Lactid Acid

[Truestar]

The cells in your body if I can recall are anaerobic or some term similar to that. Basically your muscles need oxygen to work.

Lactic Acid is the product of physical activity, and is what builds up in your muscles causing fatigue. It certainly isn't myth.

Take a clothespin and use your fingers to pinch it, keep pinching it. That burning feeling is the lactic acid in a sense "choking" your muscles from the lack of oxygen. You feel a physical fatigue. Over time if you were to constantly work the clothespin, your muscle tolerance would indeed increase, meaning you could handle more lactic acid, which is an increase in what we know as muscular endurance.

It's been 4 years since I took biology, I know everything I said is correct with the exception of the anaerobic part. There's two types of cell "breathing" functions, I'm not sure if I listed the right one.

[bushido_man96]

Those are interesting points to ponder, Truestar. Thanks for sharing them.

[DWx]

The cells in your body if I can recall are anaerobic or some term similar to that. Basically your muscles need oxygen to work.

Lactic Acid is the product of physical activity, and is what builds up in your muscles causing fatigue. It certainly isn't myth.

Take a clothespin and use your fingers to pinch it, keep pinching it. That burning feeling is the lactic acid in a sense "choking" your muscles from the lack of oxygen. You feel a physical fatigue. Over time if you were to constantly work the clothespin, your muscle tolerance would indeed increase, meaning you could handle more lactic acid, which is an increase in what we know as muscular endurance.

It's been 4 years since I took biology, I know everything I said is correct with the exception of the anaerobic part. There's two types of cell "breathing" functions, I'm not sure if I listed the right one.

Expanding on this slightly,

Your cells respire either aerobically or anerobically. The first involves the use of oxygen, the second doesn't, however the second produces less energy per mole and results in the formation of lactate.

This probably explains it better than I can: http://www.rsc.org/education/teachers/learnnet/cfb/respiration.htm

However there is some research to suggest that lactate ions (or lactic acid) isn't what causes stiffness etc. See the Exeter University link I posted earlier or

http://www.time-to-run.com/theabc/lactic.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/health/healthspecial/19lactic.html

In any case, increased fitness levels and endurance will help to delay fatigue and soreness whatever the cause.

[FitOrDie]

They say that potassium helps with sore muscles. So, banannas and potatoes are a good source, and I'm sure you can get some pills that supplement it.

On a side note, I have heard the arguement that lactic acid build up is more myth than reality. Can anyone add some research to that?

As it happens, there is no science behind the lactic acid thing whatsoever. In faaact... I very recently heard of someone showing that lactic acid is actually used to produce ATP, proving an unknown-until-recently FOURTH energy pathway within the human body.

Lactic acid, despite the popular belief of the past 20 or 30 years, has nothing to do with soreness. Corelation does not prove causation.

I think what your students need, most likely, is more training, more fitness... and probably better eating. (After all, who doesn't?) Even still, soreness is a part of training, eventually you just have to deal with it.

[Traymond]

Ok thats sounds fairly logical, but...

I have a low lactic acid expulsion rate, and I dont get sore as often as most people even my peers do. I can work out longer and not feel the pain like most people would. But those with higher Lactic Acid expulsion rates do feel more pain the day or so after working out quite vigorously.

[FitOrDie]

Ok thats sounds fairly logical, but...

I have a low lactic acid expulsion rate, and I dont get sore as often as most people even my peers do. I can work out longer and not feel the pain like most people would. But those with higher Lactic Acid expulsion rates do feel more pain the day or so after working out quite vigorously.

Correlation does not prove causation. Muscles do not run on oxygen alone. They also run on glycogen and ATP. Lactic acid seems to be the byproduct of glycogen being used for energy. It is possible that your activity is either more aerobic (meaning oxygen is the primary fuel source), such as long distance running, or anything else that can be maintained for an hour or more. Or, more fast-based, which lasts ten seconds to a minute, such as sprints, weightlifting... in which case ATP is the primary fuel.

Even if you train medium-intensity/medium-time duration activities and use glycogen a lot, it could just be that your body produces less or gets rid of it easily for some other reason. (How do you know that you don't produce as much, by the way? Do you have blood tests or something?)

It has been shown that people do not always feel soreness in direct relation to the amount of lactic acid produced in their muscles. For example- I can do a set of heavy, low bar back squats, using virtually no glycogen, thus producing virtually no lactic acid, and my hamstrings will never be more sore. Also, it has very, very recently been suggested that lactic acid is not a "waste" product at all, but another method for muscles to fuel themselves. My prediction is that lactic acid will end up being just like cholesterol- an occasionally accurate predictor of soreness/heart disease, but not at all a cause of.

[bushido_man96]

Couldn't the soreness just be the result of the micro-tears in the muscle fibers? Tearing that stuff could just, you know, hurt.

[FitOrDie]

Couldn't the soreness just be the result of the micro-tears in the muscle fibers? Tearing that stuff could just, you know, hurt.

It's possible, but not proven on any real level. It is interesting to note that the microtears (that so many- mistakenly- think is necessary for hypertrophy a.k.a. growth in size) happen during eccentric movement. This means that it happens during a "negative" movement, when you are lowering the weight, or yourself... decellerating the movement. Lowering a bar from overhead lockout to your shoulders, lowering yourself on a pull-up bar from your chin over the bar to free hang... etc. For some reason, pushing against a weight as it "wins out" causes these tears more. (One physiologist of some sort, many years ago, actually stated that only negative movements, because of the results of these tears and so forth, could grow a muscles size and therefore strength. Ridiculous, of course, just look at the olympic lifts, which have no eccentric part.) There still may be something to this and causing soreness, but there must me more to it. Go shoot baskets for an hour or do a high load of olympic lifts and drop the bar each time... your shoulders or legs or back just might still be sore. Even without all these micro tears. The mystery lives on...

My working theory- it's your body's way of asking you to take it easy, through whatever mechanism.

[bushido_man96]

Ok then, so, is soreness necessary for improvement? If you aren't sore, are you just maintaining?

[FitOrDie]

Ok then, so, is soreness necessary for improvement? If you aren't sore, are you just maintaining?

Absolutely not. The muscle tears are not necessary for muscle growth. Well, at least there is no correlation that one can see. I have seen tremendous progress from movements that never make me sore. The clean and jerk, for example. No eccentric movement never seems to make me sore (unless I'm already sore, and it makes my hamstrings more sore). Still, the explosive power in my hips has gone way up from doing this one exercise.

Another example, and this is just a weird personal thing: my shoulders, except for the very anterior part, never, ever get sore. Just doesn't happen, might be all the basketball I played as a kid. Sill, the variations of shoulder presses (and other things) that I do have grown my shoulders in size as well as all types of strength tremendously.

This is not to say, by the way, that one should never have eccentric movements in their repertoir.

The conclusion (thus far): There is good evidence that microtears have something to do with soreness, but the correlation is certainly not absolute. Not yet, anyway. Lactic acid, meanwhile, is a byproduct of only some forms of exercise, and there is no good reason to think that it causes soreness, as it is barely even related.

Bottom line: soreness sucks, we all know it, but its something you have to deal with it. Don't do anything to get yourself so sore that its debilitating, and work through it otherwise.

Ha ha, now that I think about it... I really wish there were a better answer.