As the UK continues to celebrate the performance of Team GB in Beijing, it is worth giving some consideration to the training required to produce world-class athletes, often from an early age.
An athlete's training centres around comparing the athlete's performance at specific points to blood lactate levels.
You can see a slow rise in lactate until it begins to accumulate faster than it can be metabolised.
At this point, called the anaerobic threshold, the muscles are not adequately supplied with oxygen and further exertion causes the liberation of and a steep rise in lactate.
Levels can increase from a low of 1mmol/l at rest, to a high of 4mmol/l at the lactate threshold.
Since lactate is liberated at this point, the anaerobic threshold is also the lactate threshold.
By effectively relating an athlete's speed to the lactate threshold, you create an objective evaluation of performance.
Lactate analysis is a standard measure of fitness in many sports because it helps coaches to regulate training and avoid overtraining.
Using lactate data, both an athlete's aerobic and anaerobic systems can be conditioned for better performance.
Aerobic fitness permits a very high level of effort before lactate even begins to build up.
Beyond this point, anaerobic fitness permits the athlete to keep going hard even at high lactate levels.
Maximum lactate tolerance is not just a matter of toughing it out; you must train for it.
YSI UK have two analysers that are used in the field of sports science for measuring lactate levels in athletes.
The YSI 1500 is a portable unit with laboratory accuracy.
Weighing only 10lbs and about the size of a laptop, it can be used anywhere and gives 60-second results using a minimal blood sample.
The measurement range is 0-30mmol/l and any sample can be run without dilution.
The YSI 2300 Stat Plus analyser is an alternative and is kept in the laboratory.
It can measure both lactate and glucose, giving results in less than 60 seconds.
The 2300 is the gold standard for clinical diagnostic work in laboratories and is used extensively by university sports science departments, including those where GBR coaches are based.
Dr Malcolm Robson, who works for YSI as a retained consultant, is considered to be one of the world experts in the field of sports medicine and in particular, lactate testing.
YSI UK can therefore offer instrumentation and any help deemed necessary by the coach, physiologist or technician, to interpret blood lactate results to correlate with training, for the benefit of the sports person being tested.
Dr Robson has been personally involved with the training plans and lactate testing of members of the GB Olympic long-distance swimming team and is very proud of their medal achievements in Beijing.
One of his articles 'Identification of Potential Swimming Talent' looks at identifying potential world class athletic ability in children.
In this article Dr Robson said: 'Could we expect that any offspring of Agassi and Graf would be a potential Wimbledon Champion? 'The answer statistically could be yes but only if the person was trained correctly in that sport.
'The genetic probability of the person being of athletic stature is high, but that body could be trained in an alternative sport from a young age.
'So while genetic status is important, it is the correct training through many years that will produce a champion.
'How then, can we identify young people, who may become champion swimmers in their future?' His article identifies one way of determining athletic potential in young people and it can be carried out from about 10 years of age.
He added: 'It has been said that children do not produce lactic acid.
'This is totally wrong.
'If a child's body is stressed, an increase in lactic acid can be expected.
'It is through the puberty years that monitoring is essential.
'With the onset of puberty, a large increase in aerobic capacity may be expected.
'This will decrease as the hormonal status settles down.
'Correct monitoring during these years is necessary as the increases and decreases in capacity become more frequent.
'Without monitoring, overtraining is likely and permanent damage is possible.
'If potential is suspected, extreme care should be taken with that swimmer and the potential nurtured over the years, especially if the swimmer attends any training camps that may be alien to a normal training environment.
'At that time accurate medical monitoring should take place with the results interpreted by qualified staff.
'The blood monitoring of swimmers should be carried out approximately every three weeks as this time factor allows for a physiological response to training.
'This is essential for the correct monitoring of a training stimulus.
'Training times can then be adjusted faster or slower dependant on the results.
'The human body can not just get faster, it is a normal body response to slow down and this is important to detect, otherwise overtraining will occur.'
