LT test on an indoor bike?

deer_dance

I started using a heart rate monitor recently and after a bit of reading got the gist that working out my lactate threshold heart rate was the best way to use it effectively.

I read that the best way to do this was a do 30 mins at TT pace and calculate average HR over the last 20 mins.

Finding somewhere flat/quiet enough to do an uninterrupted run is pretty impossible round here so wondered if doing the test on an indoor/spinning bike would suffice?

I've had a few goes on a spinning bike I have access to. My LTHR came back as 184bpm. This seems high given that I think my max HR is in the low/mid 190's. Could this be accurate or are the figures maybe skewed by the relatively high temperature when cycling indoors?

diy

Are you taking the avg of 2 runs?

no reason you can't do it on a spinner as long as you can work hard enough, personally I think its difficult on an indoor bike to get your heart up as high.

deer_dance

diy wrote:

Are you taking the avg of 2 runs?

no reason you can't do it on a spinner as long as you can work hard enough, personally I think its difficult on an indoor bike to get your heart up as high.

No, but I've done the test a few times now and have seen very similar values. Particularly in recent tests.

I know what you mean about getting your HR up but I seem to manage with a decent warm up.

Regardless of validity I've found it beneficial to my fitness. Hopefully it is giving me a reasonable estimate.

Thank for the response.

BeaconRuth

deer_dance wrote:

I started using a heart rate monitor recently and after a bit of reading got the gist that working out my lactate threshold heart rate was the best way to use it effectively.

I'm afraid I'm inclined to disagree. I think LTHR is a lot of nonsense. What EXACTLY is it supposed to be anyway?

Ruth

diy

As long as you are caning it for the full 30 mins and not watching the HR monitor as some sort of speedo/target, then its going to be better than any standard age based formula for basing zones on.

mrwibble

get a lactate test, about £100

deer_dance

BeaconRuth wrote:

deer_dance wrote:

I started using a heart rate monitor recently and after a bit of reading got the gist that working out my lactate threshold heart rate was the best way to use it effectively.

I'm afraid I'm inclined to disagree. I think LTHR is a lot of nonsense. What EXACTLY is it supposed to be anyway?

Ruth

Would be interested to know why exactly you think it's nonsense. I'm assuming you are fairly clued-up on the subject given your profession. Do you disregard heart rate and HR training zones generally when working with your clients?

I appreciate power meters are the way to go but don't feel like my ability and experience justifies the cost of one at this point.

mrwibble

What's your long term plan for cycling?

jgsi

deer_dance wrote:

BeaconRuth wrote:

deer_dance wrote:

I started using a heart rate monitor recently and after a bit of reading got the gist that working out my lactate threshold heart rate was the best way to use it effectively.

I'm afraid I'm inclined to disagree. I think LTHR is a lot of nonsense. What EXACTLY is it supposed to be anyway?

Ruth

Would be interested to know why exactly you think it's nonsense. I'm assuming you are fairly clued-up on the subject given your profession. Do you disregard heart rate and HR training zones generally when working with your clients?

I appreciate power meters are the way to go but don't feel like my ability and experience justifies the cost of one at this point.

I should let Ruth reply, but my opinion on the matter is an enthusastic 'trainer' is that basing training schedules and training rides - indoor/outdoor - using heart rate is so imprecise and variable as to render it quite useless.
However I will always record my HR traces and use them to guage how hard my system did have to work.
Recovery rates after giving it full gas to see the levels after 1 minute and 2 minutes give a good indication of wellbeing - ie if you are stressed/under the weather then the recovery times tend to suffer so you amend planning in that respect.

diy

You can spend silly money on this stuff - you have to work with what you've got. As long as you have reasonably consistent data and take time to monitor RHR, light activity HR etc.. you can train with HR data pretty well. I'm pretty clued up on the influences of my base HR and will normally have a minute settling down - pre-indoor training and a minute under light load (if its not where it should be), just to gauge how much "rev range" I have on the day. If my HR is up a bit due to food for example then I will up my HR goal for a given zone. If its down then I do the reverse.

My biggest problem is pacing myself for a session, I often leave too much in reserve, so understanding what flat out looks like is important.

For example my current HR is 37bpm as I type - that is a little higher than usual probably due to a weekend of alcohol abuse and lack of sleep When I go training tonight it will be up probably to around 42 again quite high for me and I will up my HR target about 2-3bpm based on the same effort last week.

BeaconRuth

deer_dance wrote:

I appreciate power meters are the way to go but don't feel like my ability and experience justifies the cost of one at this point.

That's perfectly fine - I think powermeters are completely unnecessary for many and I think people are often far too quick to assume they need one. I was not dismissing HR monitors out of hand at all.

Would be interested to know why exactly you think it's nonsense. I'm assuming you are fairly clued-up on the subject given your profession.

I think 'LTHR' is nonsense because there is no such thing. It is not based on any physiological phenomenon and there is no such thing as a single LTHR figure which can be repeatably measured

I read that the best way to do this was a do 30 mins at TT pace and calculate average HR over the last 20 mins.

So it's an average of a range of values which could start anywhere, could finish anywhere and could be anything at all in between. Taking an average of that little lot is pretty shoddy science in my book.

I will concede there is a range of HR where one might roughly expect someone to find their HR during intensive TT-pace training or racing, but even then I would never recommend using HR alone to pace anything (most of all a time trial).

Do you disregard heart rate and HR training zones generally when working with your clients?

Not at all, no. They're very useful as a rough guide but it's crucially important to also take into account perceived effort and any available objective measures too.

Ruth

bahzob

I thought the above graph illustrates what's going on behind the scenes and why lactate threshold is an important measure.

As intensity increases so does blood lactate level. Lactate is not a "bad" thing, it is actually good, it is used as an extra fuel source. However the capacity of the body to process it is limited.

At a certain point more lactate is being generated than the body is capable of processing. At this point the level increases significantly showed by the change in the slope of the blue line in graph above.

Training should have affect on this graph. It's quite possible though it will not change in shape, just be moved to the right wrt the power numbers on the x axis.

From a physiological perspective the power produced at lactate, the % of this point relative to max HR and the ability to recover once dropping below this point can all be affected. More about this in these articles, the first one is especially good. They also explain why, paradoxically, to improve performance at threshold you will ideally combine intense workouts with "endurance" ones.

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/what-is-lactate-and-lactate-threshold

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/zone-2-training-for-endurance-athletes

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/how-proper-training-affects-lactate-threshold-heart-rate

Psychologically training gets you accustomed to the pain that comes around LTHR. Athletes with identical physiological measures will still perform differently just because of this.

All this being said HR can only be one aspect of measuring LTHR, especially in self tests.

Power ofc is very useful. I find an equally reliable measure is RPE especially level of breathing. Depth of breathing up to LTHR increases but it's still voluntary, I can force myself to stop for a few revs and maintain power. Past LTHR every breath counts and stopping even for a few revs is next to impossible. ((Just on this, the key thing is breathing out, apart from lactate increased intensity also increases CO2 levels in the blood and this is a thoroughly bad thing that needs to be flushed asap. This is the main reason you breathe more heavily, even though oxygen use increases it's not a limiter if you have healthy lungs so breathing in should be as relaxed as possible and never forced).

BeaconRuth

Bahzob, I think you're contributing to the supply of scientific guff which only confuses and makes people think they need a PhD to learn how to use a HRM effectively. If you're going to sound scientific then at least do it accurately.

That's a graph of lactate and HR vs power (although there is no label telling us this on the x axis).

It doesn't define 'lactate threshold heart rate' and what you've written is extremely unclear:

bahzob wrote:

From a physiological perspective the power produced at lactate, the % of this point relative to max HR and the ability to recover once dropping below this point can all be affected....

I cannot make head nor tail of this sentence. "The power produced at lactate.." What does that mean?

All this being said HR can only be one aspect of measuring LTHR, especially in self tests.

??? LTHR stands for "lactate threshold heart rate". So HR is the only way of measuring LTHR.

Where exactly on your graph is the LTHR? And what exactly is it?

Ruth

diy

BeaconRuth wrote:

Not at all, no. They're very useful as a rough guide but it's crucially important to also take into account perceived effort and any available objective measures too.

Ruth

I find this so hard to do without some data. Though I am mostly training to compete with myself rather than win races.

Grill

diy wrote:

BeaconRuth wrote:

Not at all, no. They're very useful as a rough guide but it's crucially important to also take into account perceived effort and any available objective measures too.

Ruth

I find this so hard to do without some data. Though I am mostly training to compete with myself rather than win races.

Really? I find RPE to be a fairly decent substitute for when I'm training without a PM. Admittedly I tend to be able to go that little bit harder when looking at power, but it's not a million miles off.