Should You Test Your Blood Lactate For Proper Zone 2?

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Should You Test Your Blood Lactate For Proper Zone 2?

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IN THIS 35-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Today, Jerred and Joe discuss lactate testing
• They deep dive in their own lactate test 
• They explain their new Zone 2 heart rates
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

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• Should You Test Your Blood Lactate For Proper Zone 2?

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To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast, where we talk about fitness, health, and anything to help you become the most optimal human beings. Let's dive in. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast, Jared Moon here with Joe Courtney. What's up, Joe? What's going on, man? Not much.

So we just finished a few days ago some blood Lactate testing for zone 2 you may have seen us post about it on social media Or if you follow me on social media, you probably saw me post about it I got a lot of questions about it. And so we're gonna dive into it A little bit more on the podcast today.

So this will be the podcast listener friendly, deeper dive. We will also have a YouTube video of us doing the lactate testing, filming, all that kind of stuff and explanation. But this will be the deeper dive into blood lactate testing for zone two and why you should, or shouldn't think about doing it.

I think that would be the ultimate, the takeaway is should you test your blood for lactate to find out what your true zone [00:01:00] two is? And so I think that's where I'll start. And I'm just going to talk about lactate real quick. And I'll try to keep this super high level because I'm not a chemist.

I don't want to, I'm not a biologist, anything like that. I'm just trying to understand this from a coaching level. And then I want to bring that information down to an athlete level. So people can understand it. So why do we even care about lactate? So we know why we care about zone two, and I talked about that in my last podcast.

So zone two is really great for fat oxidation. It's like where you're burning the most fat for energy. Not necessarily losing the most fat, but where you're actually burning the most fat for energy. It helps you build a really strong aerobic base. So you can run faster paces. You can build that base.

So you can go higher on your top end, end up building your VO two max. If you add in the right training on top of zone two training, it's going to help you live longer. It's going to turn you into a robot monster, all those kinds of [00:02:00] things. So I already covered like why you might want to do zone two, but where does lactate come into this?

And I want to talk about that today, because I think it's important. Lactate's like the real test of whether or not you're in zone 2. So a great indicator of whether or not you're in bad shape would be how much lactate your body produces and like how quickly. Because that's what we know to be true of someone who has metabolic disease.

They are going to, or metabolic syndrome. They're going to produce lactate very quick in the exercise. And it's almost the only thing that they can do is burn glucose. They can't burn fat. So lactate is actually a byproduct of anaerobic metabolism. So without oxygen, I think is all we need to know.

So lactate is a byproduct of that. So it's a way for your body to, when your body does anaerobic metabolism, it's trying to produce energy for the activity that you're doing. And a by product [00:03:00] of that is lactate. Lactate is pretty much only used when glucose is broken down. So glucose gets broken down and I'm not going to go too far into weeds here, but it gets broken down into pyruvate.

Okay. And so what happens is when you do really hard exercise, people normally start talking about lactate and lactate buildup and all this kind of stuff. But what's actually happening is hydrogen ions are being flooded into the body when you're doing really high intensity exercise. And then what happens is those hydrogen ions attached to pyruvate that's been broken down, which is glucose broken down.

That's how you get lactate. Lactate is actually pyruvate in a hydrogen ion. And lactate is actually stopping you from being acidic. It's like stopping your body from being overly acidic and you dying. That's like the goal of lactate. And then, your body can, if you bring in enough oxygen, your body can start to use lactate for fuel.

It can bring it back in to the body, the liver, combine it back and then break it [00:04:00] back down for, because it looks a lot like glucose when it gets, Combined when two of them get combined, I can start being used for energy. But again, I'm not going into utilizing lactate for energy. Or going into all of that stuff.

So lactate big thing to remember. It's a by product of anaerobic without oxygen. So we all know zone two running, cycling, those kinds of things that you want to get better, better at. Those are not anaerobic activities. Those are aerobic activities. And so we want to avoid lactate. Okay, that's the goal in Zone 2 training, is you want to avoid too much production of lactate.

And the best way for me to describe this to someone is, lactate production is like spending money on a credit card. Okay, so if you, it's fun, like spending money on a credit card can be fun, cause you're just like spending money, you don't feel like it's real money. And then you get to the end of the month and you get the bill and maybe you spent more than you made and now it's not fun anymore, right?

That's how lactate production is. Because if your [00:05:00] body is producing a lot of lactate and anaerobic metabolism. You're going to need more oxygen and eventually your body can only bring in so much oxygen and you can only clear and utilize so much lactate that your body's basically going to stop.

So that's how lactate can stop you is you basically can't, you can't utilize it, you can't bring in enough oxygen for it to be used. Your body can't clear it. And so you're going to, you're going to get that bill, like that credit card bill. And so that's what happens when you're producing too much lactate.

That's when you. That's when you can actually fall off this cliff and you can no longer exercise. You can't push it anymore, right? So that's why you want to avoid lactate. Zone two is aerobic metabolism. So the threshold that they've marked here is two millimole. Or less of blood lactate circulating.

So if you're less than that's like the point at which your body is still relying on aerobic metabolism. And it's still able to utilize that lactate and re break it down and utilize it for energy. So [00:06:00] clearing it is like reusing it. And so that's what we want. And I wanted to give this quick primer on.

Just a lactate in general. So people understand why the hell it even matters, why you might even want to think about it because. If your body is, you, if it's producing too much lactate, again you're playing that credit card game. You're writing checks that you can't cash those kinds of things.

And so when you're in a purely aerobic state, your body is super efficient. It's burning primarily fat as energy. That's where you're at your fat max. So fat oxidation, fat burning is at the highest in zone two, you're able to reset, recycle lactate, and this is where you're stressing the mitochondria.

And so if O2 is available, aerobic metabolism, pyruvate can go straight into the mitochondria and it creates a crap ton of ATP, which is energy for the cell. And so this aerobic metabolism is our powerhouse. It's how we live most of our lives, right? Through aerobic metabolism, sitting here, walking [00:07:00] zone to exercise, all that kind of stuff.

So that's the quick. Lactate lesson. So we're trying to avoid lactate in our zone two training. That's why we do a blood test to see how much lactate we have and see if it's below that two millimole threshold that we're talking about. So that's my lactate lesson. I don't know if you fell asleep, Joe, or if you're still paying attention, but did you have any questions about anything lactate related there?

That was definitely a lot. Some of the breakdown within the lactate is definitely new words that I've never even heard of. So I know if I said pyruvate, some people might just click off the podcast and stop listening altogether. But I had to give the lesson. I had to do a quick breakdown. Yeah I don't think I really have any questions or things to ask.

You said it perfectly. Okay. So we'll get into what we did. So how we did our zone two test. Now I can get into just what we did. It was Joe, myself, Mark Bishop, who's been a garage gym athlete for a long time. He actually came in town and this is the test that we utilize. We weren't trying to find.

Necessarily max lactate production or anything like [00:08:00] that. So we used our MAF zones as a baseline. So MAF, again, I did, I answered this in my last zone two podcast. So if you take your age, so 180 minus your age, that gives you your baseline MAF zone two heart rate. So for us all being around the same age, 35, 36 we were in the one 45, one 44 range for our math zone.

Now math also says, if you listen to that zone two podcast that you can add beats per minute, like if you're a certain level of fitness or you haven't been sick, like I, again, I went over all that in the last zone two podcasts, just a few episodes ago, so go listen to that. If you have any. Any questions about how to calculate your number?

But what we wanted to know is how accurate is that number? So we get this number it says we should be at 145 But is it accurate? When we actually test blood lactate is my blood lactate still below What it should be to be in zone two and so that's what we were doing. And so we would run All three of us ran for an hour in [00:09:00] total, and we would hop off the treadmill at 15 minute intervals to test our blood lactate and just to see where we were at.

So I'm going to pull it up on the screen. If you are on YouTube, you can see this let's see, maybe you can pull it up. There we go. What happened? And again, if you're listening only, I'll make sure that you understand it. I'll go with my results first. So my. Baseline, the heart rate I should be shooting for to be in zone two for me was 1 45.

So I ran in 1 44 to 1 48 range for 15 minutes. And then I hopped off the treadmill and tested my blood lactate at 15 minutes was 1. 5 millimole. So well below where I could be to still be in zone two. So then I took it up a notch. I went up to or no, I'm looking at Mark. Sorry. Yeah, I was looking at Mark.

So anyway, I was at 1. 7 and I was [00:10:00] running at 1 48. So forget all that. I was running at 148 beats per minute which is real close to my zone two number and I was at 1. 7 and so I was like, okay, 1. 7, not bad. I'm just going to I'm going to increase it a little bit and see what happens. So I went up to one 55, 155 beats per minute.

And then I actually hopped off at 30 minutes and my blood lactate came down to 1. 6. So I'm still not pushing up against that zone two level. And so then for my third 15 minute run up to the 45 minute mark, I was like, I'm going to just push it. So I went above one 60. I was probably averaging. I wasn't right at one 60.

I was probably like one 63, one 64, like above one 60. So pretty high. And then I hopped off at 45 minutes and then that's when my blood lactate was at 2. 2. So I'm now out of zone two. I'm in anaerobic energy production. I'm producing too much lactate. I would not be able to sustain it for very long. At one 60, zone three, you could still sustain for long periods, but not like hours on end, like you can with zone two.

So [00:11:00] it was too high. So then I brought it back down to the range of one 50 to one 55. I was probably hovering like one 53, one 54. And then my blood lactate dropped all the way down to 1. 5, I think. And so that's what happened when I, when, you know, so I get off, I have too much lactate, I lower my intensity.

My body starts to clear the lactate because that's what happens if you're fit and efficient. And then I went, I came back down into zone two at this one 50 to one 55 range. And I could go over, over everyone else's results, but it's, Joe's don't make any sense and Mark's are very similar to mine.

We'll talk about that in a second, but ultimately what I found. The big takeaway from all that is my base math zone says, Hey, you should be at one 45, but I didn't know if I should add five or add 10 based on all of his questions. And now I know through two different tests in this blood lactate that I can go up to one 55 and still be [00:12:00] comfortably in zone two.

So that's a 10 additional beats per minute. That I can add and still be in zone two. So I could technically go up to 155 instead of 145 and still be building my zone two base. So it's really helpful information to do a blood lactate test to find out what your real threshold is before you bump up past zone two.

And I'll throw in some caveats and everything else. But Joe, we don't know what the hell happened. Do you want to go over like what your results were from your test? Yeah, so I was the guinea pig first starting off, we are having some issues and doubts about the meter because it is very finicky if you, so if you ever decided to get this meter it read up however much you can, you have to be very diligent about how you do it.

You have to be really clean, clean off everything and then dry off everything and then only touch the blood to the strip. It was like all of these things. Let's just tell them exactly just in case they want to do it because I couldn't find that information anywhere. And I wish someone would have talked about it.

So here's how you, here's how you effectively take a lactate meter. And I'll tell you [00:13:00] why we started to get concerned because the night before the test I hadn't tested the lactate meter. And I was like, the reason I hadn't tested is because I've done plenty of like blood glucose tests and stuff.

I get it. Like you prick your finger, here's a strip, like it's easy. So I didn't think anything of it. And I was like I might as well test it. And the first time I tested it, my reading was 4. 6 and I was like. Okay. So I'm doing sprint intervals right now. And I was just sitting at my kitchen table. I was like, that's, this isn't right.

And then I was sitting at my son's soccer practice later that evening. And I was like, I'll test one more time. And I said, this is one more time. And I was like 8. 6. So I'm like borderline dying, or I have like leukemia or something. And I was like, okay, this something's not right here. And then the guys come over in the morning and I think we try to do baseline tests.

And I don't remember what they were, but they were like, they were too high. Every, everyone was like out of zone too. And so what we did realize is what Joe was saying is like. How you take the sample really matters. So can't have any sweat. You can't have any contaminants or any dirt. So we would clean it off with an alcohol swab.

Then we would make sure [00:14:00] our finger was dry on a paper towel. We would prick ourselves. And then I learned this from like one of the Amazon reviews is you have to discard the first drop of blood. So you squeeze out a drop of blood, get rid of that one. Then only then after it's clean and all that stuff, you can use that second drop to touch it on the strip.

And again, like Joe was saying, you have to like, only the blood should touch the strip. Your fingers shouldn't touch the strip. You don't want to smear it on there. It's got to is barely get the blood into the strip zone and let it like suck. The blood into it, then you'll start to get accurate readings.

And so Joe was the test subject zero zero one, and we had to learn through him, but yeah, anyway, the rest of your results. Yeah. And I almost feel like the meter needs to be calibrated or something. So I would do like a practice run. If you're doing a workout every 15, 20 minutes, if you're just getting a meter, then just try it out, do that process.

Cause then you might get the hang of it. Cause I think my baseline was like 2. 5 and then my first. Test at the 15 minute mark was like 4. 8 and we were like, Oh crap, this is [00:15:00] not going well. So then I got back on and at 30 minute mark, it was like, all right, this is all or nothing. And I got 1. 7.

And then from there, I just got 1. 5 at the 45 and I was like low 50 minute. I didn't go all the way to 60, but I was just, it was just like run 60, one 60 to one 65 plus, and according to Garmin, that's my zone five. Cause of it's at my own whatever zones, but I did, and I still got 1.

5 and I was still actually feeling pretty good during like even around 60. I was, I felt pretty fresh. I felt like I could keep going, which is why I like, I still kept going. So I guess that's an accurate indicator, but we're going to have to do another test in October and maybe change up how the test is done just to see.

And, I probably could have tested mine again. Cause. I should have had a spike. Apparently we just didn't get to my spike and I doubt I can sustain 160 to 165. I just ran this morning with my new totals. It was hard to get up to 1 50 today, but sustaining 1 50 was fine. And then I had his own four run and it felt pretty hard and it was [00:16:00] hard for me to get up to 1 55 plus during my like 10 minutes of zone for that I was doing.

And then I backed it back down and I was fine. Eager to do another test, but it was pretty cool to see if you really care to put the money into that, or if maybe you have a group of people and you want to split the cost kind of thing. Yeah. So yeah, my results is basically once I got to my zone.

According to the meter, I was just really efficient at getting rid of my lactate. Yeah, that's what I think is an inaccurate test because you'd have to be I'm not going to say fit, like you're fit. I'm saying you'd have to be like, and we talked about this that day. Like you'd be winning the tour de France, right?

Like that's the level of fitness you'd have to be maintaining like one 65, one 70, and you're. Still clearing lactate efficiently. You have to be the most elite endurance athlete that you'd be making. Cause the thing about if you could hop on your bike and ride at one 75 or one 70 and [00:17:00] not get tired and not build up any lactate, you'd burn everybody, right?

Like you'd just be the most bad ass athlete on the planet, but that's not reality, so I think, I don't know what happened with yours, but we got to definitely retest. And that's the beauty of you being. The first person to go is we also learned how to test appropriately and everything else.

And it's possible that maybe there was a little bit of sweat in that last one. That was when I was like, it's like by the last test, you're pouring sweat. So you have to avoid where you're dripping. Maybe there was a little bit mixed in and it just read a little bit less, but it didn't come up invalid.

I don't know. Cause we should have retested. We should have taken a second strip and done that one on your third test there. Cause all the invalid that we got were like. No, that's definitely not right. It's obviously not right. But I guess there could be in, I guess there could be a balance of the low end too.

So like Mark at the 45 minute Mark because he was the third one to go, we were smart enough to retest. Cause his was like 3. 3 and then he tested, we tested again and it went down to 1. 4. Yeah. So also know that I think there's a big reason I want to talk about it is if you do this and you're [00:18:00] getting really crazy readings.

Don't be scared. Like the strips are expensive, but don't be scared to retest. Like I should have retested Joe on his final test, but we were just I was still at the point in mindset of this might not even work. This meter might suck. And so when he got like a 1. 4, 1. 5, when he had just been running for 15 minutes between 160 and 165, I was like, this whole thing is like bullshit.

I'm just gonna, whatever, but then it worked. Like I was the next person to go and it worked for me. So anyway, we should have retested him. So not super conclusive on Joe's side, but Mark and I, we were pretty similar. And so what I want to get into is does it matter? Should you do it?

And I would say it's cool. If you're like super nerdy and into fitness stuff and you want to do something like this it, it could be cool to have and have a super accurate reading, but ultimately. I'm right within the math, what math said I would be, I could be right. Like one 45 is my base math zone.

But if I answered yes to all [00:19:00] the questions in like the math questionnaire, I actually could add up to 10 was, is what I could get up to. And so math one 45 plus 10 is one 55, which is essentially where I think I could be now if I want to be. And no, I don't think you need to test. I think if you do the math zone and do nothing else, like if you're just starting zone two, I wouldn't try to like add five or subtract or I just do one 80 minus my age.

I'm going to do that for a couple months. And then after that, if I'm making a lot of progress, then I'll start, I'll add five beats per minute, 10, 10 beats per minute, or you can do a lactate test. But at the end of the day, I'm right. I'm still right within the math zone. So I don't, I don't find the lactate testing necessary, but it took me doing lactate.

Testing to think, find out that it was unnecessary. I could just use the equation. Yeah. We've been doing a lot of zone two for the last, at least three years. So you've been part of our community for three years, three years or so doing a lot of the zone two that we've been doing and you've [00:20:00] going off of regular zone two or even you bumped up to the math.

Cause we introduced math like two years ago or something. So if you've been doing your math for about two years, then I would say, and you've been getting gotten pretty good at it, then I would say, you could probably bump it up five, but if you're just getting into zone two, keep it lower. And just really get a hang of that lower zone too, because you're still going to like zone, there's an upper part of zone two, but there's still a lower, you're still going to get the benefits of some lower aerobic training, but it's when you go above that, that it's just like blots out.

It's no, so it's better to, to err on the side of lower, I would say and you could, counter that if you want, but then to just think, oh, I could probably just bump mine up more. Oh yeah, and that's what I wanted to talk about in reality, because we were running on a treadmill I have a true form trainer, so perfectly flat like just a straight shot, like very easy on the muscles it's a little bit padded so it's not as hard, there's not as much impact and Lactate production also has to do with muscle [00:21:00] utilization because if you're using like typically lifting, those kind of things are going to rely on anaerobic metabolism, like when you're lifting a weight or whatever, and when you're running, there's not as much of that involved, but if you're rowing.

Versus swimming versus cycling. There's especially with rowing, right? There's a lot more muscle involvement or the airdyne. So your lactate test could be completely different from running to rowing to anything else. So like you have to caveat all of these things, like it only really matters within this one.

One test. So for me, what I'm looking at this as this new okay, one 55, I'm not trying to run at one 55. Now I'm not trying to keep it at one 55, because to go over one 55 is going to bump up my lactate and push me out of zone two. So again, I do. Agree with you, Joe. Like I want to be on, I want to be more in the middle.

And I've used this now in two runs. Since we did this just a couple of days ago [00:22:00] and how I look at it is the only real difference for me is I'm staying probably higher one forties for most of the run, and then if I come up on a hill, I can just run the hill at a good pace now. And I'll only bump up to about one 55 and I know I'm still in zone two.

That's been the biggest change for me because Hills in zone two used to be just like the worst thing on the planet. Yeah. I didn't have to when I first started doing it, I had to walk, but I didn't, I don't have to walk up hills. And so I just would run super slow, like just a trot of pills to maintain zone two.

Now I can keep a more like moderate pace. And I did, I ran six miles this morning at this new pacing. And yeah, I think it's three minutes faster than my pure zone to trying to stay around like 148 the whole time without ever budging over it. So I do, I didn't get to run a little bit faster to overall time wise.

So that's how I'm using it, but you also have to factor in like what. Like I said, what form of exercise are you [00:23:00] doing? Are you is there more muscle involvement in what you're doing and those kinds of things? Definitely something to consider. Yeah, I really like this. And it's almost like when we go over studies and we're like, this is a great first step, I wish they could do this, and this will now, I think we're doing our own sort of study of, it's very small sample group, but more testing of this.

And I almost want to get if we can get like a, either endurance or lactate specialists, because. As we start laying out the chart, I'm curious as to how. Resting heart rate and max heart rate could factor in and change people's because all of our numbers are the same, we're the same age.

All the math is going to come out to the same, but our resting heart rates and max heart rates are completely different. And that's usually dictates zones a good bit. So I'm really curious how and if those factor in each individual person. But we'll come up with a good test in October when I come down and do the next lactate test.

Okay. Yeah, I don't think I think max heart rate would be the only thing that actually matters in [00:24:00] that question. Just my theory here I don't think resting heart rate will matter I mean because it like resting heart rate is it's a useless metric other than like You know you're fit if you have a low resting heart rate just means your heart's not working as hard, right?

But max heart rate to do a max heart rate test I think is because if you actually can't get your heart rate Let's say to 190 you and I are the same age like I can get it above 190 And if you're just like I physically can't do it like no matter what how many stairs I run you up or kettlebell swings I have you do consecutively like Yeah, it just won't actually get to one 90 then.

Yeah, then there should be a difference, but if you can get there and I push you there so that, I don't know if you want to come back, but I, that would be my next proposed test is let's get a true max heart rate test. For, I was going to write it down and I was just going to keep it to myself.

Yeah. So I think if you actually can't get it high, that might be something else to look into. Now, one thing I wanted to talk [00:25:00] about before we. We go is pre exercise fuel and zone two. And this is this might go against what some people talk about. But I do get questions about what I eat before zone two runs.

And what I eat before zone two run is water and electrolytes. That's, or should I say, that's what I consume. Now, if I'm going to go run on a track. I'll have a scoop of peanut butter and a banana, and that's about it. Because I get a lot of questions about pre workout fuels and stuff that even came up in our community.

People were asking because one, one pre workout fuel I do is UCAN. I've talked about that one and we have no affiliation with the company at all. It's just a good carbohydrate supplement, but. Never ever, and I want to be very clear on this, like never ever would I get in the habit of taking a carbohydrate supplement before every run.

And I actually think it might end up screwing you up long term, or it'll be, it'll become something that you just [00:26:00] always have to do. I'm not saying you can't increase fitness if you always have pre workout. I'm saying, I think it might screw up the fact that you just always need that. Because if you look into how the body utilizes fuel, If you shove yourself full of a bunch of carbohydrate, a bunch of glucose, and you're going to do a zone two run, your body's going to use whatever's easiest.

And so it's going to use the glucose. It's going to be like you gave me a crop ton of this. You gave me 60 grams of carbohydrate before the zone to run. I'm just going to use it. And so it will use that because it's the easiest fuel for your body to use. And you can still, when you're at closer to this two millimole, your body's using some fat and then some glucose.

And it's going to be like, give me, I want to use as much glucose as possible. And again, I'm not trying to get too nerdy here, but the point of zone two is aerobic metabolism. And so aerobic metabolism is when you are getting the pyruvate down into the mitochondria. And then the mitochondria is being [00:27:00] forced to get better at ATP production.

So energy production through the mitochondria. I want that process to happen fasted. I don't want any glucose. I want my body I want my body to get better at burning fat, which is what happens at zone two. I want to stress my mitochondria. I want to get better at burning fat and utilizing that for energy.

So I just wanted to be clear on that like i'm not saying pre exercise Carbohydrates are bad if you're doing any kind of weight lifting anything where you're doing anaerobic metabolism you're doing like I said a track run like faster repeats by all means go get your carbs in Do your carbohydrate supplements if you have to, or just eat a banana like I do.

But if you're really trying to get better at zone two, and we're moving outside of just performance, and we're talking more like longevity and health. I do, I am of the mindset right now, unless something comes out and changing my mind, but I'm of the mindset right [00:28:00] now that you should absolutely do your zone two cardio fasted again, to better utilize fat for fuel.

And to stress the mitochondria and get it better at producing in their energy ATP. So that is, is my two cents on whether or not you should take a pre workout carbohydrate supplement. Because that was a big conversation in the garage math, the community last week. So for our training and what we're doing, we're only doing zone two for probably an hour.

But for those athletes that are either training longer or trying to maybe use some of ours that are, that wants to do a half marathon or a marathon. At what point would you Eat or have it have some sort of carb or supplement. Would it be like you start the first hour or something fasted or just electrolyze and then add or start off and add.

And we're talking about if I'm doing an event, if I'm doing an event, I don't care about stressing my mitochondria and because that to me, that's all training, right? And so I would start if I went to go do a race tomorrow I would carb load today [00:29:00] and I would take a carbohydrate supplement or eat carbs in the morning before Doing it and then I would fuel throughout the event so that again that's like on the performance side performance.

I always want fuel but when i'm training I want to practice being able to utilize fat more that way you don't, I really feel like you start to rely on that so heavily. And this is something I really learned when I was big into cycling and started testing all this stuff was. I would always have pre workout that's got, it got drilled into my head.

And I think if you come from more of a bodybuilding style training, which I did a long time ago, that there's always like the pre workout meal or whatever, you're always thinking in that capacity and amongst those lines. And so you take this, that over to your endurance and you're like, okay, what am I going to eat before this?

But ultimately what would happen on my cycling rides is I would be out of zone two and I'd very quickly run out of energy. Like I would be, or even be in zone two and I'd run out of energy and I would bonk and I wouldn't, my [00:30:00] performance would suck. And then I realized some simple carbohydrates.

Fix that problem, but then I also started to realize over time if I keep my intensity lower and I have nothing I can go I can still do a two hour ride and my body will just burn fat because you got tons of fat That your body stores it can store a lot more fat than it can carbohydrate And so I just think that you know Those are the two different instances for me is if you're only ever looking for performance cool load yourself up with carbs all the time but if you actually want to train longevity Performance mitochondria efficiency all those kind of things I think you should do your zone two fasting.

Yeah. And if you are training for longer stuff, you definitely have a fueling strategy. That's not what I'm saying. We covered that. It's called the weekend warrior fueling series. I think we just had that on the cooldowns, but it was a three part series. When did we do that? Like 2019, 2020. Yeah. Two or three years ago.

Yeah. It's been a while, but like we went over, we went in [00:31:00] depth over three different podcast episodes about protein considerations, carbohydrate considerations, like everything for fueling for these types of events. So if you want to nerd out on that stuff, we already have with three, one hour episodes, so go check those out.

But I think we, we will end this one at the end of the day. My takeaway for the garage gym athlete is just do your math zone. That was probably the coolest thing because. In my mind, that's all there really is, right? There's the math zone, but there's the other zone too, that people play with where they just take their max heart rate and they do 60 to 70% of it.

If I was doing that, or if most people were doing that, you might be way off what the math would calculate. So you might be running in a zone too. That's just like completely unsustainable. So the coolest thing that for me to see was like, we talk about math all the time. That's what we've been telling our athletes to do for a couple of years.

And it actually worked out at least in our instances that math held its ground on even up to a blood lactate test for zone two. So if you don't want to do the test, save a couple hundred bucks. [00:32:00] And buying all the equipment and just do the math stuff. That's my ultimate takeaway. But that's it for this one.

Thanks for watching or listening. If you have been listening to the podcast for a while, you like our content please five star review and positive comment really helps the show out, helps it reach more people. And we would really appreciate that. And if you're on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, leave us a comment.

Love the the comments we are getting right now. And we're publishing, like I said, we're going to have some more YouTube specific. YouTube only content coming out from this lactate stuff. If you want to dive into this more, definitely check us out on YouTube or garage gym athlete. And if you want to get into our training, easy to do.

Just go to garagegymathlete. com sign up for a free trial. We would love to have you. And remember if you don't kill comfort will kill you.[00:33:00]