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Lactic Acid Research

Mikey

5-Mar-2005
12:56:29 PM

One of the stories on Catalyst (ABC) this week was on research on Lactic acid being performed at Latrobe Uni. Their conclusions are pretty interesting...certainly very different from current thinking about Lactic Acid.

Essentially they are claiming that Lactic acid does not cause muscle fatigue - it in fact help muscles maintain their strength during physical activity.

You can find a transcript of the story at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1314443.htm

And articles from latrobe uni at:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/2001/mediarelease_014.html

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/bulletin/092004/research1.html

I am not convinced myself (and neither are the athletes at the Australian Institute of Sport by the sounds of it) but I wondered what everyone else thought.

anthonyk

5-Mar-2005
2:34:04 PM

well from general experience my muscles get weak and useless when they get pumped, which is generally associated with lactic acid build up. maybe i've been mislead, maybe after reading this i can actually climb stronger once my muscles get full of lactic acid, what a useful find!

"I think you let your body produce it and having a warm up to make maybe make a little bit of it lactic acid might help you go better."
i don't think i'll take his word on that one..

still its a bit of an academic find anyway, you exercise, your muscles make stuff, you get weaker. whether its the lactic acid or one of the other things it doesn't really matter to the end user hey..

still, interesting find about the mechanics of muscle action. their experiments still seemed a bit restricted and it would be interesting to see the effects of adding more LA or removing the other by-products during the natural fatiguing process.

sabu

5-Mar-2005
5:00:49 PM

the results are really interesting, if there are other by products of muscle activity then it's fairly possible that another substance is responsible for tiring. Why do you perform better after you've warmed up? maybe because there is a bit of lactic acid in your muscles. im sure they'll do more experiments, adding and subtracting certain by products, i mean who could resist doing more!! i'd certainly be interested in further findings
one more thing it is a mistake to go against empirical evidence because almost all of the time (there are exceptions) the evidence is correct

Super Saiyan

6-Mar-2005
9:03:32 PM

i find that i climb heaps harder after i jump on something stupidly hard as a warm up, pump the hell out of myself, and then have a rest to de-pump. after that i climb way harder and pump out less.... maybe its just me...

alrob

7-Mar-2005
6:49:14 PM

On 6/03/2005 obsessedclimber wrote:
>i find that i climb heaps harder after i jump on something stupidly hard
>as a warm up, pump the hell out of myself, and then have a rest to de-pump.
>after that i climb way harder and pump out less.... maybe its just me...

thats a flash pump my friend. thats how i try to warm up (thats try :D) i think it basically is a shock treatment for muscles and gets the initial mind blowing pump out of the way before trying something hard. i tey running a couple of laps on stuff thats easier then the project until i think i'm too pumped to climb, rest 15-20 mins, then i'm right as rain,.

gordoste

7-Mar-2005
9:59:08 PM

On 6/03/2005 obsessedclimber wrote:
>i find that i climb heaps harder after i jump on something stupidly hard
>as a warm up, pump the hell out of myself, and then have a rest to de-pump.
>after that i climb way harder and pump out less.... maybe its just me...

same here... would do stretches and then head up something 1-2 grades under my project. Then do a couple of easy ones, have a rest and hop on the project. dunno why but it seems to work...

rhinckle

8-Mar-2005
7:21:39 AM

thread crossing here.

Climb badly without warm up.
Excuse"I didn't warm up"
Warm up and climb badly.
Excuse "I was pumped from my warm up."

Goodvibes

8-Mar-2005
8:46:03 AM

It does seem a bit weird at first but I guess it is not that hard to imagine that other by-products that are produced in tandem with Lactic Acid could be the main causes of fatigue.

I don't think they are trying to say that you perform better when you have heaps of lactic acid in your muscles but that the lactic acid is helping to improve performance whilst at the same time other chemicals are being produced that result in fatigue.

Thus in isolation lactic acid may enhance performance but in practice there are other by-products being produced at the same time that generate a stronger response that results in fatigue.

As to the warming up, if I get a flash pump on the warm up route i am usually fu#$ed for the whole day. I find it much more effective to warm up relatively slowely so as to gradually get your muscles working harder which for me results in much better performance throughout the session.

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