The Daily Pill is a series of very short daily posts where I share the definition of a medical term I think we should all know. Read it every morning and build up your medical vocabulary.
Anaerobic Threshold
This is a tricky one to explain quickly because it requires a bit of background info, but here we go: plainly said, your anaerobic threshold marks the point during intense exercise where your body starts to produce more lactate than it can clear away.
🤔Why you need to know:
Your anaerobic threshold is significant because it indicates your endurance limit at high intensities. Here is a brief explanation:
When you're doing mild to moderate exercise (lets say Zone 2 cardio), your body can use oxygen to produce energy in a sustainable way - No biggie.
BUT as you kick thinks into high gear (sprinting or lifting heavy weights for example) oxygen alone is not enough, so your body starts relying on anaerobic glycolysis (which basically means anaerobic metabolism in this case).
Anaerobic glycolysis is much less efficient at producing energy than oxygen, but it can generate it quickly, which is useful during high-intensity activities.
Lactate is a just a byproduct of that process.
Once lactate accumulates faster than you can clear it, you have hit your anaerobic threshold.
Knowing your anaerobic threshold is important for athletes because it helps them train more effectively by targeting specific energy systems. For example, staying just below the anaerobic threshold can improve endurance by increasing the body's ability to clear lactate, thus extending the duration you can sustain high-intensity jazzercise.
Im gonna end up writing a long form post about this because there is actually a lot to cover and the Daily Pill is not the time nor the place. I did this to myself.
🧠Trivia:
The anaerobic threshold concept gained wider public awareness during the fitness boom of the 1980s, particularly through its association with the fitness regimen of President Jimmy Carter.
“In the late 1970s and early 1980s, President Carter, an avid runner, experienced episodes of collapsing during long-distance running events. This was publicly attributed to pushing past his anaerobic threshold, which was a relatively new and sophisticated concept to the general public at the time. The incidents brought attention to the importance of understanding one's limits in physical fitness and introduced many to the idea of the anaerobic threshold.”