Lactate Testing

Lactate is a by-product measured by sport scientists or coaches to evaluate workouts and profile athletes during fitness testing. Lactate is not the cause of fatigue, but does correlate with the decay of work, thus making it a biomarker for performance. Lactate testing is done with endurance athletes to calculate their lactate threshold, or the intensity of experience before the lactate increases exponentially. The primary benefit of lactate testing is getting a simple summary of how the body is coping with the workload for comparative purposes. We look at the level of work (watts for cycling, or pace for running) it takes to produce lactate. Once achieved, we can train around this level in order to produce the desired cardiovascular response.

Lactate Test consists of a relatively low intensity ramp test, increasing intensity every 10 minutes until the desired amount of lactate is achieved. Once we obtain this spike in lactate levels, the test is over.