Regulation Of Pacing Strategies During Intermittent Sprint Exercise

"Pacing strategies are the regulation of exercise intensities throughout a given bout of (continuous or intermittent) self-paced exercise in response to the exercise and environmental-induced demands placed on the athlete. Models that have been proposed to explain the development of fatigue and the reguation of exercise intensities include i) peripheral pertubations directly affecting the ability to sustain a given intensity; ii) a centrally-mediated manifestation regulating peripheral pertubations via changes i neural drive from the central nervous sytem (CNS) and iii) the conscious decision to adjust exercise intensity based on the perception of the physical demands. These mechanisms associated with fatigue-regulation have been investigated in prolonged, continuous exercise, but less so in team sports. Such investigations are relevant to team sports athletes, as competition matches are self-paced, with diverse physical demands ad thus pacing strategies may be important to ensure optimal competition performance. Accordingly, as pacing strategies are suggested to be either due to changes at the periphery, or a central regulation of these peripheral changes, an effective method to assess the pacing mechanisms in team sports is via the manipulation of athlete's pre-exercise state to examine the effects on subsequent performance and pacing. The pre-exercise circumstances used to alter physiological and perceptual states in the present thesis are commonly experienced by team sport athletes participating in various football codes and alter central, peripheral or conscious states. Accordingly, this thesis examined the effects of sleep deprivation, carbohydrate (CHO) ingestion, and thermoregulation on pacing strategies and self-paced intermittent-sprint performance in team sport athletes."--Abstract.