We have all become quite used to what aerobic exercise is all about, jump on a treadmill and run at a steady state for half an hour or so. But what happens when you start pushing this intensity past the aerobic zone into anaerobic activities?

Anaerobic activity is where the body is working at such a rate that the blood stream cannot get enough oxygen to muscles fast enough. It's that serious burn that you get in your muscles when you are pushing yourselves as hard as you can go. Anaerobic exercise is essentially exercise without oxygen. This happens during high intensity and cannot be held for long periods of time. A product of your muscle exercising in an oxygen deprived environment is large amounts of lactic Acid. Lactic acid begins building up inside the muscle at a rate faster than it can be cleared creating muscle failure.

Anaerobic exercise refers to anaerobic muscle respiration and not respiration as a whole. The muscle still receives oxygen, just an insufficient supply to meet the demands of the activity. Your muscle needs the oxygen to convert glucose into energy. When you exercise hard enough so that not enough oxygen can get through, lactic acid is produced as a by product. Anaerobic capacity is referred to as anaerobic threshold or lactate threshold. It refers to the point in the anaerobic exercise when the lactic acid starts to build up at a rate greater than it can be removed out of the muscle. This is really when your muscles start burning and you really can't carry on much longer.

Your anaerobic threshold is perhaps one of the best indicators of your ability to perform. Traditionally an athlete with a higher VO2Max was considered in much better shape; however an athlete with a lower VO2Max but higher anaerobic threshold would be able to go further faster without experiencing muscle failure than an athlete with high VO2Max and a low anaerobic threshold. Although the higher VO2Max would be considered 'fitter', the athlete with the higher anaerobic capacity would be able to travel faster for longer.

Types of anaerobic sports include football, basketball, rugby, hockey and soccer. An anaerobic sport is anything activity requiring brief spurts of high intensity activity. So anything that includes brief spells of all out sprinting or heavy lifting is likely to be anaerobic.

Your anaerobic threshold can be improved with anaerobic activities. High intensity interval training is an ideal way of increasing your anaerobic threshold. High intensity interval training is a routine of sprints and rests. It usually takes no more than 20 minutes but don't underestimate how effective this training is. In fact there are very few exercises that can produce such substantial changes to the body in such a short amount of time.