Lactate Threshold Test

Descripción

Most “threshold” numbers you’ll see quoted are fixed — a flat 2.0 mmol/L for aerobic threshold, 4.0 for anaerobic. They’re wrong for most trained athletes. Well-trained athletes routinely sit well below 2.0 at LT1 and well off 4.0 at LT2 — the thresholds are breakpoints in the shape of your own curve, not a number that applies to everyone.

This test finds yours. It’s an incremental step test — 3-minute stages, intensity rising in fixed increments (watts for cycling, km/h for running, sec/100m for swimming), with a fingertip or earlobe blood sample, heart rate and RPE captured at the end of every stage. The stage window is calculated around your estimated thresholds beforehand, so the 8–12 samples land exactly where the curve bends, not spread thinly across a range that mostly doesn’t matter.

Two thresholds come out of the resulting curve:

– LT1 (aerobic threshold) — the first sustained rise above resting baseline; the top of your true easy/recovery zone
– LT2 (anaerobic threshold) — the steeper inflection where lactate production outstrips clearance; the ceiling of sustainable race-pace effort, and the single most useful number for threshold prescription

The breakpoints are found by fitting a three-segment regression to your lactate curve rather than reading them by eye — the same method, applied identically every time, so your results are genuinely comparable test to test. Every curve is then reviewed by Barry before your report is released — a sanity check the algorithm alone doesn’t get.

What you’ll get:

– LT1 and LT2 as intensity, heart rate and RPE
– Your full lactate curve, HR and RPE overlaid, thresholds marked
– Five training zones anchored to LT1/LT2, expressed in your own pace/power/watts, HR and RPE
– A trend read against your previous test, where you have one
– A written interpretation of what the thresholds mean for your training, not just the raw numbers

Before you test: come normally fuelled (a light carb-based meal 2–3 hours before), no hard training in the 24 hours prior, no caffeine for 3–4 hours before, no alcohol the night before — a compromised baseline shifts the whole curve, so these matter more than they might seem.