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Changes of muscle oxygenation and blood lactate concentration of swimming athletes during graded incremental exercise

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Abstract

The sport performance of swimming athletes in three different levels including 5 national high-level swimming athletes, 5 ordinary swimming athletes and 5 college students was investigated by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Four parameters of muscle oxygenation and blood lactate (BLa) concentration were simultaneously monitored during incremental exercise on the ergometer. It was found that inflection points of muscle oxygenation and BLa concentration were consistent with the human sport capacity. Moreover, inflection points of muscle oxygenation occurred earlier than those of BLa concentration in ordinary athletes and college students. It implies monitoring changes of muscle oxygenation is superior to BLa measurement under this condition, since BLa test has an unavoidable time lag. Significant correlation (r 2 = 0.948; P<0.05) was observed between inflection points of muscle oxygenation difference and inflection points of BLa concentration on workload. This relationship suggests changes of muscle oxygenation detected by NIRS is beneficial to the evaluation of athletes’ physiologic function and training load. Considering that muscle oxygenation could be in-vivo and non-invasively measured by NIRS, it may be a better indicator of exercise intensity than BLa measurement in the near future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physical Education, Jianghan University, Wuhan, 430056, China

    Yuxiang Wu, Tao Song & Guodong Xu

  2. School of Health Sciences, Wuhan Institute of Physical Education, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Guodong Xu

Authors
  1. Yuxiang Wu
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  2. Tao Song
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  3. Guodong Xu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guodong Xu.

Additional information

Yuxiang Wu received the Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2011. Currently he is a lecturer in Jianghan University. His research interests include biomedical monitoring of sports physiology and sports biomechanics.

Tao Song received the B.Sc. degree from Xinyang Normal University in 2007, the Master degree from Wuhan Sports University in 2010. His research interests focus on the human movement science.

Guodong Xu received the Bachelor’s degree in education (1988) and the Master’s degree in sports biomechanics (1997) from Wuhan Institute of Physical Education. He received the Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2006. Currently he is a Professor and dean of School of Physical Education in Jianghan University. His research interests include the monitoring of sports training by biomedical photonics method.

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Wu, Y., Song, T. & Xu, G. Changes of muscle oxygenation and blood lactate concentration of swimming athletes during graded incremental exercise. Front. Optoelectron. 8, 451–455 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12200-015-0532-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12200-015-0532-9

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