Lactic Acid Is Not Your Enemy

Modern studies suggest that lactic acid isn’t the troublesome waste product it was originally thought to be.

Bicycling | 31 July 2017

Modern studies suggest that lactic acid isn’t the troublesome waste product it was originally thought to be. – By Bicycling Staff

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Scientists now dispute the notion that cyclists and other athletes have accepted for nearly a century—that lactic acid is a waste product of muscles overwhelmed by anaerobic energy demands. This theory is based on experiments in frog muscles done by Nobel laureate Otto Meyerhof in the 1920s. In contrast to this idea, recent studies suggest that the lactate produced by muscles helps fuel high-intensity training.RELATED: High Intensity Intervals to Meet Your GoalsGeorge A. Brooks, PhD, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, is among those challenging Meyerhof’s findings. According to Brooks, lactic acid isn’t a waste by-product but a kind of fuel for our muscles. He suggests that our bodies make lactic acid and break it down into lactate, which is converted by the cell’s mitochondria into an important source of energy. A 2005 study from the University of New Mexico and California State University, Sacramento, confirmed this idea: “If muscle did not produce lactate . . . exercise performance would be severely impaired,” wrote the authors.

About 98 per cent of lactic acid is converted to fuel in the mitochondria. The remainder, called acidosis—“the hydrogen part or the proton”—is probably responsible for that familiar burning sensation. “The lactate itself is benign, good fuel,” says Brooks.

The good news: This doesn’t negate one of the foundations of bike training. The term “lactate threshold training” is a misnomer, as it’s based on the idea of riding just below the intensity at which we thought lactic acid would overwhelm the muscles with pain, but training at that level—in short, hard repeats or steady-state intervals—does help you ride longer at harder intensity by developing more mitochondria to more efficiently process the lactate. It just needs a new name. Anyone up for a Mitochondria Ride?

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Lactic Acid Is Not Your Enemy

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