Efectos de la recuperación entre series activa versus pasiva durante el ejercicio de Press Banca en hombres jóvenes entrenados

Resumen

Resistance exercises are essential in exercise training programmes, both in sport and in health fields. Improvements in strength performance depend on each of the physiological mechanisms of muscle activations, from neuronal to metabolic pathways, so that knowledge of the physiology of muscle activation and neuromuscular fatigue is fundamental for physical exercise professionals. From all the variables that take part of the training load (i.e., intensity, volume, frequency, etc.), recovery is one of them that has received less attention from researchers. The few research that have been carried out regarding this parameter have focused on recovery between exercise sessions, while few have analysed rest periods between exercises or between sets or intervals within the same exercise. Among interset rest, most of the scarce research has focused on the analysis of the effects of different rest periods (they are focused on duration), instead of evaluating the effects of different stimuli using the same rest interval. For all these reasons, the aims that have been pursued with the research that take part of the present doctoral thesis have been focused on the analysis of the effects of active (ACT) versus passive (PAS) interset rests during a resistance exercise in resistance-trained young males, and this active stimulus was the maintenance of the same movement as the exercise being evaluated but performed with a low-load (5-10% of the maximum repetition) and at a slow velocity of execution (2 seconds for the concentric phase and 2 seconds for the eccentric one). Thus, with study 1 we sought to compare the effects of ACT versus PAS on power loss and perceived exertion in successive sets during bench press exercise; and our results showed that ACT achieved a lower intraset power loss compared to PAS, and slightly lower perceived exertion with ACT after exercise, concluding that ACT may be a suitable stimulus to minimise intraset performance loss and to improve perceived exertion in resistance exercises. In the same vein, with study 2 we aimed to compare the effects of ACT versus PAS on power and velocity loss, blood lactate levels and the rate of perceived exertion also during bench press exercise, demonstrating that the intraset loss of both power and velocity was lower in ACT compared to PAS. In addition, only with PAS there was a significant increase in blood lactate levels during the interset rest periods (post-set values with respect to the pre-set of the following sets, p<0.01), although there were no significant differences in the rate of perceived exertion when comparing both protocols. Finally, with study 3 we compared the effects of ACT versus PAS on intraset velocity loss, blood lactate levels and rate of perceived exertion during the same exercise, but we modified the experimental design to have more interset rest intervals (instead of performing 2x8 and a 3rd set until muscle failure, we performed 5x8). Our results showed that there was a lower intraset velocity loss in ACT compared to PAS, and that blood lactate levels increased throughout the session less in ACT compared to PAS, which could represent a metabolic advantage for improving performance in successive sets during a resistance training session.