Lactic Acid Not Foe...but Fuel page

[Js137]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/he...6run.html?_r=1

Good read! Another challenge to CW. His reward:
"I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I had my papers rejected"

[Al_Kavadlo]

Great article - thanks for sharing! I especially like the ending, about coaches knowing better than scientists! I'll almost always take anecdotal evidence based on first hand experience over what some egghead in a lab determines with a bunch of "scientific theories."

[Js137]

I agree and I produce scientific research (financial economics). In my field we spend quite a bit of time simply thinking about what alternative mechanism or device could have produced the results and then attempting to rule it out! Usually we can't state decisively that this is happening simply because there always exist some alternatives. So we take the entire area as a whole and if it generally holds in multiple papers and through time - heck, it just might be true!!

I never knew how the conclusion that lactic acid building up stopped activity was reached, but after reading how it is easy to see that CW (or the scientist) simply jumped on one possible conclusion.

Learn to see the logical leaps, think critically, and question everything - this is the advice I usually give my classes!!

[federkeil]

I know he mentioned increasing distance to increase the lactic acid uptake, but I wonder if he's done any research into interval training. Not so much to determine that it too increases uptake, but by how much relative to simply increasing distance.

[Hedonist]

Yes. I saw that article. Amazing. All the research on sports and a totally wrong bit of cw lasts a century.

[Vick]

Body by Science pointed this out a couple of years ago.

Get it through your head. The past 100 years of convention wisdom is probably wrong due to bad science or political pressure.

What it means is that we have to measure our own personal gains in health and fitness. We have to share results good or bad. Read, question, adapt and grow. That is probably our best common goal.