Individuals with a significant training history do not need to 'crush' every workout, as sufficient volume can compensate for lower intensity.

Peter Attia· MD

um and I also don't think I need to suffer that much certainly on a daily basis maybe once in a while um but that said you know I still really enjoy quantifying my training and I know that there are many people who don't and I and I I think for those people you know for example most of my patients are absolutely not measuring their lactate levels during their cardio training it if if 2% or 5% are that would probably be accurate and for most people it's what you say it's what do I need to do to make you enjoy this and use your rate of perceived exertion as the guide tool um but look I still have a little bit of a data person in me and I like using this metric to maximize the efficiency of and it's a great way for me to track my progress right are am I able to get Watts higher and higher and higher while keeping heart rate and lactate more or less the same um and and so I'm just guessing that at your level this must be a relatively important metric right I mean in terms of what is there well first of all maybe just to find for folks what what a lactate threshold is we haven't even talked about it it's not something I particularly care about anymore but but you know talk about what a lactate threshold is how it's measured do you guys even still do lactate performance curves yeah but it more more as a function of more as a function of other metrics that I collect okay so lactate for me again is is is a concentration metric and is a is a marker of something and for me it's a marker more of substitu isation or like not not an extremely accurate one but it's a good one um so I would say the lactate for me is a way that allows me to collect more even but this is is a redundant metric to other metrics as well to basically be more precise in the way that I would prescribe or change even the training on a session uh so I would say that there are are plenty of good surrogates or or uh proxies that you can use instead to do the exact same thing without Le dat but if you're looking more let's say for example you want to know better now for example uh your subsidization or have an idea of that it I would say even argue that you can't necessarily only do one measurement you have to do a little bit of couple of let's say little bit change in intensities not much but small range there with a couple of measurements to get an ID because your let's say call it your your lactate uh or your maximum lactate steady state concentration for example in in a session can also vary based on for example dehydration so for example if you go out you have one lactic concentration today this might already change for in in two days time for example that's one but but I think it is but we use it uh as a way um uh uh okay how can I make this not too complicated so I mean I'll tell you how we used to do it and it was probably much cruder than what you would do but if we would do repeated intervals at ascending Pace or ascending like meaning descending pace so ascending effort descending pace so if it was in the pool we would swim hundreds or 200s and do and at change the pace so you'd go out pretty easy for the first one check the lactate fully recover repeat it fully recover repeat it and you're getting faster and faster and faster so then you have you make a graph the x- axis is the speed the Y and we would note heart rate as well but we would really focus on speed and then the y axis was the lactate concentration and it becomes a power curve and again this is very crude so I can imagine that now the methods are much better but you can eyeball them as sort of two separate linear curves and they intersection becomes the inflection point at which you go from kind of sustainable to unsustainable lactate production or nonlinear parabolic lactate production and we would sort of say look let's just assume that that intersection occurred at 3.5 Millo concentration of lactate we and we would note what the pace was there we would say to that athlete you have to be mindful of exceeding that pace now this speaks to everything you just said I mean that pace is going to change depending on your hydration depending on your energy reserves depending on your fatigue so of course it's crude but directionally that's what we thought about as you you have to be very careful every time you exceed that pace in a race because you're now tapping into a very finite Reserve um is that kind of how you still do it albeit probably with much more accuracy yeah no I I I what what I really like with what you say uh is one you talk about infliction point because this is a this is very misunderstood some people still today go by fixed blood lactate accumulation values or concentration values so they stick for example to four Mill moles or something like this and okay if you're going to if you're going to publish a paper and you want it to be able to compare with other papers that are out there well that that's that's fine but already here the problem with that is that four moles can be accumulated in a whole range of different ways you can go just above your second infliction point or just above maximum like this the state and then you creep up towards four four M meaning that now you have to have a smaller

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Individuals with a significant training history do not need to 'crush' every workout, as sufficient volume can compensate for lower intensity.

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