Ok a few questions:
What sort of workouts are best to train your lactate tolerance? By that I mean training your body to be able to tolerate more lactate and clear it out faster (talking about running here).
Would doing those workouts (whatever they might be) in one sport help running? Would doing workouts on the bike or in the pool to help train your lactate tolerance, help your running LT?
Thnks
John
Andy Coggan or S Mcgregor to reply in 5…4…3…
Your lactate threshold is about the pace you can hold for one hour. Training at this pace, slightly below, and sometimes slightly above are the best ways to better be able to tolerate/move it out during races. If you are in good shape, which I believe you are then longer continues runs at your LT pace are best to improve your LT. Runs of around 3-6 miles of LT, not including warm-up or cool down have worked best for me. Say your LT pace is 5:30. I do these runs starting around 5:40 and progressively drop it down as I warm up more and feel better to about 5:25 for the last mile or so. These runs for me started at around 3 miles and gradually got longer. If you’re not in the best of shape workouts of 4x1 mile at LT or 2x 2miles at LT may work better, although the break should be short.
I forgot to say that I’m not sure about the other question and wondered that myself.
I’m waiting for th eresponses as well.
There is some crossover, but not enough to justify cutting back in any one discipline significantly.
First we’d better define what you are talking about. in the swim world we talk about lactate tolerance as a type of training that includes high intensity swimming of around a minute with shortish rests and only a few reps. The idea is that it trains you to tolerate your muscles locking up on you at the end of fast races.,
The type of locking up in question is most evident in a 400 yard dash run and in some cases, the 100 freestyle race. Some swimmers playing with the idea of pacing the 100 free just as the 400 dash is done.
At any rate, that type of training is very intense and not really directed at the type of “lactate threshold” training triathletes usually do.
As for whether it crosses over, modeling on elite triathletes has shown crossover only from running to biking. No other crossovers were boserved. My own personal observations are that it highly depends on your current relative fitness. If you are already at the pointy end of your abilities then you won’t see any type of crossover between sports no matter what the training is. If you are just getting off the couch after 15 years then virtually anything you do will improve the speed of your other sports.
I reckon most of us are in the great middle where it might help and might not. Those who follow the literature like to point out that there is scant evidence of cross training benefits in trained athletes. What is less clear is what constitutes “trained” and how to determine whether any individual in the great unwashed masses can be considered “trained.”
No…I cannot see that working. Lactate threshold is in the muscles…rather than some central adaptation. LT is VERY specific to the type of training and muscles used in training. If you are comparing two activities, the more muscle recruitment overlap there is, the more training transfer you will get. Plenty of transfer type of studies out there where upper body training had little impact on lower body LT and vice versa. That is why cross training is primarily BS.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1991 Sep;23(9):1035-41.
Transfer effects of endurance training with the arms and legs. Bhambhani YN, Eriksson P, Gomes PS.
Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
The purpose of this study was to examine whether endurance training in the form of arm or leg cycling resulted in significant transfer effects when exercise was performed with the untrained muscle group. Sixteen middle-aged male volunteers completed 24 training sessions over 8 wk on either an arm cycle ergometer (AG, N = 8, mean age = 35.2 +/- 6.6 yr) or a leg cycle ergometer (LG, N = 8, mean age = 41.0 +/- 4.7 yr). The two groups were initially equated for their pre-training peak oxygen uptake (pVO2) determined during leg cycling (44.5 +/- 5.0 and 43.8 +/- 7.7 ml.kg-1.min-1 for the AG and LG, respectively). Training was performed at an intensity that was mid-way between the pre-training ventilatory threshold (VT) and the pVO2 for both cycling methods. Significant increases (P less than .05) were observed in the relative values of the oxygen uptake at the VT and the pVO2 as a result of both these methods of training, but these elevations were specific to the muscle groups that were trained. This specificity of training was also evident in the cardiorespiratory and metabolic measurements obtained during submaximal steady state exercise performed at the power output corresponding to the pre-training VT during arm and leg exercise. Hence, it was concluded that improvements in exercise performance resulting from short-term aerobic training with the arms or legs in middle-aged males with relatively high aerobic powers are due primarily to peripheral adaptations in the trained muscles.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1984 Aug;16(4):349-54. Links
Specificity of arm training on aerobic power during swimming and running.Gergley TJ, McArdle WD, DeJesus P,Toner MM, Jacobowitz S, Spina RJ.
The specificity of aerobic training for upper-body exercise requiring differing amounts of muscle mass was evaluated in 25 college-aged male recreational swimmers who were randomly assigned to either a non-training control group (N = 9), a 10-wk swim(S)-training group (N = 9), or a group that trained with a standard swim-bench pulley system (SB; N = 7). For all subjects prior to training, tethered-swimming peak VO2 averaged 19% below treadmill values (P less than 0.01), while SB-ergometry peak VO2 was 50% and 39% below running and swimming values, respectively (P less than 0.01). Significant (P less than 0.01) increases of peak VO2 in tethered swimming (11%) and SB (21%) were observed for the SB-trained group, while the S-trained group improved (P less than 0.01) 18% and 19% on the tethered swimming and SB tests, respectively. No changes were observed during treadmill running, and the control subjects remained unchanged on all measures. Comparisons between training groups indicated that although both groups improved to a similar extent when measured on the swim bench, the 0.53 l X min-1 improvement in tethered-swimming peak VO2 for the S-trained group was greater (P less than 0.05) than the 0.32 l X min-1 increase noted for the SB-trained group. The comparisons between SB and S exercise vs treadmill exercise support the specificity of aerobic improvement with training and suggest that local adaptations contribute significantly to improvements in peak VO2. Furthermore, the present data indicate that SB exercise activates a considerable portion of the musculature involved in swimming, and that aerobic improvements with SB training are directly transferred to swimming.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about; how to best delay/handle the ‘muscle lock up’ from lactic at the end of short races (ie 100m swim).
For reasons that Mike seemed to outline pretty well I don’t think that training your 400m dash will help you hold up in the 100 FS race.
If however this is a more general question of how to train yourself to handle the lock up at the end of the 100m swim, Bill Sweetenham lays out the progression pretty well in his book Championship swim training. You start with some easy yards early in the year to get your endurance up, then as you get better you add a bit of longer swims of a bit higher intensity. Toward the middle of the season you go with lactate production work. These are very fast, very short intervals with lots of rest, works on your ability to go fast and ostensibly to get your metabolism cranking fast in a hurry yet not stress you too much because you stop before it gets too bad and then rest a lot.
The lactate tolerance stuff is toward the end, like with 6 weeks to go to the big race where you take the lactate production type speed, cut the rest to 10 - 20 seconds and increase the repeat distances to 50 - 150 yards. These are usually done in rounds where you get 100 - 300 yards in, rest for about 5 minutes and then hammer again. Something I saw this morning was 3 rounds of (75 sprint from a dive, 10 seconds rest, 25 max on :45). Active rest for 7 minutes between rounds. The total time for the 75 plus the 25 should be lifetime best 100 free speed.
That’s the general idea, but your coach should already be on top of this I suppose.
Oh, and I know zippo about how the track guys do it for their runners.
bump for the day crowd
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