Work-to-rest ratio during three repeated judo struggles separated by short intermissions. A preliminary study

Abstract

It is known, that an exertion of high intensity leads to fa tigue of working muscles and to the deterioration their physical abilities. That phenomenon was especially noted during intensive and continues effort, for instant during Wingate test. At the end of that exertion lasting 30s the value of power output is always lower as compared to that recorded as peak power, reached few second after the start. That relative, percentage of power lost is expressed as fatigue index (FI). The study showed, that peak power and the maximal accumulated O (2) deficit were highly and significantly correlated and ability to maintain power output during a 30-s cycle sprint is related to anaerobic capacity [1]. Furthermore, the lost of ma xi mal power is fitted by an exponential curve [2]. Among power athletes mean FI reaches almost 49% with absolute peak po wer amounting over 1000 Watt, and over 12.0 W/kg after its normalization to body mass [3]. Impairment of maximal power output has been found also in successive repeated “all-out” bouts, when the length of intermissions for rest is too small to reach full state of recovery prior to the next bout. In such ca ses the performance levels of consecutive exertions become more and more lower, even despite of previously loading by various pharmacological enhancers [4-8]. Long since it has been evidenced, that rate of post-effort recovery of cellular phosphagens ( PCr, ATP) play a crucial role in a rise of ability to generate again maximal, initial power output, while the depletion of the phosphagens is responsible for temporary impairment of the power. Obviously, there are also the other metabolic and physiological factors contributing to voluntary post-effort state of fatigue and rate of recovery and to the equilibrium between those two processes. These issues are taken into consider, when scheduling interval training session [9]. During intermittent exercises work-to-rest ratio influences