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<p>If you’re a runner, cyclist or other type of athlete who’s even remotely serious about your sport, then I’m sure you’ve come across the term “Lactate Threshold” in training articles. While many such articles exist, offering loads of advice on how best to push the LT up a few notches, few of them give an easy-to-understand explanation of just what the LT is and why you should care about it. I’ll try my best to do that here.</p>
<p>When we exert ourselves, even mildly, a number of chemical reactions take place in our bodies’ cells. While each of these processes has an important purpose, many of them also create chemical “byproducts”, some of which can cause undesirable effects. For decades, it was thought that Lactic Acid was one such negative byproduct of intense activity. As it turns out, though, the lactic acid is actually a helpful compound, meant to neutralize other negative elements that result from said intense activity. But because we thought of it as the cause of our pain for so long, the term “lactate threshold” has stuck. The good news is, the confusing technical stuff is not too important (unless you’re a real nerd), only the physiological results of scientific stuff need concern you.</p>
<p>What happens is this: You’re going along at a certain level of intensity and everything is working fine – you’re breathing pretty hard, but you can maintain this level of exertion for a pretty long time. While your body is creating lots of chemical byproducts as the result of this activity, it is also able to keep up with getting rid of them at about the same rate they’re being produced. But then you speed up a bit. You’re going for your personal best in a 5K or you hit an intense interval bout in spin class, for example. Within a minute or so (depending on how much you ramp up the intensity) you start to feel some ill effects of this: Your breathing becomes labored, maybe you find yourself “lifting” your ribcage to try to gasp in more air; you start to feel that familiar burn in some of your muscles – probably the large muscles of the legs; your brain starts saying, “I don’t know how long we can keep this pace up, body.” You have just crossed over the “lactate threshold.”</p>
<p><img src="https://i.imgsafe.org/8923b5c50e.jpeg" width="1620" height="1080"/></p>
<p>Your body can no longer dispose of the byproducts at the same rate they are being accumulated, and so they begin to build up in your cells. Your available oxygen is all being used up just to keep those muscles churning at that high intensity, so the housekeeping gets left until later. In fact, much of the energy being produced to perform this work isn’t coming from oxygen at all, but rather from the breakdown of ATP in the muscle cells, which is creating the culprit byproducts in the first place. Overall function is impaired as a result, and eventually you will have to slow down or stop, at which point your body will recover and once again be able to keep up with the disposal of byproducts, magically making you feel better again within a matter of minutes.</p>
<p>So the training question is, “How can I push my LT higher, so that I can exercise faster/longer/better?” Surprisingly, for most people the answer is to spend more of your training time -80% of it in fact- working out far below that level.</p>
<p><img src="https://i.imgsafe.org/895a00059c.jpg" width="1080" height="1080"/></p>
<p>By first building and then slowly improving your aerobic capacity – that system that allows everything to run smoothly, utilizing oxygen as the primary energy source – you automatically push your lactate threshold (or maybe more accurately your “anaerobic threshold”) further out because the ATP energy system doesn’t need to be utilized as much, as soon. Commonly, recreational athletes chronically overtrain, working in the zone where no real aerobic gains are being made and the anaerobic or lactate threshold isn’t being pushed either. This leads to injury and a compromised immune system and will actually make your performance worse. Working out hard three or four days a week may actually be worse for your health than not exercising at all. So, embrace this good news and start making most of your training minutes relatively easy ones. To really improve your performance, focus on making your training sessions a lot longer, not a lot harder.</p>
<p>Of course, there is still the remaining 20% of your workout time that has to be spent at or above the very uncomfortable anaerobic threshold in order to realize peak performance. 10% of that time should be spent doing steady-state workouts right at that threshold, and the other 10% (cumulative) should be spent in short interval spurts going above that line.</p>
<p><img src="https://i.imgsafe.org/895f0980e7.jpg" width="1080" height="1080"/></p>
<p>How do you determine what your LT is in the first place? Well, to do so accurately, you need to be in an exercise physiology lab where your blood or breath samples are taken over the course of a workout that gets progressively harder. Probably, you’re not going to do that, though, so there are a couple of other things you can do:</p>
<p>1 – The Runner’s Field Test: Set out on a run by yourself on a treadmill or (preferably) on a flat track or stretch of road outside under good weather conditions. Do a short, easy warm-up and then run for 30 minutes at the fastest pace you can sustain for the whole run. So, no starting out super fast and then slowing down fifteen minutes into it; and no slogging at the beginning with a kick at the finish. Experienced runners will have a good idea of what pace this is, and inexperienced runners will have the unfortunate experience of finding out by trial and error over three or four such runs. When you’ve found the right pace, get your average heart rate (you MUST wear a monitor for this, no palpation pulse-taking) for the last 20 minutes of the run. That is your approximate Lactate Threshold.</p>
<p>2 – RPE Scale: Much easier for you and just about as accurate, is the Rating of Perceived Exertion scale. This is simply a subjective analysis by you about how hard you feel like you’re working. The tricky part is that the most accurate RPE scale is the one that goes from 6 to 20, rather than the one that goes from 1 to 10. So you’ll have to familiarize yourself with the rating numbers and categories, and then use that scale to determine where a 15 is for you. In words, this is described as effort that is HARD but not VERY HARD. When you hit that level of effort, stay there for five minutes or so and get your heart rate. Or, skip the heart rate altogether and just use the RPE scale to guide your workouts.</p>
<p>Remember that higher intensity workouts should make up only a small percentage of total training each week, and plan your sessions accordingly. If you’re running for 200 total minutes each week, for example, then you should only do one 20-minute run at your lactate threshold and an accumulated 20 minutes worth of intervals at and above that point in a separate workout, spaced at least 36 hours (but preferably a couple of days) apart.</p>
<p>Of course, it goes without saying that these workouts are for fit to very fit individuals, and those who are just starting to exercise or who have any underlying health concerns need to be exercising at a light to moderate intensity for months before considering a program that ramps it up.</p>
<p>I hope this has answered some of your questions about the lactate threshold and how you can train to increase your performance.</p>
<p> <img src="https://i.imgsafe.org/8960e6cf03.jpg" width="607" height="1080"/></p>
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