Feature :: Dropmachine.com - Lactic Training – how to push through your body’s shut down mechanism.

You step up into the start gate atop Mont Sainte Anne. You're given the ten second beep, you adjust your goggles, pull the gloves on tight, give the pedal one last spin like you're kick starting your KX250, and try to envision yourself railing one of the most technically and physically demanding courses in the world. Beep, beep, beep, beep........ beep, and you're off. The first 30 meters go by like it never happened as you're fueled by a brass set and excitement. The first third of the hill goes by like you planned, you're focused, smooth and on task, everything is cool. Then it hits you, you start to feel a dull throb in your quads and forearms, you push through the pain for time being. As you near the last third of the course your legs are screaming at you and wont let you open up full throttle, your breathing is off the chart, your head hurts, your teeth hurt, you taste puke in your throat, your vision is starting to tunnel and it feels like your body is shutting you down. News flash - It is.

Built in to every human being are several defense mechanisms. They're safety features. One of these such features works similar to the way a governor on your lawnmower engine does. When your body starts to develop a combination of too much lactic acid, starts running low on available glycogen for muscle contractions, and is far past Vo2 max (oxygen debt basically) this built in safety feature slows you down to prevent injury. Lactic buffering is also another mechanism that your body uses to defuse lactic acid that's building up. Basically your body produces alkaline to neutralize it. There are workouts specifically designed to raise that point of your body taking over and shutting you down, but until you have good Vo2 max (oxygen uptake) and lactic buffering there isn't much point to them. What works best is starting out with workouts aimed at lactic threshold. This types of work out increase your Vo2Max and how fast your body can defuse lactic acid. This is the point where a lot of downhillers draw a blank. What is Vo2 Max? In English terms, this is the point that your motor is no longer working efficiently. You're now storing lactic acid, not defusing it and breathing it out in carbon dioxide. You're not taking in enough oxygen into your blood to handle the work. In short raising your Vo2 Max is increasing how hard you can work when you're at your max level. It is directly attached to lactic acid witch is why it's crucial. Many guys coming off a solid race season, whom are still in good form will already have good test results. But no one should spring and pay to have testing done. You may be fit, but not that fit. So how do you start?

Well like any hard training you have to have a firm and wide base on your training pyramid. If you have zero fitness you shouldn't bother. It's a sure way to get nowhere and/or get sick. Most lactic training workouts are a simple concept. It's all very hard and somewhat uncomfortable too. I personally find it more painful mentally to keep pushing through the hurt. For your body to realize it needs to naturally better deal with lactic acid it takes more than just doing an effort until your lactic, and then resting. They all involve going very lactic, and then continuing to work all out with no or not enough rest. In my own training this year as a kilo (1000m) rider lactic training was a very important part of my schedule that I HATED with a passion. If I had a workout at night, I would spend all day looking for ways in my head to get out it. Ultimately at the end of the day the workouts did pay off and I lost my ride by the narrowest of margins. Like any other kind of interval work you have to give it a bit of time to start to see some results as well as give your body some time to get used to being throttled. I always recommend making sure you have an empty schedule in the social life following a lactic session. You will feel like hell, and not want to be around anyone. The beauty of lactic work is the use of a heart rate monitor isn't needed. In fact you want to leave it off regardless, seeing how hard your heart can pump may scare you. What you need is a stop watch than you can read while working hard, you'll also need a bike on a trainer. CX, Road, Track, Cross, it doesn't matter.

One of the best and most used workouts in my world to get your body used to the idea of lactic work is a simple step workout of intervals. On its own its better than nothing, but I highly recommend using it as just a starter.

If you have any health conditions that are effected by straining your lungs and heart stop reading this and go see a doctor first. Having a fatal asthma attack while training for senior sport racing would be senseless. Use your own discretion, common sense, and listen to your body!

Warm up for 20 min, Start off easy wearing a sweater if you want. By the end of the warm up you should be dripping sweat and it should be hard to talk by your breathing hard. I don't recommend working out in a hoody at all, I always suggest an undershirt and a fan. Overheating or heatstroke wont get you anything but time off! Collect yourself a bit and then get your watch set. Im lucky that I have a gym partner to run my stop watch. Set your trainer up or gear the bike accordingly so that it feels like your going into a bit of a headwind, for a small amount of time you'll go as hard as you can, with a bit of a recovery, only just not enough. Between sets you'll get a bit of a break. Here's the workout.

After that workout I always recommend putting your legs against a wall in the air for 15-20 min to help drain the garbage out. Making sure your properly hydrated all day and afterward is ALWAYS a good plan too. Some people react to higher lactic levels with a head ache within an hour after, I fall into those "some people". If you need to pop some Tylenol or an anti- inflammatory go nuts. Chances are if your new to intervals on a trainer at that intensity you may feel a little gutted or ill after. It goes away, the only tough part is trying to put food in when your appetite has been demolished. If you're new to intervals or aren't quite the fittest person on the planet I would do this work out 1 - 2 times a week for at least a month and a half. Ultimately if you're able to listen to your body you will know when your body is recovering from that exercise.

One of the toughest intervals ever invented is called the Tabata protocol. It can be applied to many sports and activities but for bikes its nothing shy of evil when done properly. When I was explained it by my coach I knew it would hurt. But I didn't know it was going to be that brutal. This kind of workout you only do every 10 days at least. And you need an easy recovery day following. It also take 3-5 sessions to work up to the full work out. You will require someone to run a stop watch as you may lose vision. You're also going to want a fan, a towel or rag on the floor in case you miss the pail if you spew. The interval consists of sets of sprints 20 seconds long, with 10 seconds rest in between. For your first attempt you may want to only do one set of 6 sprints. Second attempt, go 2 sets of 6, then go to 3 sets. Once you can do 3 sets, up it to 7 sprints, and then 8. In between sets you need to get a full recovery in. If it takes you 20 min, or you have to lay on the floor because your dizzy go for it. When I do these I have a crash mat to land on, I've puked, I've come close to blacking out, and I've sworn it hurt so much, but it works. This is what a full Tabata session for a cyclist in my position looks like.

I'll do that interval 3 times with at least 15-20 minutes of very easy spinning with zero resistance on the legs. It takes even the most fit athletes 5 - 6 min to stop hyperventilating as well. Within that interval by the 5th sprint I'm in a lot of pain, by 6 in oxygen debt, by 7 staring to lose some vision, and by 8 you cant really see much difference in my leg speed between spinning and sprinting. By the end of the second set I'm usually off the bike within 5 minutes to lay on the floor waiting for someone to shoot me. By the third interval set I'm hurting in no time. Regardless if I stay on the bike or not after that set I need to lay on the floor and I'm usually looking for something to puke in as my trainer is laughing his ass off. Once I feel a little less like a hangover I tend to get on the bike and with no resistance spin for 20 -30 min super easy. A work out like that requires a solid flush or else you can do damage.

My post bike recovery lasts into the night as well. You learn a few tricks over the years. One of the best ones I learned was to raise the end of your mattress 5 or 6 inches so your legs are elevated. It sounds stupid but it certainly helps freshen up abused legs. I also tend to do this workout during the afternoon, that way I can slowly sip away at a very thick and nutrient rich recovery shake after. You wanna see the rare occasion that I turn away food, that's your chance. As I said before this kind of workout should have 10 days minimum in between to fully recharge. Its gonna take a lot out of you. But at the end of the day it comes down to a simple concept - How badly do you want to win?

Some will ask why just work your legs when DH is a full body beating? Well you are simply making the movement with your legs, which is practical. The reality is your storing the lactic acid all over your body. When you get into these kind of workouts you'll what I'm saying.

A workout a lot of cyclists of all kinds do on the road to do a very similar thing can be done in the pre season months leading up to the first race. Same deal as before, it requires you to be very warmed up, ready to rock, and leave 10 days before you do it again. You need a fairly long hill, it doesn't have to be steep, but a fairly long and consistent grade. It will take you at least 2 sessions to nail the efforts as you need to listen to your body a bit. This is as much mental training against pain as it is for changing how hard you can work.

You need to select a gear against the hill that has you working hard enough to go very lactic within 30 seconds or so. Its not necessarily an all out sprint. You need to ride it so the effort is 3 minutes long. The tough part is gauging it so at 3 minutes you're about 5 seconds away from falling over. I have the luxury of having someone follow me in a car to honk the horn at 3 min after I pass a particular mail box. This is the kind of workout that you may discover you can invent your own swear words or adjectives to describe pain. Anyone who can recover inside of 20 minutes didn't do it right. I usually spin for 10 min in my easiest gear, sit for a few and then spin again on harder gears to get ready for the next one. For a warm up I usually ride for at least 40 minutes first and I make sure I attack 2 hills to get my lactic system turned on. If you don't do that you can't work it out. Think of it as trying to rev an engine that's not turned on. I do no more than 4 of these, and put the same amount of effort into the post bike recovery as the training. Usually the next day I only get on the bike to ride by the beech and enjoy some saddle time. I tend to use this workout when the weather is nice enough that I don't have to wear several layers or a rubber rain suit. Mentally I find the lack of any structure within the interval to be harder as you just sit there and hurt your life away. Within the 3 minutes you will go to a deep place that not many people can say they have gone to on a bike. The trick I found is to focus on where you're going, and just ignore the pain - as simple as it sounds.

Witch brings me a point that a lot of coaches or trainers, certified or not miss. Cycling is suppost to be fun. Nobody reading this on Dropmachine.com is paid enough money to race to live on. My coach this year was adamant whether it was a trainer session, or a brutal workout on the track or even the road that when I get home (espesialy from the track) That I eat, and then get out on the road bike and ride somewhere enjoyable, somewhere fun. Having some time on the saddle that's actually fun and enjoyable does wonders for your mental state. Too many cyclists start to develop a hatred for the bike because every time they get on it, its painful, or not fun at all. Between the end of April until nationals started I logged in my diary something like 35 "beach rides" as I called it. Just as it sounds, a cruised up and down the White Rock beach for 30 min. I easily credit that to not burning out mid training block. Fortunately for downhill guys fun is as simple as getting on the DH bike. But be careful that you treat lactic work with respect and recover properly. Or it will bite back.

Back on task here. Within 2-3 weeks of race season you should stop lactic work. As long as you utilize the lactic system every now and then, or basically a race, you can keep your gains through the summer season no problem.

	Old School Johnny - January 25, 2010 This is a great article. Great tips and taking this idea into the spin class can really work wonders, Push it and you;ll be crawling out of the gym, thanks for the time schedule, it helps...I have yet to puke...but damn close/.
	Somers - January 26, 2010 That sounds horrible. It must be good for you if you keep doing that. I'm shocked that 5 seconds of high-intensity can have any benefit.
	Nick Boers - January 28, 2010 Thanks JS. Any suggestions to add for recovery drinks?
	JS - February 10, 2010 5 seconds of everything you have adds up Kris when you need 4 times the recovery. Nick: There should be an artical about recovery drinks and tequniques floating around. Right now my personal mix consists of 2 scoops of powder milk(protein), 4 scoops of dextrose sugar. I buy a months worth at a time for about $20 total. I add a bit of glutamine and gatoraid also. search out the artical.

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