Measuring VLamax

Triathlon Forum
21

You’re confusing the concept of a threshold with the ways of estimating a threshold.

In his latest TP article, he now suggests 5 very different, very vague ways of estimating FTP that could potentially result in quite different numbers e.g.

  • “simply evaluate the power that you can routinely produce in training during long(?) hard(?) efforts” vs
  • "you may wish to perform formal testing to determine your ‘critical power’ vs
  • “you can use your Normalized Power from a ~60min mass start road race”

Add to these, as you brought up, the 20min * 0.95 with or without the recommended warm up and anaerobic ‘blow out’ from the original Training and Racing with a Power Meter and you’re very right, when it comes to answering the simple question, “What is my FTP?” it all gets, well, confusing!

Much less confusing IMHO to stick with a finger prick and the simple question - “Is my blood lactate steady at this power output or going up?”

Andy’s article? Do you have a link?

Lactate testing easier than using an estimate from power data. I guess those with a commercial interest in lactate testing would say that.

22

Lactate testing easier than using an estimate from power data. I guess those with a commercial interest in lactate testing would say that.

I’ve no commercial interest. I’m too busy coaching to do much testing these days so I instruct my athletes to buy their own portable lactate analyzer (& no I don’t get any kickbacks). For the relatively low outlay (far cheaper than the initial PM), I just honestly believe it’s the best way of getting an accurate window into the athlete’s ongoing physiological development.

Here’s the article where Andy outlines the myriad of methods of ‘estimating’ FTP… https://www.trainingpeaks.com/…-is-threshold-power/

23

Yes, measuring lactate yourself is far easier than downloading a power meter file , or doing a several tests of various durations to estimate threshold or other metric pertinent to performance.

24

I was doing my apprenticeship under Thorpe’s coach shortly before he and Pieter were duking it out

You may have seen this video. It was made 17 years ago, two years after the Sydney Olympics. It’s a little theatrical since it was made for a video course at the local community college

http://bit.ly/1PeCJBx

That may be a slight overstatement

I believe the athletes Jan has advised have won over 600 Olympic, World Championship and European Championship medials. Hard to top. Lot of relay swimmers but they are still medals.

25

For someone that knows absolutely nothing on this topic - can you explain what VLamax does or how I can use it?

Is it similar to me looking at my 15 sec, 1min, 5min and 20min power overtime?

26

I was doing my apprenticeship under Thorpe’s coach shortly before he and Pieter were duking it out

You may have seen this video. It was made 17 years ago, two years after the Sydney Olympics. It’s a little theatrical since it was made for a video course at the local community college

http://bit.ly/1PeCJBx

That may be a slight overstatement

I believe the athletes Jan has advised have won over 600 Olympic, World Championship and European Championship medials. Hard to top. Lot of relay swimmers but they are still medals.

Yes, very theatrical.

The best measure of performance is performance itself. Power meters measure performance. Lactate measures have a relationship with performance, but like medal counts we are reminded: that correlation does not imply causation. Most of World Level performance comes down to choosing your parents well, having parents situated close to opportunities for performance and quality training.

27

Personally, I’m just happy to see a move away from the “FTP is everything” paradigm. Because, as you stated in that other post. There are more ‘moving parts’ to consider, especially wrt training, than solely looking at FTP.

Those who claim FTP is everything obviously don’t camp out with the smart kids at the WKO4 Power Users group on Facebook.

But even 15 or so years ago, people using WKO where looking at way more than FTP with power profiling, quadrant analysis, and early fatigue profiling.

Now we have a modelled power duration curve, modelled FTP, time to exhaustion, fatigue resistance etc etc, that all comes from power data.

But yeah if you think a one off post race lactate beats 1-sec recording for a whole ride or every 3-5min in the lab or whenever is convenient to stop in the field then I wish you luck to understand the physiology when competing.

28

For someone that knows absolutely nothing on this topic - can you explain what VLamax does or how I can use it?

Is it similar to me looking at my 15 sec, 1min, 5min and 20min power overtime?

In energy system terms, for all intents and purposes, total power production can be thought of as the composite of 2 systems - the aerobic and anaerobic.

VLamax quantifies the power of the anaerobic (glycolytic) system in producing energy in the same way that VO2max quantifies the power of the aerobic system. Because it is a power measurement it is expressed per unit of time, in mmol/L of lactate per second, just as VO2max is expressed in Liters per minute (or ml/kg/min)

Any effort is a composite/balance of these systems. You could have 2 athletes putting out the same power but generating that power in different ways. A good example would be the 1500m on the track. You have some ‘800m types’ with very strong VLamax running just as strongly as ‘5000m types’ coming down a distance with very high VO2max. Obviously, these types of athletes with different physiological strengths will (& should) train quite differently as they are ‘getting the job done’ in very different ways using a different balance of their energy systems.

This obviously applies strongly to a sport like road cycling where we have ‘sprinter types’, ‘climbing types’ and every type in between that must also strike just the right balance in the strength of each system for their specialty while still making it to the finish line!

However, it also applies in a reverse sort of way to a sport like triathlon. If we look at 70.3, for instance, we have some athletes with very high VO2max values coming up from Olympic Distance racing and doing well. We also have other athletes with lower VO2max coming down from Ironman distance racing and doing similarly well. These athletes are able to do so because of the ‘weakness’ of their VLamax, i.e. they don’t use a lot of glycogen & are, therefore, able to maintain a very high % of their VO2max for a long period of time.

Knowing where your own strengths (& weaknesses) lie with respect to each of the systems can provide useful insight into where to direct the training - higher aerobic power or higher/lower glycolytic power

29

Here’s the article where Andy outlines the myriad of methods of ‘estimating’ FTP… https://www.trainingpeaks.com/…-is-threshold-power/

Funny thing is Andy wrote that article in 2003…

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gfme10Zuc90D7Ferof8eS90x182VA4TdJwtPSKgdvxw/edit

30

so I instruct my athletes to buy their own portable lactate analyzer (& no I don’t get any kickbacks).

Really, this works? I can somehow picture how this would work for lower intensity steps but once you get past 4mmol or so?

I assume this would mean taking the sample from your finger tips? You don’t contaminate the samples with sweat easily?

I’ve often pondered getting a device but I’m not really sure if this really works when doing on your own.

31

For someone that knows absolutely nothing on this topic - can you explain what VLamax does or how I can use it?

Is it similar to me looking at my 15 sec, 1min, 5min and 20min power overtime?

Sebastian explains it here

https://www.velonews.com/2019/05/training/fast-talk-ep-73-how-to-balance-your-vlamax-with-sebastian-weber_493291

32

so I instruct my athletes to buy their own portable lactate analyzer (& no I don’t get any kickbacks).

Really, this works? I can somehow picture how this would work for lower intensity steps but once you get past 4mmol or so?

I assume this would mean taking the sample from your finger tips? You don’t contaminate the samples with sweat easily?

I’ve often pondered getting a device but I’m not really sure if this really works when doing on your own.

It’s certainly easier if you have a friend/significant other who can help out (makes the initial outlay cheaper too if you go in on a lactate tester with a training buddy or 2 and agree to test each other!)

But you can definitely do it on your own if you organize beforehand, especially if using aerobars for the test:

  • Set up a table to the top right corner of the bike (assuming right-handed)
  • Lay out alcohol swabs already opened
  • Have test strips lined up at the ready
  • Have a stack of gauze pads

For each stage - alcohol wipe → spike finger → gauze wipe → sample

When sampling, hold the tester like a pencil i.e. with the strip pointing down into the blood droplet. Capillary action of the strip will suck the blood up.

Movement isn’t usually too much of a problem, especially on the aerobars, until the effort gets close to maximal. At that point, a 2 second pause in pedaling to get the sample won’t throw things off too much.

33

so I instruct my athletes to buy their own portable lactate analyzer (& no I don’t get any kickbacks).

Really, this works? I can somehow picture how this would work for lower intensity steps but once you get past 4mmol or so?

I assume this would mean taking the sample from your finger tips? You don’t contaminate the samples with sweat easily?

I’ve often pondered getting a device but I’m not really sure if this really works when doing on your own.

It’s certainly easier if you have a friend/significant other who can help out (makes the initial outlay cheaper too if you go in on a lactate tester with a training buddy or 2 and agree to test each other!)

But you can definitely do it on your own if you organize beforehand, especially if using aerobars for the test:

  • Set up a table to the top right corner of the bike (assuming right-handed)
  • Lay out alcohol swabs already opened
  • Have test strips lined up at the ready
  • Have a stack of gauze pads

For each stage - alcohol wipe → spike finger → gauze wipe → sample

When sampling, hold the tester like a pencil i.e. with the strip pointing down into the blood droplet. Capillary action of the strip will suck the blood up.

Movement isn’t usually too much of a problem, especially on the aerobars, until the effort gets close to maximal. At that point, a 2 second pause in pedaling to get the sample won’t throw things off too much.

Are you using this to measure MLSS or VLamax ?

34

I was doing my apprenticeship under Thorpe’s coach shortly before he and Pieter were duking it out

You may have seen this video. It was made 17 years ago, two years after the Sydney Olympics. It’s a little theatrical since it was made for a video course at the local community college

http://bit.ly/1PeCJBx

Thanks for sharing, Jerry. I hadn’t seen that.

Brought back a lot of memories. We were doing a very similar type of test for the Aussie National Team when I was at the Australian Institute of Sport (at the risk of aging myself, :slight_smile: about 10 years before that video was made. At the end of most training blocks, swimmers would do a 7x200m progressive test with heart rate, stroke data & blood lactates at each stage. Much of the training prescription was very lactate focused & these were some of the most successful years of Australian swimming culminating in the Sydney Olympics. Would have been even more successful if not for PVH

35

medal counts we are reminded: that correlation does not imply causation

But it is a lot of medals. Olbrecht after getting his PhD started working with local swim clubs in Belgium. One of the swimmers he worked with was Luc van Lierde who asked Jan if he could help him become a triathlete. About 10 years later he won Kona in 1996. Just before that success Jan approached a top Dutch swimming coach to see if he would be interested in trying his approach. Incredible success followed. In the last Olympics swimmers advised by Jan went gold and silver in the 100m free. He also advised the swimmer winning the open water 10,000m gold.

So is it correlation or causation? Or both? Those interested should examine the rationale behind the approach. Judge for yourself. The rationale is a theory that posits that the two energy systems are interrelated in the sense that changes in one will affect how much the other is used. For example, increasing aerobic capacity will lower glycolytic use and thus lower lactate produced. Lowering anaerobic capacity will lower glycolytic use and thus lower lactate produced. Both of these very different changes in metabolism will increase the threshold.

http://www.lactate.com/images/LactateProdSystem.gif

There are several links to Sebastian Weber on this thread that will help understand the rationale. Another good place is a long article we have on our website about the Lactate Threshold. The rationale is discussed there. http://bit.ly/2gHumG2

36

Spare me the marketing hype. Lactate testing, for cycling in particular, is so last millennium.

The best measure of performance is performance itself. Certainly not grabbing the odd lactate measure in the field or post race, or worse in a lab setting that has no relevance to performance in the field.

37

Lactate testing, for cycling in particular, is so last millennium.

I wasn’t aware the body has changed since the last millennium. You apparently do not understand what is being discussed. I suggest you try to understand the concepts being discussed before disparaging them. It has nothing to do with estimating some sort of threshold though that can be done very easily. It is much more complicated than that. It is trying to measure what causes a threshold or what is behind any measured number metabolically.

38

Lactate testing, for cycling in particular, is so last millennium.

I wasn’t aware the body has changed since the last millennium. You apparently do not understand what is being discussed. I suggest you try to understand the concepts being discussed before disparaging them. It has nothing to do with estimating some sort of threshold though that can be done very easily. It is much more complicated than that. It is trying to measure what causes a threshold or what is behind any measured number metabolically.

Yeah only doing a PhD in this stuff, but yeah, been involved in published papers, where I took thousands of blood samples to measure lactate, as well as other measures to increase our understanding of physiology. But yeah, tell that to yourself.

Not hard for people to visualise that there are different energy pathways. Mostly determined by genetics, but to varying degrees trainable. We can visualise this from actual performance using FRC FTP contribution in WKO4. Even a basic critical power model allows us to determine whether a rider has a strong aerobic system or anaerobic system.

Am sure someone will development a measure of lactate in real time offering the same 1-s we have from a power meter. But even then, like HR, HRV, NIRS it is all a response to exercise, not the stimulus that a power meter measures.

In cycling we can measure performance in racing and be far more specific with our understanding of performance. The best predictor of performance is performance itself. Not post race lactates, or mickey mouse tests in the field, or lab based tests that are a good predictor of performance in the lab.

39

so I instruct my athletes to buy their own portable lactate analyzer (& no I don’t get any kickbacks).

Really, this works? I can somehow picture how this would work for lower intensity steps but once you get past 4mmol or so?

I assume this would mean taking the sample from your finger tips? You don’t contaminate the samples with sweat easily?

I’ve often pondered getting a device but I’m not really sure if this really works when doing on your own.

It’s certainly easier if you have a friend/significant other who can help out (makes the initial outlay cheaper too if you go in on a lactate tester with a training buddy or 2 and agree to test each other!)

But you can definitely do it on your own if you organize beforehand, especially if using aerobars for the test:

  • Set up a table to the top right corner of the bike (assuming right-handed)
  • Lay out alcohol swabs already opened
  • Have test strips lined up at the ready
  • Have a stack of gauze pads

For each stage - alcohol wipe → spike finger → gauze wipe → sample

When sampling, hold the tester like a pencil i.e. with the strip pointing down into the blood droplet. Capillary action of the strip will suck the blood up.

Movement isn’t usually too much of a problem, especially on the aerobars, until the effort gets close to maximal. At that point, a 2 second pause in pedaling to get the sample won’t throw things off too much.

Are you using this to measure MLSS or VLamax ?

Both.

Since moving more towards triathlon, I’ve been more interested in MLSS (& metabolic testing) than anaerobic tests. But, after hearing Sebastian talk about the inverse relationship between VLamax and Fat Oxidation, I started to look into the metabolic data that I have to see if that relationship bore out &, sure enough, it does. So, while I still encourage athletes to get the ‘full picture’ with periodic metabolic testing, VLamax/anaerobic power testing can provide a really useful (& cheap) way to indirectly check-in on the metabolic side of things on a more frequent basis.

40

so I instruct my athletes to buy their own portable lactate analyzer (& no I don’t get any kickbacks).

Really, this works? I can somehow picture how this would work for lower intensity steps but once you get past 4mmol or so?

I assume this would mean taking the sample from your finger tips? You don’t contaminate the samples with sweat easily?

I’ve often pondered getting a device but I’m not really sure if this really works when doing on your own.

It’s certainly easier if you have a friend/significant other who can help out (makes the initial outlay cheaper too if you go in on a lactate tester with a training buddy or 2 and agree to test each other!)

But you can definitely do it on your own if you organize beforehand, especially if using aerobars for the test:

  • Set up a table to the top right corner of the bike (assuming right-handed)
  • Lay out alcohol swabs already opened
  • Have test strips lined up at the ready
  • Have a stack of gauze pads

For each stage - alcohol wipe → spike finger → gauze wipe → sample

When sampling, hold the tester like a pencil i.e. with the strip pointing down into the blood droplet. Capillary action of the strip will suck the blood up.

Movement isn’t usually too much of a problem, especially on the aerobars, until the effort gets close to maximal. At that point, a 2 second pause in pedaling to get the sample won’t throw things off too much.

Are you using this to measure MLSS or VLamax ?

Both.

Since moving more towards triathlon I’ve been more interested in MLSS than anaerobic tests but, after hearing Sebastian talk about the inverse relationship between VLamax and Fat Oxidation, I started to look into the metabolic data that I have to see if that relationship bore out &, sure enough, it does. So, while I still encourage athletes to get the ‘full picture’ with periodic metabolic testing, VLamax can provide a really useful (& cheap) way to check-in on the metabolic side of things on a more frequent basis.

Can you share your protocol for both ? Or point me to a link ?

In the past, for MLSS, I would do a 3 and 20min test and calculate CP. I would then do 4x8 at CP minus 5 and test lactate at the end of each 8min and see if it was steady

More out of curiosity than anything/

thx