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Full Video Transcript

What Threshold Means

Today we’re going to talk about improving our lactate threshold. What in the world is it? Do we have to do zone 2, high-intensity interval training, double threshold, Norwegian training? How in the world do we improve it?

And how does that tie to performance? I’m going to break it all down and most importantly give you about five different ways to improve your threshold and a model to do so. Before we get to

Testing and Definitions

do that, a little bit of science. I’m going to break this down as simple as I can. Traditionally the lactate threshold is thought of as hey when do we hit a balance point where production of lactate equals you know utilization or removal of it. Do we hit that steady state?

In the lab we can test this. Most of the tests are educated guesses. So any sort of step test where we go, hey, I want you to run a mile at this pace and a mile a little bit faster and then a mile a little bit faster, they’re guessing. The only way to get at a really good spot is to do like a longer test at just below threshold and then after a long period of rest then go a little bit faster and see if we keep that line you know steady until we don’t see it steady and we see it rising and then you’ve hit your lactate threshold or max lactate steady state.

The point is there are a million different ways to measure lactate threshold and even identify where it is and it’s complicated and messy. So when we talk about it in training, we’re not talking about it as like this is the definitive point. We’re kind of ballparking it. Okay.

The second thing

Lactate Is Not Bad

that is really important. Lactate used to be seen as the enemy. It’s not. We know this.

We’ve known this for 60 years or so, but we still say it all the time. Hydrogen ions accumulate at the same time as lactate generally. And we made a mistake and said, “Hey, it must be the lactate. We’re screwed.” It’s not.

Hydrogen ions can contribute to fatigue. Now, we know that lactate is both a fuel, meaning we can shuttle it. According to George Brooks’s shuttle model, we can shuttle it from fast twitch fibers to be utilized in slow twitch fibers. We can use it.

Our brain likes to use lactate as a fuel. Other sources in our body like to use lactate as a fuel. And it also according to recent research acts as a signaling mechanism. Meaning it can activate or tell us to activate signaling pathways that cause adaptations.

Stuff like PGC1 alpha alphabet soup of signaling pathways. But it basically says, “Hey, build some stuff. we need it to help us out here. Okay, so it’s a good thing in a weird way, but we still use it because it’s easy to measure.

So, let’s get to the

Reading the Lactate Curve

curve itself and then we’ll go into the training. When we look at a lactate curve, it generally looks something like that, right? it’s no rise or very small rise and then eventually we get to a point where it starts rising faster and faster until we have upward slope. In research land, we generally think and in practical we generally think if we can shift that slope to the right, meaning we can go a faster pace before we start going upwards, the lactate threshold has improved, which means our aerobic abilities has improved.

That’s true to a degree, but we’ve simplified

Aerobic vs Anaerobic Balance

it where we miss a vital part. Instead of thinking of the curve is solely from aerobic attributions, we can think of it as a push and pull between our aerobic and anorobic system. So if we improve aerobically, it shifts that curve to the right. It’s pulling that curve to the right.

Our anorobic system pulls it to the left. Okay, what do I mean by that? If I have a very good anorobic system and that generally comes with more fast twitch fibers. Fast twitch fibers produce more lactate.

They just do. That’s what they do. If we have more of them and are utilizing more of them at a given speed, then we’re generally going to have higher lactate levels even if we’re very strong aerobically. This is why you see, you know, middle distance runners have higher lactate levels, even if aerobically they’re stronger than some guy who’s a slow twitch oriented athlete, but not quite as good over 5K, 10K, or what have you.

The fast twitch athlete has higher lactate levels generally at every speed. Now, the lactate threshold might be a little bit better, but their lactate numbers tend to be a little bit increased. Why? Because they have a lot of fast twitch fibers.

This is important because we can be fooled by the lactate curve. If all I did was lots of long slow stop, lots of threshold stuff and no speed maintenance, I would kill my anorobic system. Yes, I would likely improve my aerobic system which would pull us to the right. But I could also kill my anorobic system which would pull us further to the right.

So we think, “Oh, look, I got this huge huge boost.” But then I go and race and I don’t race as well because I’ve killed my speed. Okay. So that goes both ways. Sometimes you can, you know, boost your anorobic system and your aerobic system stays about the same and you and it looks like you’re dtraining aerobically.

You’re shifting that curve and you say, “Oh no, I’m screwed.” But maybe over a mile you’re in a much better place or 3k or 5k because the speed component is higher and your aerobic system is still good. It’s just you improved your speed. The way I like to think of this is it’s your 400 time versus some distance time. There’s a balance here.

We’re getting that seessaw. All right, we’ve gone

Transporters and Adaptations

through most of the science. I have one more thing and then we’ll go into the trading. It’s been very popular now to talk about signaling pathways and then transporters. So the way we think of transporters are the things that help shuttle lactate into and out of the muscle cells.

We have MCT4 monocaroxulate transporter 4. It acts as the exit door for fast twitch fibers mainly. So the more we have that, the more exit doors are and the more our fast twitch fibers can throw that stuff lactate out into the world and hopefully have it shuttled to be utilized. We also have MCT1 which is more in slow twitch fibers.

It’s the entrance door. Okay, it’s so that those slow twitch fibers can pull all that lactate from the blood and say, “Hey, come in here. We’ll utilize you as fuel. Come on in.” Training shifts both.

Now, the only reason I bring this up is because if you look at the research, it’s all over the place. Some say, “Hey, you need to do lots of long slow stuff or or high-end endurance stuff or even sprint interval training to improve these things.” That generally occurs when we look at very narrow slices of a system because the way training studies are designed is really hard to isolate the effect because they’re generally six to eight weeks on college kids and you’re saying do this one thing and we’ll try and see what happens here. That’s why it’s interesting from a science standpoint but I wouldn’t give it a lot of credence yet. It can help.

and can give a sub signal, but the history and training actually helps us better here than the narrowing down. Okay, but the point is there’s some adaptations that occur in fast twitch fibers, some that occur in slow twitch fibers, which gives us an idea into the training of why we need a little bit of everything depending on who you are and what you’re training for. All right, let’s go into

Build the Base First

the lactate threshold training and development. I hear you, Steve. You gave me a ton of science. What in the world do we do?

So, it starts with this. We got to have a foundation. You’re probably sick of me saying this, but you can’t skip steps. And the reason is this.

That foundation provides all the machinery, the roadways, the mechanisms, the delivery trucks. It helps set everything up in order to have an efficient system. What’s our foundation in running or endurance sport? It’s the base.

Lots of easy, sometimes a little bit of moderate. That’s what gives us the pathways, the capillaries, the mitochondria. Does the other stuff do it? Absolutely.

Can you do it without a traditional base? Yeah, you can be a little bit like iglooy and get that base through aerobic intervals, which we’ll talk about, but the point is like we have to have that foundation in order for the lactate threshold specific training to help us improve. If we skip steps and we say, “Yeah, forget it. I’m just going to go do lots of threshold work.” We’re going to miss out because you’re trying to build the foundation or the infrastructure at the same time as refining it.

and it just doesn’t make sense. So, lots of easy, zone one, zone two, I don’t care. I hate zones. You know this if you watch this.

The point is easy enough to be consistent at for different types of runners. That’s going to to differ a lot. Okay? Find what works with you.

Accumulate volume. How much depends on your situation. As much as you can handle in your situation, dependent on how you’re feeling, injury risk, what you’re training for. 800 versus a marathon is different accumulate lots of easy once we get

High End Aerobic Connector

through that then we start adding spices of I’d call it high-end aerobic work which you could call aerobic threshold which would be like that first like slight increase we get very slight or we could call it like marathon effort or around there this serves as like the connector okay it’s saying hey that lots of easy where you mainly went through mostly easy to recruit slow twitch fibers didn’t get that tired because we went sort of long but not too long. Like this is where you top this off. As we increase intensity, we’re going to bring more and more fibers into the work. We’re going to rotate in between them.

Some are going to get fatigue. We call upon them and we train them more because we’re utilizing them. So, the high-end aerobic work is really good for training those maybe slightly harder to recruit slow twitch fibers or the kind of intermediate fibers that we have. How do you do this?

It’s marathon pace stuff. Now, you’re not doing a marathon, so you don’t need to do unless you are, I guess. So, you don’t need to do like the long marathon pace work. What we’re looking for is spices of work to build the foundation.

So for most people, anywhere from 8 to 12 miles or so of marathon pace work building up to it. I like to build up to about 10 miles for non-marathon specialists where you’re building this stuff up. We can do this in terms of just straight marathon pace stuff or what works better if you’re not building towards a marathon is more progression stuff where you’re starting a little bit easier, getting faster, a little bit faster, a lot of it steady, and then you might finish a mild tier faster than that to kind of go through the realm of aerobic abilities. We’re not trying to kill it.

We’re not trying to press this thing if we’re just working on developing the threshold. We’re just trying to expand our foundation. Okay. Once we have that

Below Threshold Volume

foundation, we move towards the second step, which is what I’d call a little bit below to just below that lactate threshold. The differentiator is is this. Mary’s back and made this assessment 20 years ago. It still holds true.

If we’re riding that line on that threshold or right below that line, it becomes a little difficult to manage because if we go a little bit faster, it’s not disaster or doom. It’s just you’re switching things up a little bit. You’re recruiting more fast twitch fibers. Lactate starting to accumulate.

That shifts the adaptation slightly and it’s easier to overtrain in that and not get as much volume. And what we know when it comes to to lactate threshold development, especially just below or a little bit below is we just want to accumulate time and volume in that space. So it’s not about pushing pushing pushing to get that hurt and improve it. It’s let’s accumulate a lot of volume.

This is the brilliance of the double threshold is back and and others realize that hey if we stay enough below this where it’s safe and sometimes split it up we can accumulate a whole heck of a lot more over time in a safe manner and not overtrain. This is why generally the advice is not just below where we ride that line but a decent number below. So if your lactate threshold occurs at 3 and a half mill moles, maybe down hang out at 2 and 1 half to three for the most part. If you don’t have lactate, you can ballpark this with the talk test with understanding what you’re feeling.

Talk test, I generally say you should be able to say a couple sentences. I feel good. I feel great. I want to communicate.

As you’re saying communicate should get a little bit harder. That’s generally a good sign that you’re below threshold. It’s going to differ again based on everyone. but playing it safe.

Now, we do need some stuff depending on your level at just below. Why? It just shifts the adaptation slightly. We’re bringing in more fibers.

We’re doing things a little bit more risky, but we can handle it. But there’s a safer way to do this. Okay, if we look at traditional

Split Threshold Sessions

threshold training, what we did was the Jack Daniels threshold runs. We did 25 minutes at threshold and said, “Hey, call it done.” What we now know is that doing those traditional threshold runs, well, there can be helpful, it sometimes gets in the way of accumulating volume. Why? Because if I tell you to do 25 minutes straight versus 5 by 5 minutes with a very short rest, 5×5 minutes is slightly easier physiologically, but not that much of a difference.

But from a mental standpoint and mental fatigue, it’s a lot easier than saying go ride the line for 25 minutes or ride below the line for 25 minutes. It’s just easier to do 5×5 minutes. You get a little break, a little bit of turn your brain off time where you can handle it. This is why increasingly you’re seeing more split up stuff.

Okay? So it could be 5 minutes, could be 1 minute, could be 2 minutes, could be 3 minutes. Generally when we do this we have to keep the rest short enough so that your aerobic system doesn’t drop down too much and we can stay on that ride. So short rest no on very short intervals could be 20 30 seconds for 5 minute intervals could be 45 to seconds to a minute you’re just looking at short rest.

The other way I like to do this instead of split is to get have it called like dealer’s choice which means you tell the athlete, hey, when you’re feel like I’m getting a little mental fatigue or feel like I might be riding that line too close, jog around for a minute or two, 90 seconds, then get back on it. And the goal, you tell them the goal is just to get the total time. So I don’t I would tell athletes, I don’t care how you split it up. I just want 35 minutes total.

split it up however however you feel in those moments. So split it right. What you’re trying to do is make it a little bit easier psychologically so we can accumulate enough time and volume instead of saying hey go run 25 minutes good luck or go run 30 minutes good luck. Sometimes writing that line can drive us a little bit nuts.

Okay, in terms of handling it all of that. So we can do it straight, we can split it up, we can do it short intervals, long intervals, all that stuff. Okay, once we

Threshold Plus Variations

get to that, we’ve gone below and just right on, then I like to say the next step, and sometimes you skip this step, but it’s a good one, is add some stuff to it. That’s my lactate threshold plus. Meaning what you do is you take your traditional threshold workout and then you add some sort of component where you’re going changing the stimulus. You’re going a little bit above.

So this could be we’re doing 6 by 5 minutes with a minute rest. The first five are at lactate threshold. The last one is I’m going to push it a little bit faster. Does this ruin the stimulus?

No. Training doesn’t work like this. What it does is it just says, “Okay, we’re going to throw a little bit of lactate into the system. We’re going to get a little bit but not too much fatiguing.

We’re going to recruit some more fast twitch fibers, teach you teach them how to kind of utilize it and we’re going to be in a good spot. You can also do this instead of um you know just adding on one faster component. We can do this as a progression so the last part of that threshold run gets a little faster. We can also do this by incorporating hills by making part of that threshold run, especially at the end, up a slight hill.

This forces you to slow down a little bit, which is fine. Changes the dynamics of the requirements based on going up the hill, which adds a strength component. There’s a little bit of non-specific kind of lactate in there, meaning you’re recruiting muscle fibers that you generally don’t utilize on the flats. And it gives us like a little bit of boost.

Okay, the next phase, okay, is

Alternations Above Below

alternations. This is where we’re playing above and below the threshold. Someone asked me the other day if you could just push up the threshold, and they said you couldn’t pull up the threshold. That’s incorrect.

You can pull up the threshold, otherwise igloid training wouldn’t work. But Ronaldo Kenova made this observation 15 years ago and said, “Hey, we need to work on mainly pushing up the threshold from the bottom, but we also need to pull up the threshold.” Cuz he found in elite athletes especially, you can create a max last, a maximum lactate steady state at a speed faster than threshold, which kind of is crazy, but it makes sense. I write more about this in the science of running. Check it out there or it’s online.

Google it. Alternations are essentially doing this is you’re alternating just above or below the threshold. And what you’re trying to do here is alternate something a little bit faster. So you’re recruiting more fast twitch fibers.

You’re throwing some lactate into the system. Then you’re going below the threshold to essentially say, “Hey, we’re in a higher endorobic state, but we’re going to teach these muscles to utilize what we got on here. Clear it all out and keep going. So, generally what I like to do is go by feel, but you might go something of like, hey, we’re going to alternate.

We’re going to go uh 400 m at just above lactate threshold. So, maybe plus 5 seconds a mile or so, or plus 5 to 10 seconds a mile. And then we’re going to go 400 on and then 1,200 m off at maybe marathon pace, or just faster than marathon pace. So, we’re well below the threshold.

still fast enough where we have to stay concentrated. And we’re going to alternate those for maybe four or five miles depending on the athlete. Then we might do it again and we might say, “Hey, this time we’re going to go 600 on,000 off, then 800 on, 800 off.” And what you’re doing here is you’re throwing a little bit more lactate into the system, shifting the challenge a little bit. If we looked at lactate over the workout, we’d see this like steady, then slight bump, steady, slight bump, steady, and it would be a little bit of accumulation over time.

So, by the end, we’re significantly above the lactate threshold. Not crazily, but enough. But you’re getting it in a kind of controlled aerobic way. All right.

This is a great way to not only work on a lactate threshold, but also work on that upper end of that threshold where if we think of or the upper end of that curve, if we think of it curving up like this, we can have a very high slope where it just kind of goes through the roof or we can have a more gradual slope where we just keep going. alternations make that upper end of the curve more gradual in addition to helping the lactate threshold point as well. The last one

Aerobic Intervals ILO

that I’d include and I’ve hinted at this is aerobic intervals. They’re iglooy style. Okay, I’ve done a video on this. I’m going to do a deep dive on iglooy specifically, but essentially what you’re doing is you’re utilizing short intervals that are often a little bit faster than the pace of lactate threshold.

So the half marathon, the 1 hour pace that gives us a rough guidance of at 15k depending on the level of athlete. We’re looking at we’re running a little bit faster than that, but because the interval is short and the rest periods are short, we don’t get significant lactate accumulation and we stay relatively aerobically. This is off also why you see people like Inger Britson do 400 meter repeats with short rest that might start around lactate threshold or a little bit faster but eventually into the season he’s doing them at you know 10k pace or about there about that’s like a old school iglooy style workout. We can do that with 400s, 300s, 200s, 100s, depending on the athlete.

But what we’re doing here is now we’re running at a slightly more specific pace. But because we’ve manipulated the variables, our lactate levels stay relatively slow. Depending how we manipulate them, they could be below the threshold, they could be right around it, they could be right above. But the point is we’re staying mostly aerobically.

That’s the last one that I’d use. Some examples of that. 400s are a great example. Uh 200s with a 100 meter float are a good example of this.

We could even do hundreds with the turnaround rest or mixing them in um or mixing them throughout. So we do some 400s, some 200s. As far as pace, generally the longer ones, if we’re doing 400s, we’re looking at 10k to half to 15kish pace or effort. If we’re doing 300s or 200s, you can push that down a little bit.

If we’re doing hundreds, you could go as fast as 5K or 3K, sometimes even mile pace, and still be predominantly aerobic and have relatively low lactate levels. The faster you go, obviously, the more we dip into um having lactate a little bit higher, which is fine if that’s the point. But we look at those kind of five ideals from our foundation

Putting It All Together

to below to lactate threshold runs with some stuff in them to alternations to aerobic intervals that give us the development. And the key here is this. Everything works. I’ve said this before, but a lot of it is the sequence, the timing, the goal around it, and what you’re trying to do that helps you individually like, you know, prepare your body for the demands you’re going to face.

Meaning, if I’m a 800 runner, I’m going to develop this threshold in a different way. I still might have to go through that sequence, but instead of spending a lot of time going, I’m going to go right below lactate threshold, I’m going to move towards alternations and more importantly aerobic intervals very quickly. If I’m a marathon runner, it’s different. In fact, I’m going to develop my lactate threshold before extending that into the marathon pace that I need to do because I need a gap between those things.

But keep those five kind of workout tools in mind as you go through your development for getting lactate threshold which is obviously specific for the half marathon or around an hour pace but also provides this very good support for if you’re running a 10k or 5k or 3k or even mile. It provides you with that aerobic ability um that is necessary for those predominantly aerobic events. There you go. Deep dive

Wrap Up and Next Steps

into lactate threshold training. Hopefully that helps. Leave questions, comments, subscribe, share this with others. Do all the things that every YouTuber asks you to.

I’m just a coach telling you my thoughts. Until next time everybody.