Introduction
Blood lactate was discovered in the late 1960’s into the early 1970’s as a performance tool for sport, giving the athlete a relatively easy way to measure the body’s response to increased intensities. This can often be described as a biomarker (a biological response that can be measured). You may have heard of Oxygen (O2) vs Carbon (CO2), VT1 and VT2 etc. While this article won’t be diving into these specifically as the focus will be on lactate, the above are all examples of biomarkers that can be measured to gain insight into your limitations and what type of training you need to prioritize for your specific goals.
You see, as the intensity of exercise increases, your lactate level climbs too. This is a result of your body not being able to clear the lactate being produced quickly enough due to the higher intensity your body is working at. As a result, your blood lactate rises. The difficulty arises when securing accurate results, mainly because your level may not necessarily climb at the same rate as you increase your overall exercise intensity. On top of this, everybody has a different lactate response!
How can Testing my Lactate Help Me?
When you complete a Lactate test in your given sport, it profiles your body’s lactate response to increased intensities from very low (resting) all the way through near maximum. What is produced is your very own lactate profile/curve showing where your lactate increases. Blood lactate is a by-product our body gives off. More intensity = more lactate. The key is in knowing that the rapid increase in lactate (shown below lactate profile/graph) which shows inflection or “threshold” points is a result of our body’s fuel sources changing to manage the increased intensity it is under, together with the speed/wattage also increasing. Our bodies breathe in Oxygen & Carbon, it then uses the oxygen we breathe in and mixes it with the food we eat/ our stored fat (or carbs) to create energy. Understanding what percentage we are using fats and carbs as a fuel source is the key to unlocking your sporting potential. As you ask more of your body by increasing intensity, (Speed, Watts etc) your body needs faster access to fuel. This is in the form of carbs and your lactate starts to steadily increase as a result.
Understanding My Lactate Profile
We will stick to a basic 3-zone model for now to gain a picture of how powerful blood lactate is. As seen below the 3 zones are based on when your Lactate inflection points occur. The first is your Lactate threshold Point 1 or LT1 for short, the second is the Lactate Threshold point 2 or LT2 for short. Both points are marked with a white dot in the example graph below.
Everything behind LT1 (Shaded Green) is recovery and traditionally termed “aerobic training”, everything between the two threshold points LT1 & LT2 (Shaded Yellow) is the gradual change of your body being fully aerobic to fully anaerobic and everything to the right of LT2 (Shaded Red) is fully anaerobic. Around this LT2 point and above is often referred to as “Threshold” which may take the form of hills in your training programme. This further adds to the misunderstanding as we already have seen there are 2 thresholds that it can be referred to. Quite often an athlete’s marathon time is predicted by obtaining their lactate Threshold Profile and going slightly below their LT2 pace. Although it depends on the athlete this can be sustained for a long period of time and represents the maximum pace an athlete can sustain without tipping over into fully anaerobic which inevitably leads you to “hit the wall” at some stage.
Most of the confusion in this field is due to the terminology that is used incorrectly sometimes and bunched together and/or abbreviated to describe a certain training stimulus your coach or fellow athlete is looking to achieve. As the water is considerably muddy for athletes and coaches alike I have devised a matrix/cheat sheet where you can see at a glance what people are referring to, what you should use to describe certain intensity points and all other terminologies in between. Each column in this cheat sheet represents separate methods that can be recorded to identify these changes within an individual athlete.
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand Lactate testing, its uses and benefits alongside demystifying some of the misused terminology that’s pushed around. At least now you will be armed with the knowledge to ask the right questions if somebody asks you out for “Threshold Training”!
If you would like more information on individual lactate profiling or the other tests we complete at The Performance Lab such as Vo2 max test, running economy and precision daily caloric needs, feel free to get in touch and we will be happy to guide you in the right direction for you and your goals.