A raincloud plot showing the distribution of 11 metabolic threshold estimation methods (lactate and ventilatory thresholds) across relative workload (% Wpeak) from two trials each in 21 female and male competitive cyclists. Data from Yogev et al., 2023: https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2023.1143393. Thresholds are stacked vertically, colour-coded from red (FatMax; occuring at the lowest intensity) to pink (RER = 1.00, at the highest intensity), each displaying a kernel density curve, individual data points (n ≈ 42), and a white median marker. The intent is to visualise how various threshold estimates return values all along the range of relative intensity, thus suggesting that there is no single true intensity breakpoint, but rather that different methods find threshold-like behaviours at different intensities, depending on which metabolic variable and analyses methods are used.
Pick a threshold, whichever one you want!
Getting a number is cheap. Knowing what the number means and what to do with it is far more valuable
#rstats #dataviz #exphys #sportscience
