![Sample our Sports and Leisure journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5949/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Sports-Leisure.jpg"})
Abstract
Background
A double-blinded, placebo-controlled, cross-over design was used to investigate whether two different sodium citrate dihydrate (Na-CIT) supplementation protocols improve 200 m swimming performance in adolescent swimmers.
Methods
Ten, male swimmers (14.9 ± 0.4 years of age; 63.5 ± 4 kg) performed four 200 m time trials with the following treatments: acute (ACU) supplementation (0.5 g kg-1 administered 120 min pre-trial), acute placebo (PLC-A), chronic (CHR) supplementation (0.1 g∙kg-1 for three days and 0.3 g kg-1 on the forth day 120 min pre-trial), and chronic placebo (PLC-C). The order of the trials was randomized, with at least a six-day wash-out period between trials. Blood samples were collected by finger prick pre-ingestion, 100 min post-ingestion, and 3 min post-trial. Performance time, rate of perceived exertion, pH, base excess, bicarbonate and lactate concentration were measured.
Results
Post-ingestion bicarbonate and base excess were higher (P < 0.05) in both the ACU and CHR trials compared to placebo showing adequate pre-exercise alkalosis. However, performance time, rate of perceived exertion as well as post-trial pH and lactate concentration were not significantly different between trials. Further analysis revealed that five swimmers, identified as responders, improved their performance time by 1.03% (P < 0.05) and attained higher post-trial lactate concentrations in the ACU versus PLC-A trial (P < 0.05). They also had significantly higher post-trial lactate concentrations compared to the non-responders in the ACU and CHR trials.
Conclusions
Acute supplementation of Na-CIT prior to 200 m swimming performance led to a modest time improvement and higher blood lactate concentrations in only half of the swimmers while the chronic Na-CIT supplementation did not provide any ergogenic effect in this group of adolescent swimmers.
Trial registration
Clinicaltrials.govNCT01835912.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-26) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Copyright comment
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-26) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Copyright comment
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario for their support of this study, and Izabella Ludwa her assistance in the data collection. A special thanks goes to the swimmers, parents, and coaches for their time and effort.
Competing interests
There is no conflict of interest in this study.
Authors’ contributions
CR conceived of the study and carried out data acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and was the principal writer for the manuscript. EP participated in data acquisition and was a manuscript reviewer. YM participated in data acquisition and was a manuscript reviewer. GW conceived of the study and was a manuscript reviewer/reviser. MP carried out data interpretation and was a manuscript reviewer/reviser. MG was the medical advisor and was a manuscript reviewer/reviser. PK was the research supervisor for the study and was involved in its conception. PK also assisted in the statistical analysis and interpretation of the results, and was the senior manuscript writer/reviser. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.