Lactic Acid

[Corbab]

I was about to pile a bunch of questions on jdanger in another thread, but I have a lot of them, so I'll put it all here. I'm not especially well-versed in the science, so I apologize in advance if I'm wildly mis-naming things.

All I want to do is go hard. For a long time. I've heard "lactic acid" being thrown around plenty, but I don't really get the whole concept. I know it's the product of anaerobic work, and that too much of it (or not enough tolerance) causes you to burn out.

For power production over time, which is better: raising the lactate threshold or not producing as much to begin with? How does one go about this.

My personal training concerns are the 2k and 6k ergometer pieces. My 2k times is 6:50, and my 6k is somewhere around 22:00-24:00 (haven't tested it yet). I'm trying to build a bit more muscle this summer for more power, but I also want to get that machine-like endurance to go HAM every stroke.

[Rhiarti]

Basically, your body has one preferred energy fuel, but three different ways of making it. Which of those it uses depends on the type of activity.

The lactate system tends to be used for interval bursts of high intensity activity, and produces lactic acid as a by-product. If your body isn't dispersing it fast enough, that's where the problems set in, as the lactic acid builds up in your muscles and eventually your body will force you to stop.

So what you're seeing people talk about is improving both your body's ability to withstand the build up of lactic acid, and its ability to remove it faster, enabling you to go harder/longer.

In other words, if that's your goal, start out small and build up, just the same way you would if your goal was lifting something way beyond your current weight range. Your best way to improve is to do short bursts of strenuous activity (say, 1-3 minutes), followed by something gentler, but still active. In the case of running, interspersing runs and sprints with walking and gradually reducing the time spent walking between each burst.

Early morning, and not fully caffeinated yet, so hope that a) helps, and makes sense?!

[EnygmaEve]

Rhiarti got the meat of the concept down, but I could whip out my Biology degree and get all sciency-wiency-wibbly-wobbly, if it interests you.

And, I just stumbled upon breathing ladders, which apparently help you deal with lactic acid formation better in weightlifting, but only with "big" movements.

[jdanger]

For power production over time, which is better: raising the lactate threshold or not producing as much to begin with? How does one go about this.

My personal training concerns are the 2k and 6k ergometer pieces. My 2k times is 6:50, and my 6k is somewhere around 22:00-24:00 (haven't tested it yet). I'm trying to build a bit more muscle this summer for more power, but I also want to get that machine-like endurance to go HAM every stroke.

You're conflating the issue a little with the way you framed it and I don't want to go too far beyond Rhiarti's accurate summary but yeah.. 2-6k ergs are going to be all about increasing both threshold and tolerance. Two of the big differences between trained and untrained people is that trained people can always sustain the same amount of power output as an untrained person without accumulating significant blood lactate. This is to say their threshold (where they begin to really accumulate lactate in the blood) is higher.

And secondly, trained people can sustain power output through higher levels of blood lactate once they are past threshold. This is tolerance. An untrained person who does say 200m erg sprints is going to spike their lactate (among other things that we think actually cause fatigue/burn but that's beyond the scope imo) and crash hard. A trained person is going to produce more power over those same sprints and also be able to maintain significantly higher percentages of their max power output for longer in light of escalating lactate and acidosis issues.

Then there's clearing or recovery ability. A trained person is going to be able to deal with the super high levels of lactate and the real nasties in the blood/tissues and return to near homeostasis (resting levels) faster than an untrained person. So untrained guy blows it out in 3x200m sprints with a minute rest and it's maybe 15 minutes before he can walk around normally. Trained guy does the same thing and then does the whole thing again 3 minutes later maintaining 95% of his power output of the first series. Then maybe he gets up and carries untrained guy to his car because he's just that nice of a person.

So does any of this really matter? Not really. Lactate is a marker that allows us to look inside a complex system and get a glimpse of what might be going on at a particular point in time. The concepts of threshold, tolerance and clearance are interpretations of this marker that we use to try and place its context within the larger system. Training for the 2-6k erg distances is going to involve a lot of tempo and interval work designed to push all of this stuff (and more) as far as possible to get the best result. It doesn't matter if you're faster because you're generating less lactate or tolerating or clearing it better (in reality it will be some combination of all three), it just matters that you go faster.

So what to you do? Get strong in the off season. As it gets closer to go time start hammering the erg specific power work and build it up over time.

[Corbab]

So what to you do? Get strong in the off season. As it gets closer to go time start hammering the erg specific power work and build it up over time.

So I just have to work hard to get better? I hate it when things are this easy...

Really though, thanks so much to everyone for the answers.

EnygmaEve- I'll take the science if you really don't mind sharing it around (I'm honestly considering at least a minor in biology/physiology). And I saw the breathing ladders*bit, but I don't think that'll work so well with rowing strokes.

[EnygmaEve]

OK, so here is the science stuff:

The basic unit of our body's energy(the basic unit of life energy, really, from bacteria to plants to animals) comes from a molecule called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate).

There's two ways to get ATP: aerobic and anaerobic, but they both start of on the same path before they diverge into either with or without oxygen.

First your digestion system has the job of taking everything you throw at it and breaking it down to glucose. Then your cells take in the glucose and snip the sucker right in half, giving you two molecules of something called pyruvate. This is where the path deviates.

If there's oxygen present, it goes on to the mitochondria in your cells to create the most net ATP. Without available oxygen, it goes into the lactic acid cycle, which nets you a lot less ATP than the aerobic means. It's basically your body's "last-ditch" effort to squeeze some more juice out of your system when there's not enough available oxygen to complete cellular respiration.

Biologists are incredibly boring when it comes to naming things, so they like to name things either 1) after themselves (the lactic acid cycle is also called Cori cycle, after the dude who discovered it) or 2) after their "end" product (the aerobic respiration pathway is either called Kreb's cycle or citric acid cycle). So you will be safe in assuming that lactic acid is the end product of anaerobic respiration.

Lactic acid causes the "burn" you feel when you are working a muscle, but it doesn't actually cause the muscle soreness (DOMS) after the workout. In fact, it's one of science's mysteries that is currently being researched about exactly what causes muscle burn and soreness during and after workouts. All they know for sure is that lactic acid + some other stuff causes the burning, and that lactic acid DOESN'T cause DOMS, and DOMS might be because of something like muscle damage at the cellular level which in turn causes an inflammatory repair response (which is supported by the fact that anti-inflamatories seem to help with DOMS).

Every point I made here can be expanded upon in A LOT more detail, but I think I gave a decent overview, hopefully a mistake-free one because I still don't feel like I've woken up all the way and it's been a while since I had to explain this stuff to anyone (I tutored and taught this in college for 6 years).

Please let me know if I've flubbed anywhere or if you'd like a better explanation.

[Raincloak]

Lactic acid causes the "burn" you feel when you are working a muscle, but it doesn't actually cause the muscle soreness (DOMS) after the workout. In fact, it's one of science's mysteries that is currently being researched about exactly what causes muscle burn and soreness during and after workouts. All they know for sure is that lactic acid + some other stuff causes the burning, and that lactic acid DOESN'T cause DOMS, and DOMS might be because of something like muscle damage at the cellular level which in turn causes an inflammatory repair response (which is supported by the fact that anti-inflamatories seem to help with DOMS).

Well I learned something new today ... I thought lactic acid was what made your muscles sore after a workout. Guess I was wrong (I never made it past high school biology).

I know active cooldowns, stretches, and ice RIGHT AWAY after a workout help reduce soreness. Also NSAIDs (like Advil etc.), but that goes without saying ^^ Those crazy athletes who take an ice bath after an event have the right idea. A hot bath after a workout will actually leave you more stiff the next day. At least, that's what happens to me...

[jdanger]

Lactic acid causes the "burn" you feel when you are working a muscle

I'll have to do some fact checking but I'm pretty sure we've given lactate the pass on this and more. As an intermediary between anaerobic and aerobic pathways (energy substrate) and as a proton buffer "lactic acid" actually helps improve the functioning conditions in working muscles by providing an aerobic energy source and fighting against things like acidosis and depolarization (iirc currently the leading theory of muscle fatigue). Lactate is correlated with problems like acidosis and fatigue but it isn't the smoking gun as it were. Indeed it is the fact that it's a big player present on the stage when all this fancy stuff is going down that we used it as a surrogate marker to discuss these complex processes and eventually ascertain its true importance. That doesn't make it the bad guy. In fact right now it has a case to be dubbed the messiah that allows us to keep doing anything once we've blown our anaerobic ATP sloughing ace-in-the-hole during intense exercise.

I apologize for sorta freely using the word "burn" in a lot of places during this discussion. I should have been more careful there. I just like slick idioms when we are keeping it casual. When we really hammer into the nitty gritty we need to be a bit more careful with how we add color to our posts. I don't foresee a problem with nitty gritty in any context so I'm going to keep using that no matter what.

[EnygmaEve]

I'll have to do some fact checking but I'm pretty sure we've given lactate the pass on this and more. As an intermediary between anaerobic and aerobic pathways (energy substrate) and as a proton buffer "lactic acid" actually helps improve the functioning conditions in working muscles by providing an aerobic energy source and fighting against things like acidosis and depolarization (iirc currently the leading theory of muscle fatigue). Lactate is correlated with problems like acidosis and fatigue but it isn't the smoking gun as it were. Indeed it is the fact that it's a big player present on the stage when all this fancy stuff is going down that we use it as a surrogate marker to discuss these complex processes. That doesn't make it the bad guy. In fact right now it has a case to be dubbed the messiah that allows us to keep doing anything once we've blown our anaerobic ATP sloughing ace-in-the-hole during intense exercise.

I apologize for sorta freely using the word "burn" in a lot of places during this discussion. I should have been more careful there. I just like slick idioms when we are keeping it casual. When we really hammer into the nitty gritty we need to be a bit more careful with how we add color to our posts. I don't foresee a problem with nitty gritty in any context so I'm going to keep using that no matter what.

When I'm more clear-headed, I'll see if I can't dig and find some current published research articles on this. But for now, I'm dealing with a sinus headache and just can't be bothered.