LT and FT training – You must do it!

“In a future blog, I will get into the relationship between lactate threshold, optimal training, performance and the development of the functional threshold used today by many coaches. “That is what I wrote last week.  I will fulfill that promise now…

Often when I read articles on training or even more so marketing materials from coaches or their organizations, I find we are hammered on a few key points.  This makes sense for marketing but it really does not make sense for learning how to train or coach properly.  One always has to remember that the big picture is just that, it is much bigger.  Lactate threshold training is a good example.

I do not know how many articles I have read that over emphasize the need to do sessions or sets at lactate threshold (LT).  So, to counteract that emphasis, let’s first look at two major drawbacks of training at LT…

The Drawbacks of Training at LT

One drawback of training at LT is that sessions can be overdone.  As a result, you end up overdone just like a black charred and dried up BBQ’d weiner.  As you remember from my previous posts, acidosis does not overload that athlete at LT so as a result, there is not a strong stimulus to tell the athlete to stop (i.e. this hurts, let’s go home).  It is very common to train too long at LT or simply do too many workouts in one week at LT.  Although acidosis did not build up, the extensive training at this intensity leads to significant trauma and muscle fiber breakdown.

The second drawback to just training at LT is related to the first.  In my opinion, athlete’s drain themselves with their LT sets and do not do enough training above LT.  This is a problem simply because not all muscle fibres are recruited at the LT level of intensity and thus not trained.  You see our body is pretty good (not perfect) at using the minimum amount of muscle fibres to maintain speed.  As some fatigue, more get recruited.  However, it takes a lot of fatigue and this goes back to the first point, increased periods of recovery to recruit the same amount of muscle fibres that you could recruit at higher intensities in shorter amounts of time.  Depending on the type of racing you do will effect how much higher intensity training you should do to be your best.

Don’t believe me?  Well, you don’t have to, but others agree:

Hunter Allen who wrote the Training and Racing with a power meter with Andrew Coggan (ph.d) who coined the term FT (functional threshold which is equivalent to lactate threshold, just measured differently), agree that training should be limited at FT.  They recommend starting in a so-called sweat spot (88-94% of FT) to get the best results especially if you have limited time.

Read some of Mark Allen or Dave Scott’s training articles.  A lot of the training they suggest is either below or above LT. 

And, Olbrecht writes in The Science of Winning:

…training at the maximal lactate steady state was the magic and optimal method to improve the athlete’s endurance (aerobic capacity/power).  However, nothing is further from the truth.  The components that make up an athlete’s endurance are very complex and it is fantasy to think that just one single intensity is capable of developing all of the different components that are necessary for improvement.  

Note: he says maximal lactate steady state.  Again, very similar intensity to the lactate threshold, just a different way of measuring it.

Benefits of Lactate Threshold Training

No doubt there are benefits to lactate threshold training.  Intuitively, I hope you can see that improving your LT allows you to hold a faster pace before acidosis sets in and creates fatigue.  Training around LT can help you do that.  And, perhaps that is why so many people gravitate to LT training as the magic pill.  Also, training at LT is tough.  What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.  Ignore that if you are one of those highly motivated athlete’s that has trouble training easy.  I won’t go into the physiological benefits because I think you get the idea.  LT training definitely has its place at one time or another.   

Functional Threshold  (FT) Training

 And, as you probably already figured out, FT = LT.  No, this does not hold true for everyone.  Sometimes FT can be higher or lower than LT.  However, as far as training stress is concerned, FT = LT in our books.  If you understand everything I have talked about in terms of LT then you should understand the benefits of FT training because they are the same.  There is nothing new with FT training.  Once again, it is just another word for LT, MLSS, AT, OBLA, CP60 because we don’t have enough already.  Actually, I am okay with FT now.  It is simple because it is easily measured as the average amount of power you can maintain for 60 minutes.  Having its own definition may make things easier for you so you can forget about all the other’s and focus on what is importation and that is…getting your training done.

 

I hope I have enlightened you a little bit on the crazy testing/training world of lactate threshold.  It may sound complicated but really it is very simple once you get around the semantics of it all.  By the way, I was being sarcastic with the title of this article not trying to be misleading.