Lactate Tolerance v. Lactate Buffering

Rather than think of "lactate tolerance" and "lactate buffering," think of running at moderate to high intensities as "dealing with lactate." This basically means processing it as a fuel source at a fast enough rate to forestall the lowering of either muscle pH or blood pH.

The presence of lactate (the negative ion) actually may not be directly linked to lowering pH, since the associated protons (the positive ions) are apparently taken up in another reaction before they can interfere with muscle movement. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water - blood lactate is still an excellent barometer for ensuing distress and lowered pH.

There are a number of ways your body can combat a lowering pH; the prinicipal method is via bicarbonates and phosphates present in the blood. There are also ways you can deal with lactate. Lactate can be reconverted to glucose in the liver (gluconeogenesis) or it can be used as fuel by the heart (reconverting to pyruvate via dehydrogenase enzymes). It can also be transported out of certain skeletal muscle fibers and into other skeletal muscle fibers for use as fuel. The monocarboxlylate transport (MCT) proteins are instrumental in this process, specifically the MCT-1 and MCT-4 "isoforms," whose expressions are increased via certain types of training and associated recovery stages. Expression of these isoforms during training is also dramatically increased by supplementation with testosterone and by thyroid hormone.

Two basic types of workouts which affect expression of the MCT-1 and MCT-4 isoforms are:

1) "Crest-load" running at an effort intensity slightly above (stronger than) the "ventilatory threshold" but not exceeding the "respiratory compensation point." ***Note that since lactate can be processed, the "lactate threshold" may be blurred in many runners; i.e., blood lactate may rise more suddenly at a certain effort intensity or it may continue to rise gradually without having an easily definable point of inflection. Ergo, the term "lactate threshold" seems to be falling out of favor, but "ventilatory threshold" remains very definable and measurable.*** When operating at this effort level, you basically want to hold steady at as close to the respiratory compensation point as possible without surpassing it for more than two minutes at a time and if it is exceeded, the effort should remain constant and manageable at a strong pace rather than spiraling quickly into a state of discomfort.

What's happening at this effort intensity? You're experiencing levels of lactate which barely exceed what you would normally consider to be within your "steady state" of effort, but you are operating at this intensity for a brief enough time (or are managing the pace well enough) to avoid a lowered blood pH, which would be associated with difficult, labored movements. This affords you the opportunity to generate a strong stimulus for incresing expression of MCT proteins, which assist in processing lactate. If you stop the moderately hard running before you get in trouble, take a short rest period, then resume the effort for repeated segments, you can accumulate more time at the strong pace than you would be able to do in a continuous run at the same pace without excessive laboring. This leaves you with an overall effort intensity (the session taken as a whole) which is similar to that of a continuous run of the same duration at about 8-12 seconds per mile slower. The state of effort between the ventilatory threshold and the RCP is also called the "isocapnic stage" of exercise - a stage in which blood lactate levels rise in a non-linear fashion but pH is not lowering because the effort is curtailed before the blood's buffering systems become overwhelmed by the infusion of positive ions.

Ideally, you'd accumulate 25-35 minutes of running at this kind of pace (about 8-12 seconds per mile faster than your theoretical "threshold" or "maximum steady state" pace) in a session, broken into segments of anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes and with rest periods between segments which are about 2-3 minutes long. Normally, this pace is one which you could run for 39-45 minutes in a race, but you can also run a tad slower and do 4 x 10 minutes on, 2 minutes off or 2 x 20 minutes on, 3 minutes off. Or you can go a little quicker and reduce the segment lengths to 3 minutes with a recovery of 30-60 seconds. Go by feel. Do the first 10 minutes of running (out of a total of 25-35 minutes) a little easier, then find a strong, steady groove during the middle of the session. Start each segment when you feel ready to go again, but keep the pace such that the rests can remain short relative to the run periods. Finish faster if desired, but do not race it.

2) Flooding the muscles with lactate. This involves a short but highly intense workout - something like 2 x 400 at 3-4 seconds faster than 800 race pace with a 1 minute rest period. Not many reps at all, but the warmup needs to be very thorough, so there will be a decent amount of fast strides prior to the 2 x 400, and you may wind up getting about a mile of stuff at a fast pace if you count all those strides. There isn't much explanation necessary for this one; you just go for it and tie up. This should provide a stimulus for increased expression of the MCT-4 isoform in the Type II fibers (or whatever they call those things these days), making it a good session for 800 runners or maybe milers who lean toward the speed side, but distance runners don't normally need anything quite that intense in conjunction with higher orthopedic stress loads, other workouts being sufficient to mesh with their metabolic needs and cover this base of MCT-4 expression.

To discuss where these workouts fit into a schedule could easily become a tome. The schedule is infinitely more important than the individual workouts. Properly balanced, the whole can become much greater than the combined weight of the individual parts.

Good post, Kinbote.

beckumi, I tend to ramble, please bear with me!

I'll try to keep this as short as possible. First, in response to Lord Kinbote, I like a few things about his post. The main thing I like is that no where does he mention using heart rates as a guide for training(although he probably should have addressed the issue). As far as "heart rate zones" go, you can throw it all out the window. Individuals are more different than they are the same, especially when it comes to heart rates. That's why about the best thing you can do is use your "lactate threshold," or "ventilatory threshold" as guides (another good suggestion by Lord Kinbote). A little about these measurements: lactate threshold and ventilatory threshold are in no way related, but inflection (the point at which lactate levels/ventilation drastically increase) does happen to occur at the same time point, which is why Lord Kinbote suggested using ventilatory threshold as a guide. However, there is a huge problem here: unless you have a human performance lab (and scientists) readily available to take these measurements, you can forget about using them for your training as well.

Okay, now I'll attempt to answer your original question. The history of what we believe about lactate (and lactic acid) has been all over the place. Long story short, the current belief is that lactate actually does not cause fatigue at all, and in fact it possibly acts as a buffer to reduce the acidity in skeletal muscle (Lord Kinbote addressed acidity as keeping pH from dropping--same thing), which may be what your question about "lactate buffering" refers to. You may have read the recent link on the letsrun home page about Calcium being a potential cause of fatigue. I won't get into the biochemistry of it all, you were probably confused enough reading about MCT isoforms, etc. Suffice it to say that lactate measurements are used as an indication of fatigue (even though 1.lactate may not even be the cause and 2.the word "fatigue" is extremely hard to define). In fact, studies have suggested that 4mmol lactate should be used as the point of inflection, or lactate threshold, but again you can throw that one out the window because this just plain isn't the same for everyone.

Lactate tolerance. I would pretty much throw this term out, I'm not sure what it means. Lord Kinbote's idea of "dealing with lactate" is much better in my opinion. So now that we see lactate as a possible buffer (remember, reducing acidity or "keeping pH from dropping") and as a source of fuel, we can almost regard lactate as a good thing. Although its accumulation seems to indicate something bad.

Now that I have given some (very brief) background on lactate you can probably see why there is so much gray area on the topic, especially when it comes to training. Lord Kinbote did a pretty good job of explaining the biochemistry behind it all, but when it comes to training it seems to me that you should sort of start with the general literature on threshold training, tempo runs, etc, and just see how it works for you (or your runners if you're a coach). I suppose I would suggest Jack Daniel's Formula (definitely buy the book if you dont have it) to start off with, and use his VDOT system.

The main thing I want you to get from this post is that there is no simple answer to anything (especially training and performance questions) when it comes to the human physiology because of one simple concept: Everyone is different. When we think of, for example, physics studies, we have error down to a value of like .00001%. But when it comes to exercise physiology, error can be as much as 5-10%. And that, beckumi, is HUGE.

don't these two things have to occur to become good with the lactic range of intensity/time.

1. raise the level at which lactic begins to accumulate as high as possible. Long running at your aerobic threshold and above is good for this followed by and continuous with some long running at your anaerobic threshold or wherever that is.

2. increase the body's ability to buffer the lactate once it starts to accumulate, This can be achieved initially by hill running and resistance training and followed by repetition running on the track with sessions like 5x300/4 mins and 4x400/5mins.

Of course there are other factors but in the main i think these two are essential

In between these two types of sessions for distance runners is a session I call "lactate production". A session like this would consist of 20-30X200-300 at a manageable pace that still accumulates lactate at higher levels than LT. I consider this the perfect transition workout into harder aerobic capacity track stuff, as it is easy to recover from, as well as provides a valuable metabolic and neuromuscular stimulus to athletes who have been on a steady diet of distance running and hill workouts.

Some good points here as well, and certainly HR would have little to do with training at this intensity level as either one isn't going long enough to get HR to max, or it would be at max anyway.

I believe the OP is talking more about training that is appropriate for 400m-1500m events. The anaerobic components, and I'm certainly not a exercise physiologist by the way, for these events, as opposed to longer events (where LT/VT become involved), are less of a physiological paradigm and more of an empirical (even anecdotal) basis.

Lactate tolerance requires longer recoveries, as it's about the INTENSIY of the stimulus - i.e. 2x500m with 15 minutes recovery at 95% RP for 400m or 3x300m with perhaps a 10 minute recovery at 100% RP for 400m. Don't hold these volumes (or recoveries either) as "absolute" since it really depends upon the profile of the particular athlete involved to determine appropriate volumes and recoveries - that is what an experienced coach is for!!!

Lactate buffering is about the RECOVERY,e.g at Race paces. The emphasis is dealing with reduced recoveries, although increasing volume by extensive methods - which would be different for a 400m runner than a 1500m runner - like 15-20x200m or 3x3-4x200m, etc. Again what is actually appropriate in terms of volume and recovery is what should be established for a given individual by an experienced coach.

The physiologists can argue about the actual inter-cellular structure and activity, but the practice of coaching won't really change.

As to when these two DIFFERENT types of training sessions should be included in the training season will depend upon how your racing season is structured. Ideally these would be in a pre-competitive phase, but if the racing season is extensive (many months) then they might have to be introduced carefully around the races that are less important - as these sessions can be difficult to recover from at the wrong time which might negatively impact your racing.

I actually disagree with most of what spectator said, not trying to be offensive..

As physiologists study more on exactly what is going on here (most importantly, what is causing fatigue), the practice of coaching DOES change...or should anyway. The problem is the scientists really don't know enough so coaches are left in the cold to either 1. follow tradition and do what everyone else has been doing, or 2. adjust their training based on trial and error, which could take decades. Of course ultimately, the athletes are suffering.. But I'm absolutely certain that spectator and I would agree that coaches know tenfold more than scientists when it comes to training..

Thanks everyone for the detailed input.

Coaching will always be ahead of the physiologist. It is very rare that a physiologist develops some workout that works. It\'s almost always the coach develops a workout that works and has his theory why it does, then the physiologist comes in later and describes why he thinks it works.

Look at how Canova uses science. That\'s the way a coach does it. He theorizes on what he sees with his athletes and uses his scientific background to understand what is going on.

Yep. But the thing is, how do we know it "works?" How do we know something else that's never been done doesn't provide even better results? The problem is developing a system to determine what qualifies as "works" and what doesn't. There must be criteria that says "okay, when this happens we can say that the training (or whatever) "worked."

And yes it is the sad truth that coaching will always be ahead of science. Normally the scientist approaches the situation by asking a question and then performing an experiment, and then objectively answering the question by saying "the evidence supports that this (whatever) works". And we usually find that the coaches were doing it all along!! And of course it would be great to say that exercise physiologists that are coaches, are the best coaches...but that doesn't seem to be the case very often, though there are a handful for sure.

simplify? wrote:

don't these two things have to occur to become good with the lactic range of intensity/time.

1. raise the level at which lactic begins to accumulate as high as possible. Long running at your aerobic threshold and above is good for this followed by and continuous with some long running at your anaerobic threshold or wherever that is.

2. increase the body's ability to buffer the lactate once it starts to accumulate, This can be achieved initially by hill running and resistance training and followed by repetition running on the track with sessions like 5x300/4 mins and 4x400/5mins.

Of course there are other factors but in the main i think these two are essential

It is also possible that the various training methods you've suggested are effective due to other physiological adaptations but physiologists/coaches haven't yet identified what those changes are.

For example, there was a recent study examining changes in muscle fibers as a result of a basic marathon training program. VO2max of the subjects increased a small amount (less than 5% as I recall), but there were massive changes (60% - 100%) in the power output of the muscle fibers. One could argue that the massive adaptations in the muscle's ability to contract are the primary adaptation that occurred and produced the improved performance, but that these changes have been completely overlooked until that study brought them to light. In other words, the 80 year exclusive focus on one particular aspect of endurance physiology (cardiovascular/anaerobic model) might have blinded us to other important adaptations, changes that could possibly be the primary adaptations that occur.

Can someone please post the link to the calcium being a cause of fatigue article that "random shmo" is talking about, I can't find it.

This brings me to my next question. Does this have to do with capacity or buffering?

We both run the exact same distance 40 per week- same pace,

do the exact same workouts 1200 and 300's. We also have been running for about three years. Both are 16 both same height. I weigh 5 lbs less. Maybe he is more talented. I'd like to know what the core of my problem is. Can someone help? I want to correct this. Thanks

me joe

100 12.3 12.3

200 26.5 25.3

400 58.0 53.0

800 2:16 2:05

1600 4:54 4:36

It's a very tricky area and i've been looking into it for some time, yet i still don;t have an overview yet. But i can explain some relationships reasonably.

You said "It is also possible that the various training methods you've suggested are effective due to other physiological adaptations but physiologists/coaches haven't yet identified what those changes are."

Whilst there are probably some processes still unidentified i don't think they will cover the important 'unidentified' elements. I think those elements are more adequtely covered through looking into mechanical efficiency and it's relationship to energetic flow. This increased power output your suggest is explainable through this stuff i believe.

There are a few scientific fields of analysis that look into this stuff. Motor learning and skill acquisition are two areas within physical education that talk about it. Summation of forces is one area within biomechanics that somewhat explains it.

Basically the 'skill' acquired at running is the greatest single factor in increased performance. Fitness factors could be argued to be of equal value. I think most people would give the fitness qualities far more weight that the 'skill' ones. I think this 'skill' is specific to the pace/intensity at which you run.

Calcium100 wrote:

We both run the exact same distance 40 per week- same pace,

do the exact same workouts 1200 and 300's... I'd like to know what the core of my problem is. Can someone help?

- me - joe

100 - 12.3 - 12.3

200 - 26.5 - 25.3

400 - 58.0 - 53.0

800 - 2:16 - 2:05

1600 - 4:54 - 4:36

In a word (or two) and to use the phraseology used above; he is "dealing with his lactate" better than you.

It may well be that he has more ST fibres than you; it is most likely that his LT also would be better than yours.

You would need to do a lot more aerobic training than him to try to correct this... if indeed that is possible. Hard to say, but with the right training it may be possible for you to find an event, or narrow band of events, in which you can beat this guy.

One thing is for sure, as the results show, if you continue to do the exact same training as him, he will beat you every time.

If you've got the enthusiasm, find a good coach and start working.

Random Shmo wrote:

Yep. But the thing is, how do we know it "works?" , .

Very easy. It "works" if it produces results in races. That is the only thing that matters. I´ve had runners who didn´t improve one bit in the ex phys lab between two testings but in the same time improved their race times significantly.

The problem is that scientists look only at variables.

Does X workout improve LT, VO2max, RE, etc.

These variables do not determine performance. They give an idea about performance, but it's akin to using lactate testing. Lactate doesn't cause fatigue but it can give you an idea about fatigue.

It is the Hydrogen ions, also known as H+ or Protons which are buffered.

Lactate is NOT buffered.

Lactate production itself actually buffers the accumulation of hydrogen ions, because it accepts H+ So for this reason the term Lactate tolerance is not really applicable either, but proton buffering or Hydrogen ion tolerance are relevant.

As for H+ tolerance, the more lactate you can produce, the more H+ you can tolerate. This is partly genetic, 400m runners obviously produce a lot more lactate than ultra distance runners, due to the difference in the amount of fast twitch fibers (which produce more lactate than slow twitch).

Also the type of training you do has a big effect on how much lactate you produce. Also carohydrate availability has a very big effect on how much lactate you can produce since during running, most of your muscle glycogen is converted to lactate (controversial I know)

Also arousal levels (nervous stimulation) has a very big effect on lactate production.

When you race however, you might run faster with slightly more lactate production or less lactate production, depending on the above factors, it is not as clear cut as many people make out, since it depends on the balance of

all these factors, plus the good old fashioned: how much are you prepared to hurt yourself. Of course the wise coaches will tell you that the time to really hurt yourself is during the most important races.

I think the proper term is "lactate accumulation," not production

well lactate is produced and therefore it accumulates. There is also removal of lactate. There are the other chemical processes going on but the fact remains

you can 'feel' lactic when you train for it

this 'feeling' is common through all people who have felt it, there is no confusing it and for my athletes they know lactic hell is a state they must become accustomed to.

Whether you are raising whatever its called to a higher level through long running and aerobic training so as to delay this 'accumulation' or whether you are training into that lactic feeling to become used to it ... it is still well known what to do.

The problem is that people misuse the information that is available and they misinterpret the feelings they are undergoing. They stop reading themselves because some scientist has said run at this pace for this long.