Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between physiological variables related to aerobic fitness and repeated sprint ability (RSA) in college volleyball players. Sixteen male volleyball players (21.1±1.4 years) took part in the study. Players first performed an incremental treadmill run test to determine their maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max ), ventilatory threshold (VT), peak incremental test speed and time to exhaustion. After at least 48 hours, subjects performed an RSA test consisting of 10 × 20-m sprints interspersed with 20 seconds of active recovery, to determine the mean sprint time (RSAmean), the best sprint time (RSAbest) and the fatigue index (FI). RSAmean was significantly negatively correlated with VO 2max (r= −0.73, p 0.05). The results of this study demonstrated that high VO 2max as well as VT has an important contribution to performance during repeated-sprint efforts. These findings suggest that training practices for the development of aerobic components may improve also RSA.
Highlights
The ability of an athlete to recover quickly and maintain maximal effort during subsequent sprints is an important fitness requirement that has been termed repeated sprint ability (RSA) [1]
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between physiological variables related to aerobic fitness and RSA in college volleyball players
RSA mean was significantly negatively correlated with the VO2max (r = −0.73, p = 0.01), the ventilatory threshold (VT) (r = −0.62, p = 0.01), the peak incremental test speed (r = −0.66, p = 0.005) and the time to exhaustion (r = −0.67, p < 0.004) (Figure 1)
Summary
The ability of an athlete to recover quickly and maintain maximal effort during subsequent sprints is an important fitness requirement that has been termed repeated sprint ability (RSA) [1]. Repeated sprint ability is associated with superior performance in intermittent team sports [2, 3] The recovery ability between bouts of sprints may be a key determinant of performance during repeated sprinting. The maintenance of performance in the subsequent sprints primarily depends on the ability of the muscle to resynthesize the phosphocreatine (PCr) during recovery times [4]. Number of sprints and recovery duration can be an important factor in determining the rate of PCr regeneration during and post-repeated sprint exercise [5, 6]. RSA is closely related to oxidative capacity for PCr recovery, lactatehydrogen ions (H+) buffering, removal of intracellular inorganic phosphate (Pi), and Na+ /K+ transport capacity [9]
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