing and uses either a treadmill or stationary bike.

The exercise intensity is increased in periods of about 3 minutes and blood samples are taken at the end of each period. So you can see that there are several components involved in the operation of the system. This is reflected in the equation for calculating V02 max. This looks much worse than it really is. HRmax is the maximal heart rate at peak exertion. The last part of the equation is AOxy-VOxy. The final unit for V02 max is liters of oxygen per minute.

Aerobic exercise improves V02 max significantly. Interestingly, much of this improvement results from an increase in the size of the heart. So clearly, V02 max is a great measure of physical fitness. But it is a poor predictor of athletic performance.

If you measured the V02 max of eight world-class cyclists before a race, you would be hard pressed to predict which of them would win if you only had their respective V02 max values.

This is where the LT comes into the picture. Lactate threshold is defined as the intensity of exercise at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood at a faster rate than it can be removed. This is problematic because as a result, unbuffered acid is added to the blood, a condition that makes you feel like you have to vomit and stop right away. So why does this happen during high intensity exercise?

In order to answer this question, we need a basic description of why lactate is formed during metabolism. Lactate has gotten a bad rap for the past several decades. Many refer to it as a metabolic waste product not really and blame it for the muscle soreness that can plague us several days after a hard workout not so, actually inflammation.

Let's start by describing how we convert our carbs to energy. Our cells produce a molecule called ATP.



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