What’s the difference between Lactate and Lactic Acid?

Question

Or are they the same thing? Does your heart use both during the metabolic process? Or! If lactic acid is what you feel in the muscle due to lactate build up? How does this help with endurance during short and long high intensity workouts?

Thanks in advance

In: 2

Answer 1

Same thing, pretty much.

When your muscles have hit their limit in the amount of power they can generate aerobically – with oxygen – they can generate more energy but that results in the accumulation of lactate.

To keep the reaction going, the lactate is shipped out to the bloodstream so that other tissues that have enough oxygen can burn the lactate. As power increases, eventually the athlete hits their limit in processing lactate, and that’s the lactate threshold.

So generating more power in that range is mostly about improving lactate clearance – the ability to get lactate out of the muscles and processed by the body. That’s what high intensity training does.