Psychophysiological, Body Composition, Biomechanical and Autonomic Modulation Analysis Procedures in an Ultraendurance Mountain Race

Abstract

The current research aimed to analyze psychophysiological, body composition, biomechanical and autonomic modifications in an ultraendurance mountain race. We analyzed 11 finisher voluntary athletes that participated in a 51.2 km ultraendurance mountain race. We measured before and after the mountain ultraendurance event the following parameters: Rate of perceived exertion, body composition, cortical arousal, blood pressure, body temperature, forced vital capacity, blood oxygen saturation, isometric hand strength and heart rate variability parameters. The results of temperature, rate of perceived exertion, heart rate and the percentage of body water at the end of the race increased significantly. However, the variables of body weight, body fat, muscle, body mass index, abdominal fat, blood oxygen saturation, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, cortical arousal and hands and legs strength significantly decreased after the race. The square root of the average of the sum of the differences squared between normal adjacent R-R intervals, percentage of differences between normal adjacent R-R intervals, high-frequency, sensitivity of the short-term variability, and long-term variability decreased significantly after the race. By contrary low-frequency increased significantly at the end of the race. An ultraendurance mountain event produced a large anticipatory anxiety response, an increase in sympathetic modulation, body fat consumption, percentage of body water, and RPE, not affecting the cortical arousal.

Higher use of techniques studied and performance in melee combat produce a higher psychophysiological stress response

“…Soldiers performed 2 Squat Jump (SJ), 2 Contramovement Jump (CMJ), and 2 Abalakov jump (ABK) following the procedure conducted in previous research (Clemente‐Suárez, González‐Ravé, & Navarro‐Valdivielso, ; Delgado‐Moreno, Robles‐Pérez, Aznar, & Clemente‐Suarez, ) Isometric handgrip strength by a grip dynamometer (Takei Kiki Koyo, Japan). In addition, head rate variability was recorded by a polar v800 HR monitor (Polar Electro Oy, Finland) validated to analyse RR function to analyse HRV (Giles, Draper, & Neil, ). We follow previous procedures (Belinchon‐deMiguel & Clemente‐Suárez, ; Beltrán‐Velasco, Bellido‐Esteban, Ruisoto‐Palomera, & Clemente‐Suárez, ; Clemente‐Suárez & Arroyo‐Toledo, ) analysing (a) 20 min of HRV while participants were waiting in waiting area previous to the simulation as a HRV baseline, and (b) the entire simulation. We used Kubios HRV software (University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland) to analyse the HRV data.…”

Psychophysiological Stress Response of a Paralympic Athlete During an Ultra-Endurance Event. A Case Study

“…In recent years, more athletes have been involved in ultraendurance events like Ironman, 100-km or longer races performed in several days as well as mountain marathons [10][11][12][13][14]. A number of biochemical blood parameters have been analyzed in these ultraendurance athletes like creatinine kinase and urea, showing an increase in muscle destruction and catabolic status of athletes [15]; lactate, showing how the ultraendurance races were performed with a blood lactate concentration below the anaerobic threshold [16]; hemoglobin, This article is part of the Topical Collection on Education & Training * Vicente Javier Clemente-Suárez vctxente@yahoo.es maintaining the hemoglobin values due to increased erythropoiesis to compensate for exercise-induced hemolysis [17]; triglycerides, showing an increase in the consumption of triglycerides as energetic substrate [18]; creatinine, showing normal renal function [19].…”

Evaluation of cortical arousal by critical flicker fusion threshold in cyclists

“…In this line, also ultraendurance mountain event produce a decrease of SS [22]. We can see that endurance efforts to exhaustion and maximal speed stimuli seem to cause fatigue of CNS.…”