Does a warm-up alter blood gases, lactate, and acid-base status during a 200-m sprint swim in trained male swimmers?
A structured warm-up prior to a sprint swim significantly alters pre-sprint acid-base status and elevates heart rate during the sprint in trained swimmers.
A standardized 200-m front crawl sprint swim (SpS) was used to evaluate the effects of warm-up on pH, blood gases, and the concentrations of lactate (La-) and bicarbonate (HCO3-) in arterialized and venous blood. Eight trained male swimmers performed two randomly assigned 200-m front crawl swims at previously determined intensities corresponding to 120% VO2max. One swim was preceded by a warm-up (WU trial) which consisted of a 400-m front crawl swim (82% VO2max), 400-m flutter kicking (45% VO2max), and 4 x 50-m front crawl sprints (111% VO2max). The second was performed without warm-up (NWU trial). Blood was sampled from a hyperemized earlobe and an antecubital vein before the warm-up, 9 min after the warm-up (1 min before the swim), immediately following the SpS, and at 2, 5, 10, and 20 min after the SpS. The warm-up exercise resulted in a higher pre-SpS La- in arterialized blood (3.1 +/- 0.4 and 1.7 +/- 0.4 mmol x l-1, p less than 0.05), a higher hydrogen ion concentration (H+) in venous blood (45.9 +/- 0.9 and 42.2 +/- 0.8 nmol x l-1, p less than 0.001), and a lower arterialized blood HCO3- (25.1 +/- 0.9 and 22.2 +/- 0.8 mmol x l-1, p less than 0.05). The SpS was accompanied with higher heart rates during the WU trial (178 +/- 3 and 169 +/- 3 bpm; p less than 0.05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Robergs et al. (Wed,) studied this question.