Introduction: Lactate (La) has been termed a waste product, and still many believe this myth although La has been shown to be an energy source, a gluconeogenetic precursor and a regulator (Brooks 2009). The Lactate Shuttle Theory (LST) describes the balance of La production and local and/or systemic La oxidation described for exercising muscles (Brooks 2009), for the healthy (Figley 2011) and injured brain (Dienel 2014), different tissues (Brooks 2009) and solid tumours (Draoui et al. 2011). This review addresses a theoretical position on the influence of high-intensity pre-load lactate elevation on subsequent high-intensity glycolytic exercise of non-pre-loaded muscles. Somehow paradox effects (Almer 2016) can be explained by the LST (Brooks 2009). Athletes usually perform an intense warm-up program elevating La substantially (Bishop 2003), but for the main workout they try to start at low La. It is generally suggested that elevated La always impairs subsequent performance by reducing the anaerobic energy contribution and/or interfering with muscle contractile processes (Bishop 2001, 2003; Mujika et al. 2012). Several studies showed that an elevated systemic La concentration inhibits the rate of glycolysis in subsequent anaerobic work bouts (Bishop et al. 2001), also shown for a La increase by arm exercise that decreased the rate of blood La accumulation in a subsequent cycle ergometer sprint by 50% (Bogdanis et al. 1994), and supported by own results (Müller et al. 2015). The inhibition of La production is due to an inverted gradient from an elevated systemic to the muscular La concentration consequently favouring oxidative energy production at the same workload which may be beneficial for high-intensity workouts of 1-8 min duration. The shift to an enforced oxidative metabolism may maintain better coordinated muscle recruitment due to the reduced local muscle anaerobic energy contribution. We applied this theoretical approach in various comparable situations in the laboratory and under field conditions which will be shown in detail (see also Almer 2016; Bierbaumer 2016). Conclusion Pre-elevated La levels by nondominant muscle groups uniformly showed a markedly decreased net blood La increase of 30-50% in all experiments. This inhibition of La production did not reduce but instead enhanced high-intensity exercise performance in all dynamic workloads longer than 60 s and shifted metabolism to a more dominant oxidative one. We therefore suggest that this application of the La induction by non-dominant muscles may be used to enhance performance in several high-intensity sports if applied properly.
© Copyright 2016 21st Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Vienna, 6. -9. July 2016. Veröffentlicht von University of Vienna. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.