Abstract
Prior exercise has the potential to enhance subsequent performance by accelerating the oxygen uptake (VO2) kinetics. The present study investigated the effects of two different intensities of prior exercise on pulmonary VO2 kinetics and exercise time during subsequent exhaustive rowing exercise. It was hypothesized that in prior heavy, but not prior moderate exercise condition, overall VO2 kinetics would be faster and the VO2 primary amplitude would be higher, leading to longer exercise time at VO2max. Six subjects (mean ± SD; age: 22.9±4.5 yr; height: 181.2±7.1 cm and body mass: 75.5±3.4 kg) completed square-wave transitions to 100% of VO2max from three different conditions: without prior exercise, with prior moderate and heavy exercise. VO2 was measured using a telemetric portable gas analyser (K4b2, Cosmed, Rome, Italy) and the data were modelled using either mono or double exponential fittings. The use of prior moderate exercise resulted in a faster VO2 pulmonary kinetics response (τ1 = 13.41±3.96 s), an improved performance in the time to exhaustion (238.8±50.2 s) and similar blood lactate concentrations ([La−]) values (11.8±1.7 mmol.L−1) compared to the condition without prior exercise (16.0±5.56 s, 215.3±60.1 s and 10.7±1.2 mmol.L−1, for τ1, time sustained at VO2max and [La−], respectively). Performance of prior heavy exercise, although useful in accelerating the VO2 pulmonary kinetics response during a subsequent time to exhaustion exercise (τ1 = 9.18±1.60 s), resulted in a shorter time sustained at VO2max (155.5±46.0 s), while [La−] was similar (13.5±1.7 mmol.L−1) compared to the other two conditions. Although both prior moderate and heavy exercise resulted in a faster pulmonary VO2 kinetics response, only prior moderate exercise lead to improved rowing performance.
Highlights
Prior exercise is traditionally accepted as indispensable before participation in a subsequent vigorous exercise
No significant differences were found between mean response time (MRT), HRpeak and [La2]
There were significant differences among all studied conditions regarding the time sustained at VO2max, with higher values when prior moderate exercise was performed, again not supporting our hypothesis that time sustained at VO2max would be increased when prior heavy, but not moderate, exercise would be performed
Summary
Prior exercise is traditionally accepted as indispensable before participation in a subsequent vigorous exercise. Enhancing the cardiorespiratory and neuromuscular systems, ‘‘priming exercise’’ has been used extensively as an intervention to investigate the limitations of pulmonary oxygen consumption (VO2) following the onset of a subsequent exercise bout. These limitations may be due to central (O2 delivery and transportation to the working muscles) or peripheral factors (from convective O2 transport, to its diffusion and utilization in the muscles). The kinetics of pulmonary VO2 response to exercise has been studied in three different intensity domains: moderate, heavy and severe [7]. During severe intensity exercise (above critical power), VO2 does not achieve a steady state, but continues to increase until the point of exhaustion, as VO2max is reached
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