See, TC? I’m making good on a promise to discuss
an issue I referred to. –And that
check will be arriving soon,
yes?
Also, people interested in training by splits may want to look back at a comment to the original post on the topic, because reader Joy asks how to calculate the splits. I've replied to her comment with that information, and can give folks some information on how to construct workout plans for yourself if you don't have a coach to do it for you. But now, on to today's topic: Lactate.
In the throes of
acidosis, I’ve often wished – prayed – begged – that we could race without incurring all the
pain of lactate production. And,
of course, realized how futile that wish is. In any case, it might be useful to look a little at why
lactate is important in rowing, and when it might or might not actually help
you.
First, I feel it’s necessary
to clear up an issue that I might have misled you on (well, me and practically
everyone else who writes about aerobic or anaerobic thresholds). When we use terms like “anaerobic
threshold”, that implies that your body doesn’t begin producing energy anaerobically
(i.e., producing lactate) until you reach a certain level of output. But of course that’s not true. You’re producing lactate all the time. It’s just that, when the energy demands
on your body get to a certain point, you need to produce proportionally more of
your energy anaerobically. Keep
that up and it’ll eventually result in your reaching a point where you can just
barely keep up with processing the amount of lactate you’re making, and that’s
your anaerobic threshold. Ernest
Maglischo, author of my favorite book on exercise physiology, says on page 343,
“A more accurate term is the respiratory anaerobic threshold, or simply the respiratory threshold.”
[This book has 791 pages, just so you know.]
It’s also going to be
useful to understand the three stages of energy metabolism. They are: aerobic metabolism, anaerobic
metabolism, and the ATP-CP system.
Without going into too much detail here and distracting from the topic
at hand, the aerobic metabolism functions to derive energy from aerobic
glycolysis, changing muscle glycogen to glucose, then to pyruvate and hydrogen
ions, and finally to carbon dioxide and water. While aerobic glycolysis is much more efficient than the
anaerobic phase of glycolysis, in that it allows much more energy to be
released (something like 13 times more energy), it also takes about twice as
long.
On the other end of the
energy spectrum is the ATP-CP system, also called the “anaerobic alactic
system.” That’s because is does
not use oxygen to produce energy, nor does it produce lactate. In this metabolic process, ATP is
recycled (and energy produced) by breaking down CP, or creatine phosphate. This process releases energy very
quickly, allowing muscle fibers to contract at maximum speed, but only for
about 5 seconds. The CP supply
within muscles declines quickly enough that by the end of the first 20 seconds
or so of exercise, the contribution of this system to energy supply is pretty
much nil for most races.
So, from about 5 or 10
seconds into a race until the end, you’re getting most of your energy from
glycolysis (breaking down glycogen). The anaerobic phase is
actually the first part of glycolysis, and you can continue metabolizing the byproducts of
this phase aerobically into CO2 and H2O if the energy demands on your
body are not too great. The rate
of anaerobic glycolysis, on the other hand, is limited by the amount of certain enzymes that are
used to catalyze the reactions, but that amount can be increased with training
– sprint training. Acidosis is
actually caused by a buildup of hydrogen ions, which lowers the pH in your
muscles, and causes not only pain but a loss of muscular power and speed. And even though you might will yourself
to work through the pain, pain tolerance alone won’t help you overcome the
reduction in speed from acidosis. If you keep going, you get stiff, then numb, and once I even felt a kind of interesting "sparkling" feeling just as my muscles sort of ground to a halt.
So why’s it good?
There are several
reasons.
One is that when you start
getting acidic, it can mean you’re pulling hard enough to achieve the benefit
the exercise is designed to proffer.
Getting acidic can also mean you’re pulling too hard, especially if what
you’re trying to train is the aerobic glycolitic energy system.
Engaging in anaerobic
glycolysis enables you to perform at speeds that are higher than you could if
you stayed completely aerobic. You
know that already – if you don’t pull hard enough, sure, it doesn’t hurt; but
you also get beat real quick.
In a larger sense, there
are substantial advantages to lactate-production training. You do this to improve sprint speed
(and, remember, as rowers we sprint at the beginning of some races, as well as
at the end – but don’t get me started on that topic. Yet.) You also do it to increase your body’s ability to buffer
lactic acid, because eliminating it won’t completely do the job.
Improving sprint speed
involves, in turn, two parts. One
part is developing the ability of your muscles to produce large amounts of
force very quickly, using the anaerobic system; that is, developing anaerobic
power. The Canadian rowing
trainers (that’s a way for me to say “Ed McNeely” without sounding like a
sycophant, though that’s kind of what I am) have a “Peak Power” workout that
they use with rowers and scullers for just this purpose. The idea is that increasing the peak power your muscles can produce during rowing,
you’ll also improve your submaximal power output.
Improving sprint speed
also involves increasing your anaerobic endurance, which is the largest
percentage of maximum (anaerobic) power that you can maintain for the length of
a race. For most rowers and
scullers, races fall into the “middle distance” category, which means that
half to three-quarters of your
energy during racing comes from aerobic sources (depending on the length in
time of the race, not just on the distance of the race). For this reason, middle- and
longer-distance athletes need to work more on oxygen consumption and lactate
removal more than lactate buffering.
To that end you will add to your aerobic and peak power workouts what
Maglischo calls “Lactate Production training.”
Even though there is a lot
of truth to the idea that training to produce lactate is antithetical to
training to remove lactate, in fact both are important. Training to improve the ability to
produce lactate very quickly is a way of bumping up your sprint speed, and then
taking lactate away quickly allows you to keep up that high rate of speed
longer. But when you do lots of
basic aerobic endurance training, the contraction speed of your fast-twitch
muscle fibers, the ones that like to be anaerobic, will decrease. So you can train the fast-twitch
muscles even without affecting the slow-twitch muscles (because basic endurance
does the reverse).
During peak power workouts, you
want to give yourself a lot of rest.
You also want to avoid a lot of pain from acidosis. Why? Because you want to build it up fast and get rid of it
fast. You don’t want to incur a
lot of acidosis, since this actually slows the rate of anaerobic metabolism. It turns the workout more into a buffering one or a
pain-tolerance one. And those are
important, but in smaller quantity.
At the beginning of your
workout three to five mornings per week, take a very easy warmup (like what you
would do for lifting). [TC, you’ve
just reminded me that the topic of lifting for rowing is a very important one
and that I should cover it at some point.
So there.] Then, do the
following:
10x [10 seconds on,
1 minute off]
Your 10 seconds on will be
absolutely all out, as hard and fast as you can go, for about 3 strokes at
most. It doesn’t really hurt,
because you mostly use the alactic
anaerobic energy system. Then you
paddle really, really easy for a minute, or even longer if you want. Do that ten times, then do your regular
workout for that day.
To progressively overload
yourself throughout the training season, you can increase the speed at which
you do sprint pieces as the season progresses. Increasing the volume
(doing more of them) is also a good way of pushing yourself with this
work. But don’t decrease the rest between the pieces. If you do, then you’ll just cause
acidosis to occur sooner, and you will reduce the pieces’ effectiveness. You want to rest enough that you can
pull at the same speed through all the pieces; if your speed suffers, you’re
done with the workout and it’s best to move to something else.
Does this answer or raise
questions? Let me know. First time I’ve written about this, so
I expect I can do a better job with practice. But let me know.
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