Non-invasive anaerobic threshold measurement using fuzzy model interpolation

Abstract

The interface between skeletal muscle activation through aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis is of key interest to sportspeople and athletes who participate in medium to long distance sports, such as middle- and long-distance running, cycling, swimming, rowing, kayaking and a variety of other events. To date, the gold standard for measuring anaerobic threshold (AT) is a structured test to exhaustion where blood lactate concentration is measured at regular intervals. However, the need for invasive testing, requiring trained personnel and specialist equipment, limits the availability of such tests. This paper proposes a non-invasive AT measurement method, which validates well against AT measured using lactate analysis. In addition, the proposed test has a relatively loose set of requirements on the exercise test protocol required and just requires a measure of exercise intensity and heart-rate. While the test is applicable to a range of sports, usage is demonstrated in this paper for a set of cyclists, using velocity as a measure of exercise intensity.