4. Training to improve your lactate threshold
4. Training to improve your lactate threshold
Since the harder we ride the more lactate we produce, and lactate threshold is the maximum amount of lactate acid that can be processed, then it makes sense that the more lactate we can clear then the harder we can ride.
As a result, in order to improve lactate threshold then you need to improve the amount of lactate that can be processed by your muscles. As mentioned earlier, it’s the type I (slow twitch) muscle fibres that do the vast majority of the lactate processing. Therefore, it follows that these muscle fibres need to be trained to process more and more lactate acid.
As discussed in my article on base training, it is the mitochondria (essentially the power stations of your muscles) within slow twitch muscle fibres that process the lactate. Therefore, you need to look at the level of training that gives the maximum training benefit to your mitochondria.
Looking back at my sweetspot article, we can see that the sweetspot intensity (between the upper end of zone three and lower end of zone four) is a very useful training tool for this. Therefore, training at sweetspot will give you the maximum gains on your lactate threshold.
However, it’s not that simple. Riding at lactate threshold requires you to also use your type II (fast twitch) fibres to produce power. As discussed in the sweetspot article, it is possible for muscle fibres to change from one type to another, and if you train too much at sweetspot (remember, sweetspot in not a bad thing in itself but it shouldn’t dominate your training) then your type II (fast twitch) fibres will start to be converted into type I (slow twitch) fibres. This will mean you can process more lactate – but with less powerful type II (fast twitch) fibres, the amount of power you can produce will be adversely affected.
So how else can you improve your lactate threshold?