Muscle-damaging exercise 48 h prior to a maximal incremental exercise treadmill test reduces time to exhaustion: is it time to reconsider our pretest procedures?

ABSTRACT

Pretest guidelines typically stipulate that no exercise should be performed 48 h prior to a maximal incremental exercise test. However, no study has specifically investigated if this timescale alters key outcome variables associated with . Twenty apparently healthy males split into two equal groups performed during three visits (visits 1 – _EXP1, 2 – _EXP2 and 4 – _EXP3). The experimental group only, performed muscle-damaging exercise during visit 3. From _EXP2 to _EXP3 average time to exhaustion (TTE) decreased by 45 s (9%) (p < 0.01), maximum blood lactate decreased by 1.2 mmol/L (11%) (p = 0.03), and perceived readiness decreased by 8 mm (18%) (p = 0.01). There were no changes in any variables in the control group (p ≥ 0.37). Performing 48 h following muscle-damaging exercise impairs specific, but not all, physiological outcome variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Exercise-induced muscle damage
• delayed onset muscle soreness
• VO_2max
• time to exhaustion
• running

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.