Improved aerobic power by detraining in basketball players mainly trained for strength

Abstract

Six male basketball players (18 ± 0.2 years old), all playing on the same team, performed two incremental, cycle ergometer exercises while connected to an instrumental apparatus from which cardiocirculatory, respiratory, and metabolic variables were recorded. The first test (T1) was performed at the height of the game season when athletes were in full training, mainly doing strength exercises. The second test (T2) was performed 5 months after T1, when they were detrained. In T2 with respect to T1 the following parameters were higher, anaerobic threshold (11%), maximum work rate (13%), maximum oxygen consumption (27%), maximum pulmonary ventilation (16%), maximum oxygen pulse (26%), and end‐tidal partial carbon dioxide pressure tension at the maximum work rate (11%); still at maximum work rate, the following were lower respiratory exchange ratio (‐8%), ventilatory equivalent of oxygen (‐9%), and end‐tidal partial oxygen tension (‐6%). These data indicated that in the detrained condition relative to the full training condition the players improved aerobic power. The athletes’ previous training bringing mainly strength and power exercises together with a heavy game schedule may have induced residual fatigue together with both central and peripheral circulatory impairment when T1 was performed. During the detraining period, these negative effects may have been reduced so that recovery peaking of normal physical condition was shown, which may account for an aerobic power higher in T2 than in T1, but match or game fitness, which need strength and anaerobic power, probably, were less.