Influence of Knowledge of Sprint Number on Pacing during Repeated-Sprint Exercise

Abstract

Results demonstrate that pacing occurs during short repeated-sprint efforts in anticipation of the number of sprints that are included in the trial.

Physiological and Psychological Effects of Deception on Pacing Strategy and Performance: A Review

“…However, whilst RPE was lower in the unknown condition in the treadmill protocol, supporting the central control of fixed work-rate exercise regulation via RPE, interestingly the same difference was not found in the cycling protocol. This finding was supported by Billaut et al [45] who used a repeated sprint cycling protocol and also found no differences in RPE between trials where participants were not informed how many sprints they would be completing in comparison to an accurately informed trial. The finding of a lower accumulation of work over the ten, six second sprints in the unknown condition supports theory of selfpaced exercise [21] , where work-rate is expected to be set more conservatively.…”

“…Such findings lend support for the notion of teleoanticipation in which knowledge of the endpoint, known as the 'anchor point', has a crucial role in the anticipatory setting of the pace [15] . Teleoanticipation has also been evidenced in multiple studies investigating the effect of unknown durations of exercise on performance [44][45][46][47][48] . These studies have investigated the importance of this prior knowledge of exercise duration and the empirical evidence of this theory during fixed-intensity treadmill exercise [44,46] , fixedintensity cycling exercise [44] and repeated cycling sprints [45] .…”

“…A number of deception studies [44][45][46][47][48] (see Table 1) have manipulated the expectations of exercise prior to commencement, by providing false or no knowledge about the exercise endpoint. Theoretically, the deception of external feedback prior to exercise would cause physiological resources to be incorrectly allocated and create a discrepancy between the perceived and actual demands of the exercise.…”

“…The inconsistency in the findings of RPE responses in open-loop exercise may be explained by differences in participant characteristics. As the endpoint is unknown, the RPE template will be set based on previous experience [21] , which varied between these studies [44][45][46] as trained and untrained participants were used.…”

“…Studies by Baden et al [46] , Billaut et al [45] and Eston et al [44] have included trials where there was an unexpected increase in exercise duration. It has been proposed that performance will be negatively affected if the deception is consciously or subconsciously revealed or detected as the allocation of physiological resources will not have been set accurately; having been based on an incorrect expectation of the exercise duration prior to commencement [14] .…”