Lactic Conditioning

Conditioning your muscles and heart play a large role in one's physical fitness but also in one's longevity. If you try to chat gpt this topic the results that I got were not good. Therefore I decided to come up with a basic workout that would allow one to reap the benefits of this type of training. First off, what is lactic conditioning and why should I do it? Think of lactic conditioning as the ability to perform an activity well while in a fatigued state. It may be harder to breathe but you can still do whatever activity you need to do without your typical amount of oxygen present. So, essentially if you enjoy any activity that has any type of higher level exertion that is going to last over a prolonged period of time then this type of cardio training is going to benefit you.

Think of a basketball player and what they would have to do regularly during the course of a game. As a basketball player you are asked to move dynamically and at near maximum speed for a prolonged period of time and then as the game goes on you need to be able to do that repeatedly with opportunities to rest along the way. Can you run the floor and jump as high in the 4th quarter as you can in the 1st? Can you make free throws at close to the same percentage in practice as you can in real life game settings?

This type of training would benefit nearly any athlete in any sport or anyone that likes to be active. Whether you play beach volleyball competitively or simply like to go for bike rides with the kids this type of conditioning can be beneficial to you.

Step One: We need to find a cardio based activity that you can perform at a super high intensity (95%) for 20-40 secs.

Step Two/Three: perform lower intensity movements for 2-3 minutes

Step Four: repeat

We are trying to improve the buffering mechanisms in our body by training it to hold off the lactate that can accumulate during high intensity exercise. News Flash, once you start to feel the burn, the end is near for many. We are essentially trying to take it right to that point and then downregulate our activity level but not flat out stop and lay in a pool of sweat on the ground. This is definitely high intensity so the body is going to ask for carbs for energy, this type of training will teach the body how to process those carbs for energy when oxygen is not readily available.

High Intensity Cardio modality: ski-erg-The skier is a pretty common cardio tool found in nearly every gym nowadays.

Do you need to use a cardio machine?

-NO, but it can be a little bit easier to ensure you are training correctly

I used two different methods of pulling on the skier, counted reps and then used the clock and meters traveled to be sure I was maintaining my intensity.

10/10 reps were performed by switching my stance and performing a low level jump alternating my feet each rep. I then rolled right into 15 traditional butterfly pulls on the skier.

I needed to complete this in between 32-36 seconds and travel at least 170 meters each round.

Active recovery: simple lateral movement over a very low box. There is something about lateral movement that is taxing on your body. Think about how hard playing good defense can be while playing basketball, changing direction laterally can be tough. Why do you think boxing rounds are only 3 minutes typically? You are moving laterally regularly while trying to exert a ton of force regularly by throwing various types of punches. I know that if I simply keep by body moving 15 times back and forth over this box my heart rate is not coming down right away.

My next movement was with a mace. A mace is a tool that forces the extremities to really work while also addressing some mobility in the shoulders on a majority of the movements. I would knock out a few 360s in each direction with some clocks in between.

After that was finished it was right back to the skier to repeat.

Below is a short youtube clip of what all of this looks like.

I ended up running this 8 rounds.

I then did 12 mins of steady state up hill walking on the tread where I was able to keep my heart rate around 140BPM. One thing that I want to be sure to mention is that the intense part of your session has to have the correct modality along with proper active recovery pieces for this to be a success.

https://youtube.com/shorts/CDakHwYnVBM?feature=share