The Talk Test

From the NY Times online…

Rethinking the Exercise ‘Talk Test’

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Many of us rely on the so-called talk test to gauge a workout’s intensity. It is such a simple measure, consisting of only one question: Can you speak aloud while working out? If so, conventional wisdom says, you are exercising at the right intensity to improve both your health and fitness.

But a new study by researchers at the University of New Hampshire suggests that we may need to refine our thinking about the talk test. For some of us, it seems, gabbing easily with a partner could be shortchanging our training.

For the study, the researchers recruited 15 healthy and active men and women ranging in age from 18 to 35. The volunteers were not competitive athletes, but most possessed above-average fitness. They were not new to exercise.

All of the participants began the experiment with testing to quantify how hard they could exercise. The researchers looked at measures like maximum heart rate and oxygen-carrying capacity, or VO2 max, a measure of how efficiently oxygen is delivered to muscles. They also looked at something called lactate threshold, the point at which the muscles tend to give out. As the intensity of your workout increases, you move closer to your particular physiological ceiling, the moment at which your body can no longer keep moving.

In a separate session, each volunteer then recited the Pledge of Allegiance aloud while jogging on a treadmill at an increasingly brisk pace. Every three minutes, he or she would repeat the pledge and tell the scientists whether speaking now was easy, difficult or close to impossible (amounting to a gasped “can’t talk”). Throughout the session, the researchers tracked each volunteer’s heart rate and other measures of exertion.

What they discovered was that people who are already fit start to have considerable difficulty talking when they approach their lactate threshold.

If that finding sounds abstruse, you probably are among the many of us who have been blissfully unaware of the significance of our lactate thresholds.

Read on here.