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LIVING FIT & WELL Time to Assess Your Fitness Level
LIVING FIT & WELL Time to Assess Your Fitness Level
By Mark Nemish
In my last column, I discussed the importance of improving your current fitness level and the fact that it’s never too late to develop a mindset to improve or achieve better fitness.
Far too often I see people of all ages who are active in the gym but have no sense of accomplishment, doing the same workouts day in day out and with no method of progression.
In order to achieve better cardiovascular fitness, you must first accurately assess your current fitness level to form a basis of self-comparison and a floor from which to set goals.
There are many methods of assessing fitness levels: running tests like the 2-mile Cooper Test, beep tests, step tests, and sub-maximal treadmill/bike tests. All of them are fine and can provide some estimate of aerobic capacity, but unfortunately, they also can be very inaccurate.
I prefer to assess aerobic capacity through a very small pinprick of blood to assess the level of blood lactate that is accumulating in circulation when exercising. Through a series of five-minute bouts of exercise, these lactate concentration tests will allow me to evaluate one’s fitness at the cellular level.
These tests do not take much time, are extremely accurate, and easy for the exercising individual to perform. Equating certain blood lactate levels with the speed on a treadmill or watts on a bike in conjunction with associated heart rate data will give a very nice picture of an individual’s current fitness level. The higher the intensity one can achieve (speed or power) associated with lower lactate levels, the better the aerobic capacity.
Many researchers identify metabolic disfunction at the cellular level as the genesis of poor health conditions. More specifically, mitochondrial dysfunction due to over-nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle has been identified as a key component.
If you remember back to Biology 101, your mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, the site where energy is generated. Without getting too far down the rabbit hole, mitochondrial dysfunction can result in greater oxidative stress which can exacerbate a whole host of all-cause mortality disease states. Great functioning and abundant mitochondria in muscle are a function of higher fitness levels. Since mitochondria consume lactate as a fuel, the fitter individual is one who has less lactate accumulation in circulation when running at higher speeds or pedaling at higher watts.
As a result, testing your lactate in response to specific training intensities is a great way of assessing your mitochondrial function and your overall health. Training with low-moderate intensity long duration and/or high intensity interval training protocols can greatly improve your function, size, and number of mitochondria. something I will outline in depth in the next issue.
Mark Nemish is the owner/director of Precision Health Performance based in Round Hill. He spent 22 years as head strength and conditioning coach for the Washington Capitals (2007-23) and Nashville Predators (1998-04) in the NHL.
