When youu are running a 100m sprint is it anaerobic or aerobic?
The way people who study and promote fitness use the term, sprinting is anaerobic. When you do an “aerobic” exercise, one of the sources of energy for the muscles is “aerobic glycolysis.” Oxygen is used in a metabolic pathway that gets energy by “burning” carbs (glucose) that is relatively clean: Most of the waste products are carbon dioxide and water. (For purposes of this answer, we won’t get into other areas of energy production, such as those that use fats or proteins.) If you increase the intensity of exercise, the demand for oxygen increases. In very intense exercise, such as sprinting, the muscles’ demand for oxygen can exceed the ability of the cardio-vascular-pulmonary system to supply it. The result is that the muscles start using other metabolic pathways to get the energy they need to produce motion. These pathways are not as clean as the aerobic pathways: they produce more, and different waste products, most notably lactic acid. Lactic acid causes that “hot” or “burn” sensa
