Training is continually evolving, with technology turning what was once confined to a sports science lab into something accessible in your home. One such training tool is blood lactate testing. If you have ever been to a sports science lab for VO2 max testing, you will likely have had this done. For many athletes, that is where this form of testing ends.
In recent years, the availability of consumer-friendly blood lactate monitors has increased, and the cost has plummeted. In 2025, it has never been easier to test your blood lactate while training from the comfort of your home. With lactate monitoring offering a look at how your body responds to a training stimulus, the potential benefits of measuring it are real.
Lactate testing can more precisely identify key physiological markers like lactate threshold (LT1 and LT2) as well as maximal lactate steady state (MLSS) compared to estimates of those values derived from FTP tests. This can allow for more personalised training zones than basing training on extrapolated power data from a 20-minute test.
This said, lactate testing has its issues, drawbacks and complications. Interpreting the data requires a higher level of understanding than both power and heart rate. To find out if self-administered blood lactate testing should be an avenue the performance-conscious cyclists should pursue, I spoke to Sebastian Weber, founder of performance-analysis software company INSCYD, and Neal Henderson, founder of Apex Coaching.
Blood lactate testing can look very technical but essentially boils down to taking a blood sample during exercise to analyse blood lactate concentration. A lancet is used to prick the skin, typically either on the fingertip or ear lobe, to allow for the collection of a droplet of blood. The process is the same as diabetics use when taking a blood sugar sample. This blood sample is collected on a sample strip and transferred to an analyser. The analyser will then provide a reading in millimoles per litre (mmol/L).
What blood lactate testing can provide (if done well)
Blood lactate testing was historically the reserve of a sports science lab, where everything could be controlled, allowing all variables to be considered. Small deviations in the testing protocol can impact the validity of results. The use of accurately calibrated power meters and high-quality lactate monitors greatly increased the reliability of the results.
The gold standard test for blood lactate is maximal lactate steady state (MLSS) testing, which requires riders to complete multiple efforts at different intensities lasting around 30 minutes in length, with blood lactate readings taken every five minutes. The goal is to find the highest power output at a stable blood lactate reading. That's impractical for many athletes, Weber explained, because “maximal lactate steady state is several continuous or constant load tests which span several days, so nobody wants to do that.”
To streamline this into a more time-effective protocol, incremental lactate testing was devised. Athletes ride at a given power for a standardised duration with a lactate sample taken at each step. The required output increases at each step, allowing blood lactate levels to be plotted on a graph against power. This shows how your body responds to riding at a given intensity and can be used as a far more accurate method of finding your lactate threshold than power testing alone, which can vary day to day for physical and psychological reasons.
As Weber said, “People came up with FTP and said that's a proxy for the estimation of maximal lactic steady state. [But] if you have a good testing protocol and have a good methodology to evaluate your lactate profile, it can provide additional information over a simple FTP test.”
The challenges of self-administered lactate testing
Unlike heart rate or power testing, there are a lot of factors to consider when self-lactate testing. Across the academic literature, there are over 38 different testing protocols that use different step durations, power increments and so on.
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