Lactic acid gets a hard time.

Fitness professionals and exercisers alike seem to think it is the enemy and should be avoided at all costs.

“Don’t exercise too hard, you’ll get lactic acid in your muscles and they’ll take days to recover.”

“Lactic acid will cause muscle damage and stop you from training.”

Knowing how lactic acid is produced in the body is useful to improving your fitness.

So what is lactic acid and why am I saying it isn’t your enemy?

When you exercise, glucose (sugar, carbohydrate) is broken down into different chemicals, to produce energy in a form the muscles can use. As long as your heart, lungs and blood can get enough oxygen to the working muscles, you break the glucose down completely and end up with useable energy, carbon dioxide and water. This is is called aerobic exercise.

If you exercise at a high intensity and the oxygen supply isn’t sufficient to meet the demands of the contracting muscles, glucose isn’t broken down completely and lactic acid is produced. This is anaerobic exercise.

Increased lactic acid in the muscles decreases the pH and this leads to the burning feeling that makes you slow down or stop. It’s like a built-in safety mechanism. Lactic acid can also move out of the muscles into the blood and this may be why people feel nauseous after an intense effort (e.g 400m race).

Because lactic acid causes us to slow down and results in discomfort or pain, it has been labelled as bad. However, it is when our muscles are working at the point of lactic acid accumulation that they are stimulated to “get fitter” by producing more enzymes, increasing blood vessels, producing more red blood cells etc. Up until the point at which there is sufficient oxygen to meet demand, the muscles are quite comfortable so don’t “need” to get fitter. It is at the point where lactic acid starts to accumulate that the muscles realise they need to be fitter.

How do you know if you are exercising hard enough?

You’ll know you are exercising hard enough, when you start to breath hard. When lactic acid accumulates and the pH in the muscles and blood goes down, the body responds by chemical reactions that neutralise the acidity. A by-product of these chemical reactions is carbon dioxide. It is this build up of carbon dioxide that makes us breath harder and “puff.”

So what does this mean?

Firstly, it means that lactic acid isn’t your enemy. In fact, it is your friend. Think of it as your fitness conscience that tells your muscles to get into better shape. And the better shape they are in, the higher intensity exercise you can do before you reach the point of lactic acid accumulation, meaning you are fitter.

Secondly, it means if you want to get fitter you need to train in a way that pushes you to the point of lactic acid accumulation. Now because you can’t maintain this level of exercise for very long, you have to do short bursts of exercise. This is why interval training works so much better to improve fitness. You push hard for a minute or two and accumulate lactic acid in the working muscles and blood, then slow down to let the muscles use up some of the lactic acid.

Thirdly, when you push yourself and start to breath faster, it is a good indicator that you are working hard enough. It means your body is producing carbon dioxide to buffer the lactic acid. When this happens, try to exhale strongly to clear the carbon dioxide from your body and speed up the recovery process.

Then…. when you have got your breath back to normal you can do it again!!

Five efforts (intervals)s like this during your workout is sufficient to tell the muscles to get fitter.

The good news is that the fitter you are, the better the body gets at using up the lactic acid and blowing off the carbon dioxide. It’s why athletes recover so quickly after a race and can talk to the TV person.

Years ago, when I was playing competitive basketball, I had a coach who used to make us work so hard it ran me ‘ragged’ at training. (That old expression probably tells you how long ago it was!)

He was always telling us to work harder at training than we had to in our games, and that the harder we pushed ourselves at training, the easier the games would be.

I don’t play basketball any more, but the principle applies equally to fitness for life.

While there are hundreds of health reasons to exercise and be fit, I believe one of the key benefits of being fit, is that it makes the rest of your life easier.

Let’s face it, just walking to the shops is hard work if you aren’t fit. Mowing the lawns and gardening can be too much for some people, and if you aren’t strong enough, carrying the shopping home can be almost impossible. Eventually for some people, just getting up out of a chair is a major effort.

Although this may seem extreme and a long way off, the more your fitness declines, the more difficult everyday tasks become.

At first you won’t notice. But gradually you’ll start to find tasks that used to be easy, gradually seem harder to do or you won’t be able to do them at all. Little things like moving something heavy or opening a jar.

Or you’ll notice that you get tired quicker than you used to. And muscles that you didn’t know you had are sore and you can’t remember doing anything that strenuous.

People, who let their fitness decline too much, lose risk losing their independence. Some can no longer stay in their own home because they can’t do everyday activities or they are at risk of falling. Obviously nobody wants to be forced from their home because they can’t cope.

So, next time you are struggling to get out of bed or to motivate yourself to do your exercise, just imagine how your life would change if you could no longer do the everyday things you enjoy doing.

Maintaining your fitness levels is the only way to prevent everyday activities becoming hard work. In fact, staying fit and strong not only prevents life getting harder, but it makes day-to-day tasks seem easy.

The harder you work, the easier life gets!

People often use how much they are sweating as a guide to how hard they are exercising and how much good it must be doing them. Others think that if they are sweating a lot, it is a sign that they aren’t very fit or that someone who doesn’t even break into a sweat must be fitter than they are.

While it follows that the harder you are exercising the more likely you are to get hot and sweat, the opposite isn’t necessarily true. Just because you are sweating a lot doesn’t mean you are working hard.

I read an article in the newspaper a week ago about a form of yoga that you do in a humid 38C room. The article stated that participants, some of who were athletes and no doubt very fit, claimed it was the hardest thing they had ever done and that people often felt nauseous and dizzy. I’m sure they did find it hard and they felt bad while exercising. However I expect the heat had more to do with it than the exercise.

When you exercise blood is directed to the working muscles to supply the oxygen and fuel needed. When you get hot, blood is directed to the skin so that heat can be lost from the body to keep your internal temperature constant.

When you exercise in a hot environment, the heart and lungs have to work extra hard because they are trying to get blood to both the muscles and the skin. As a result, blood is diverted away from other organs. This means a person exercising in the heat will usually have a higher heart rate giving them the perception that they are exercising harder. People feel nauseous because blood is diverted away from the gut; this also adds to the perception of working harder.

Because we use our heart rate and breathing to ‘assess’ how hard we are working, when we exercise in the heat, it often feels like we are working harder. Add to this the feeling of nausea and it feels like we are working very hard, even if we aren’t doing any more than usual. I think this explains why the athletes doing yoga in a humid 38C room perceived it to be so difficult.

Fitness is predominantly about what is going on inside the muscles than just whether the heart had to pump faster to keep up with competing demands for blood.

What are the lessons from this for you?

• Don’t intentionally exercise in extremely hot environments unless you are training for some event that will be held in an extremely hot environment.(e.g Hawaii Ironman, a marathon in the Sahara) The added demands it places on the heart and heat loss systems and the potential risk and discomfort aren’t worth it for general fitness.

• Don’t exercise in extra clothing to “heat up” and sweat more. You might weigh less when you finish your exercise, but it will be fluid loss not fat loss and the risk of overheating for no added fitness gain isn’t worth it.

• Try to keep cool while exercising. Your heart and lungs can then focus on getting blood to the working muscles where it is needed. You’ll perform better and feel better, which means you will probably enjoy it more and do it again.

• Don’t believe that just because you feel bad while exercising it is better for you. Exercise should feel a bit uncomfortable while you are doing it but you shouldn’t necessarily feel sick.

• You don’t have to exercise in the heat to be more pliable and elastic. Being in a hot room doesn’t mean the muscles are properly warmed up with adequate blood flow. A gradual warm-up of the muscles you are using is more important than having hot skin and sweating a lot.

• Focus on improving your performance. How you feel and look is important, but they are outcomes of getting fitter.

In the last blog I suggested we need a different approach to solve the current and looming crisis in our health system. I proposed that perhaps the government should invest more money than they do into getting people more active and fitter. I believe this will be essential to reduce demand for health services in the future.

An interesting study I read about recently gives some insight into how investing some money up front might make a difference in the long term.

The economists from the University of California, started from the premise that exercise is a habit; some people have developed the habit and some haven’t. The researchers designed experiments to find out whether financial incentives can help. They recruited 120 students and gave them each a brochure on the benefits of exercise. Forty received just the brochure, 40 received $25 if they went to the (free) gym once the following week and 40 were offered an extra $100 if they went to the gym eight times or more in the next four weeks.

The researchers used attendance records from the gym to compare all 120 students’ gym visits before, during and for seven weeks after the study finished.

The results were quite encouraging. The students who were paid to attend the gym for four weeks not only went during the study, they continued to go after they stopped being paid. They continued to attend about as often as when they were being paid.

The economists concluded that “it may be possible to encourage the formation of good habits by offering monetary compensation for a sufficiently long baseline period, as doing so appears to move some people past the threshold needed to engage in the activity.”

For many people, just feeling good and looking better isn’t enough to develop the habit. This is probably because it takes some time before you start to feel good and look different. Many people give up long before the results start to show up on their waist or in the mirror. Having a financial incentive to keep a person going until the results appear might be the answer many need.

Imagine if governments paid people to attend a gym or exercise regularly for 12 months. By then many would have formed the habit of exercising and continue to do so. The long term savings to the health system would be phenomenal. Given the current pressures and looming crisis in our health systems, it may be one way to reduce the demand for health services.  Continually trying to meet that demand is never going to work.

If you are like me you like me you probably subscribe to more than one email newsletter so you get different perspectives on topics that interest you. Nutrition is such an important part of fitness (you can’t run a performance vehicle on cheap fuel) so I subscribe to two nutrition newsletters, Nutrition Impact by Glenn Cardwell and Food Bytes by Julie Meek. Both are excellent and will make you think about how, what and why you eat.

In Glenn’s latest newsletter he talks about a long term diet study that followed participants on different diets for two years. In summary, what the researchers found was that the average weight loss was about three kilograms over the two years. Not much really, given the enormity of the obesity problem around the world.

At the end of his report on this study Glenn quotes Professor Martijn Katan who states that “We do not need another diet trial, we need a change in paradigm.”

I couldn’t agree more and I think it applies just much to our health system as to weight loss (the two are very much related). Imagine if we changed the focus of the health system from ‘fixing’ people when they get sick to helping them perform better; if we rewarded health professionals for having the fittest patients who used the least medical and hospital resources; if health professionals were paid more for preventive programs; if individuals were rewarded for being fitter and healthier.

I know these comments make it sound simple to fix the huge mess our health system is in. Sometimes the simple suggestion is what is needed. I don’t believe we will ever ‘fix’ the health system with more hospitals and more expensive medical tests. The real answer to the health system bottle-neck is to reduce demand for medical and hospital services. Let’s face it. No one really wants to go to hospital.

We are continually being told that with an ageing population our current health system won’t be able to keep up with demand. All the effort seems to be about increasing the supply of health services to meet the demand. Maybe we should be focusing on reducing demand. We also hear that if health expenditure continues to increase at its current rate it will bankrupt the economy. Another financial crisis! Imagine if the government threw as much money at preventive health initiatives as it has at the looming recession. We wouldn’t need many of the hospitals they keep talking about.

This sounds very idealistic, but major changes in thinking often start with an idealistic viewpoint.

What can you do? Do everything you can to stay as fit and healthy as possible. Keep reading these newsletters for advice and inspiration and subscribe to newsletters like Glenn’s and Julie’s to learn about eating and nutrition. Encourage others to do the same.

Be a role model to the people in your life, especially your family.