ABSTRACT
In addition to the wide range of terminology and determination methods for the lactate threshold (Tlac) (Weltman, 1995), there is also a range of possible protocols to elicit the characteristic increase blood lactate concentrations with increasing exercise intensity. Ramp, incremental and discontinuous protocols have all been used, but, to date, very few studies have directly investigated the effect of testing protocol on the determination of Tlac. Yoshida (1984) reported that the Tlac or Onset of Blood Lactate Accumulation (OBLA, 4 mmol·l1) was at a significantly higher workload for a 1-min vs 4-min incremental protocol. Interestingly there was no difference in the at Tlac and OBLA for the two protocols when the thresholds were determined from arterial blood, but there was a difference when venous blood lactate was measured. This suggested that a longer increment was required when measuring venous blood lactate. Weltman et al. (1990) compared a continuous (3-min) incremental running protocol to a 10-min discontinuous protocol and found no difference in Tlac expressed as , running speed or heart rate. A short (30-s) pause in an incremental treadmill protocol has also been shown not to affect the determination of Tlac (Weltman et al., 1990). To date, no study has directly compared the three commonly used protocols. Therefore the aim of this study was to compare the Tlac derived from ramp, incremental and discontinuous incremental protocols in a group of highly trained cyclists.
