Comparação de protocolos de corrida para determinação de diferentes limiares

Abstract

Introduction: Incremental running tests allow the determination of neuromuscular and metabolic thresholds. The purpose of this study was to compare electromyographic and metabolic indexes between two incremental running protocols with different interval durations at each stage of velocity. Methods: Fourteen male subjects took part in this study. The incremental protocols consisted of treadmill running at an initial velocity of 8 km.h-1, with increments of 1 km.h-1 every three minutes until voluntary exhaustion. The two protocols differed in their intervals between each stage of velocity: 30 seconds (protocol 1) and 120 seconds (protocol 2). The electromyographic fatigue threshold (EMGFT) was determined for the rectus femoris, biceps femoris, tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius lateralis muscles. For this purpose the behavior of the RMS value was correlated according to the running time, performing linear regression to determine the slope coefficients. The lactate threshold was calculated using the point of inflection on the lactate intensity curve and the anaerobic threshold was determined by linear interpolation. A paired student t-test was applied (p<0.05). Results: Protocol 2 was seen to have higher EMGFT values than protocol 1 only for the BF muscle (p = 0.023), which characterizes a specific response of this muscle in incremental running protocols. Conclusion: Running protocols with intervals of up to two minutes between incremental stages showed similar EMGFT results for most of the muscles and similar metabolic thresholds.