Original articles  EXERCISE PHYSIOLOGY AND BIOMECHANICS 

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2003 September;43(3):312-8

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Stage length, spline function and lactate minimum swimming speed

Ribeiro L. ¹, Balikian P. ², Malachias P. ³, Baldissera V. ³

¹ Faculty of Physical Education, Campinas State University, Campinas, SP, Brazil, 2 Department of Physical Education, Ribeirão Preto University, São Paulo, Brazil 3 Department of Physiological Sciences, São Carlos Federal University, São Paulo, Brazil

Aim. Lac­tate min­imum ­test (LMT) has ­become pop­ular in run­ning eval­u­a­tion. ­This ­study ana­lysed the influ­ence of dif­ferent ­stage ­lengths and deter­mi­na­tion ­methods on lac­tate min­imum swim­ming ­speed (LMS) and its ­validity for max­imal lac­tate ­steady-­state ­speed (­MLSS-S) assess­ment.
­Methods. ­Twelve ­male swim­mers (19.7±1.6 ­years, 70.3±8.7 kg, 181.4±7.9 cm) ran­domly under­went 4-5 eval­u­a­tions in a 2-­week ­period. LMS was ­accessed by ­simple vis­u­al­isa­tion (SV) and ­spline func­tion (SF) ­methods ­during 200 and 300 m ­stages LMT (LMT200 and LMT300, respec­tively), and ­MLSS-S was deter­mined ­during con­stant ­speed 2000 m ­efforts.
­Results. Respec­tively, SV and SF pro­vided LMS ­during LMT200 (1.31±0.12 m.s-1 and 1.32±0.10 m.sec-1) and LMT300 (1.28±0.11 m.sec-1 and 1.28±0.10 m.sec-1) ­which ­were not sig­nif­i­cantly dif­ferent (p>0.05) ­from ­each ­other. How­ever, LMS ­accessed ­during LMT200 ­were sig­nif­i­cantly ­greater (p<0.05) ­than ­MLSS-S (1.25±0.06 m.sec-1). In addi­tion, sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships (r=0.79 to 0.98; p<0.05) ­were ­found ­between all ­studied ­speeds and lac­tate min­imum ­values ­during LMT300 ­were not sig­nif­i­cantly dif­ferent (p>0.05) ­from ­those ­found ­during LMT200 (5.4±2.2 and 5.5±2.2 mM vs 6.8±2.5 and 7.0±2.6 mM, respec­tively for SV and SF).
Con­clu­sions. Our ­results sug­gest ­that LMS is not ­affected by dif­ferent ­stage ­lengths and deter­mi­na­tion ­methods. How­ever, LMT300 ­results ­seems to pro­vide a ­more accu­rate ­MLSS-S pre­dic­tion, ­being ade­quate for swim­mers eval­u­a­tion.