Anti-Glycolytic Workout

Introduction

This anti-glycolytic workout is a simple way to increase your ability to operate close to your anaerobic threshold, lactate threshold or whatever you choose to call the point at which lactate starts to accumulate faster than you can clear it. Arguments abound about terminology, but as long as we all know what we're referring to, I'm happy for anyone to call it what they like (we're not in a university research facility after all).

Anti-glycolytic training isn't something I came up with, I first heard the term from Pavel Tsatsouline of Strongfirst and it's quite possible that he coined the term. I've yet to have the opportunity to attend his "Strong Endurance" workshop, but the feedback I've received from those who have is that it was very good.

Some will argue that his explanation of the mechanism is incorrect. We might even vary a little on the specifics of how to perform the workout, but we should only care that it works and so it's useful to us from a training perspective.

The idea of the anti-glycolytic workout is simply that you perform an exercise for at most 30 seconds, at an intensity that starts to get you out of breath. You then rest until you feel you can go again and repeat the cycle for 10 to 20 minutes.

Very quickly, you find that you are able to have shorter rest breaks, indicating that you're recovering (and theoretically clearing the lactate) more quickly.

Recently, I've been doing 360 kettlebell swings per day, because over 28 days that adds up to just over 10,000 swings, and have quickly found that my "10 left, 10 right, rest" turnaround interval dropped from every minute on the minute (EMOTM) to every 50 seconds on 50 seconds, and even then I often find myself forging ahead of the timer.

In the example below, I've used kettlebell swings as an example, but you could use skipping, burpees, running, cycling or any one of many other exercises that raise your heart rate to that threshold level.