elliptical and lactic acid.

well due to a recovering hammy (from a strain) i can only do upper body weights and conditioning through skipping and the elliptical machine for the next coupel weeks.

Now i remeber someone suggested doing elliptical “tempo” go fast 30s and slow 30s.

So my question is is it ok to really push hard for 30 or a min or whatever during each “rep”? I find that this machine really floods my legs with LA… but at the same time the only way to get a cardio stimulus on this thing is to push to lactic tolerance otherwise i can go for ages…

you can go hard, but no need to be actually sprinting on it!! I find you have to go harder than what you think, you recover pretty quick on them, i do anyway. Last time i tried a program with 1min on easy, 1 min on med 1 min on hard, and rotated through them for 10min. I tried to keep my heart rate at 160bpm during each phase. During the hard phase, it was pretty easy to keep the hr rate up, but the other two, i had to go what i thought was pretty fast just to keep my hr up there. go to high on the heart rate, and thats when lactic will start to hit you.
there is plenty of vatiation on these machines for workouts.

so is LA bui;dup when it comes to the eliptical not as much of concern for speed loss, compared to LA buildup while running?

why does it matter u cant run anyways.

well i will be running again once i can. So in the meantime i’ll being doing elliptical work for cardio.

what kind of running program were u doing.

how bad do you get your lactic build up? perhaps run it on a easier setting till you get used to it a bit?
Its not just muscle hurting from doing a new exercise is it?
Perhaps you may need to slow down a bit, or keep the pace, but raise you recovery up to 1-2min between efforts, maybe get off it during recovery to let the hr rate drop?

well they just feel like they’re burning kinda the same feeling you’d get when your doing a high rep set of leg press or something. Then i take one minute on like level one for revovery and go back at it. I try to go as fast as i can to get the heart going but in doing so, my legs start burning. By the end of the workout my legs are pretty fried.

right now i’ve been doing 1 min hard/1 very light (basically off) and repeating like 10-15 times.

I want to keep in shape cardiovasularly but i don’t want to end up even slower than should be once i can sprint again…

Also i read in one of charlies posts that SE type running with lots of LA buildup can cause irresverisible speed loss, and also some kind of changes in the heart muscle… should this also be a concern for elliptical work?

Dont know about the lots of lactic build up??? Micheal J. is sure pretty fast though, well was. And i bet he did plenty of LA work, so i dont know. Perhaps look up under some past yrs logs, or do a complete search using the search function. And post up, i would be interestted to know too.

I don’t think that is even lactic acid Omyss… maybe just legs getting pumped a bit? Lactic acid from a couple minutes on an elliptical?

?? well yea my legs get pumped up when doing it (just like when lifting), but the burning sensation is LA is it not??

i wish i could find it… but theres no way lol theres jsut too much to search through. Maybe charlie could clear this up if i read incorrectly or something.

I really doubt you are building up much LA from an elliptical. If you are, then go easier.

i agree and it shouldnt matter since he cant run. lol