Yet more evidence that Wikipedia is often a poor source of information.

That was Wasserman's theory, anyway, but it has long since been disproven.

The mechanism linking the two hasn't been clarified because the two clearly aren't mechanistically linked.

Lactate is not the bad guy (and no one who understands the first thing about muscle metabolism during exercise has thought so for at least 50 y).

As Paulo said, the only way to determine LT is to measure lactate.

Lactic acid never exists in vivo.


This is only true at exercise intensities >100% of VO2max.



Lactate is produced from pyruvate, i.e., it never exists in the protonated form. The H+ produced during non-aerobic glycolysis are due to reactions further up the pathway.


This is correct.


CO2 is actually a fairly weak stimulus to ventilation during exercise (which probably explains why Wasserman's theory proved incorrect).


Only if you first assume that CO2 is the most important determinant of ventilation during exercise. As it turns out, it isn't, such that ventilatory threshold and lactate threshold can be dissociated in a variety of ways (e.g., glycogen depletion/loading, very fast vs. very slow cadence, steady-state vs. interval training), even in normal individuals.

It's not (at least that's not the primary mechanism).

Man, this is like talking to my advisor. I guess this is why I'm still in school.

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mckenzie

Right. Which is why I said 'Given that Wiki is not perfect, I posted here so you could point out that it is either inaccurate or flat-out wrong. ' Wiki can be correct in many cases or incorrect. It more often than not is correct - more so than Brittanica.

And in faireness, it isn't just wiki, either. Many other university websites are saying exactly the same thing.

It does seems you did answer my first question: which of the two methods is superior with some good explanation as to why ventilatory can be dissociated with lactate.

For the purposes of associating LT with HR during a test for training guidance, you suggest it will not suffice. I'm guessing you wouldn't use HR for training guidance to LT anyway (when running or biking) and would use pace or power.