Type 2B and Lactic Acid Resistance

Hello CT,

you wrote type 2B persons have a good resistance to lactic acid; how would you test this, and what kind of results should a type 2B have?
I ask that because, even if my psychological profile seems to point to 2B, and genetic testing tells me my ACTN3 is average (RX), I must really reduce the load if I want to reach a longer time under tension (with pushing exercises especially, pulling exercises are easier).
Otherwise I reach failure way before any burning sensation.
I suppose that’s because of my training history, mainly doing sets of 6-8 fast reps, for a TUT of 15-20 seconds?
Thanks in advance.

Yep, training history will play a huge role in that. For example, if you look at my training “career”…

I started out training for football. While my first 3 years were unstructured (from 12 to 15) and mostly consisted of doing every leg exercise known to man, when I got to 16 I had the chance to be trained by a really good coach who ended up being my mentor.

So from 16 to 20 my training consisted of mostly…

  • Squats
  • Deadlifts,
  • Bench press
  • Power clean
  • Chin-ups
  • Military press

And except for a 4 weeks phase where we did sets of 8, most of our work was done in the 3-6 range.

Then at 20 I switched to olympic lifting for 6 years. During that time most of my reps were in the 1-3 range,sometimes going up to 5 on squats and push presses (for example).

Then I did 2 years of bodybuilding but trained mostly with a powerbuilding approach, still hitting the big lifts for sets of 3-5 and assistance for were normally done for sets of 6, sometimes 8.

Then I went back to more of a strength approach, training like a powerlifter and once again going down to sets of 1-3 and sometimes up to 5.

At that time I had zero tolerance for TUT. When my best bench press was 445, I could only get 6 reps with 315 (at 70% you should get 10-12 reps) and 20 with 225 (those who can hit 445 should do 30-35 reps).

And when doing isolation work for higher reps I had to use baby weights… for example I would routinely use 40lbs on preacher curls when doing longer sets.

Over the past 3 years I’vetrained lighter because of shoulder issues and as a result I am now much better at tolerating longer duration sets.