RESUMEN

Flight attendants play a vital role in the safety and security of air passengers during emergencies. A 61-year-old flight attendant who endured myocardial infarction and coronary artery bypass graft surgery wanted to return to full duty. To meet airline requirements, he chose to participate in our occupation-specific, high-intensity performance training program. This patient returned to full duty as a flight attendant upon completion of this specialized cardiac rehabilitation program.

RESUMEN

This study aimed to investigate the effects of a 4-week live high train low (LHTL; FiO2 ~ 13.5%), intervention, followed by a tapering phase, on muscle glycogen concentration. Fourteen physically active males (28 ± 6 years, 81.6 ± 15.4 kg, 179 ± 5.2 cm) were divided into a control group (CON; n = 5), and the group that performed the LHTL, which was exposed to hypoxia (LHTL; n = 9). The subjects trained using a one-legged knee extension exercise, which enabled four experimental conditions: leg training in hypoxia (TLHYP); leg control in hypoxia (CLHYP, n = 9); leg trained in normoxia (TLNOR, n = 5), and leg control in normoxia (CLNOR, n = 5). All participants performed 18 training sessions lasting between 20 and 45 min [80-200% of intensity corresponding to the time to exhaustion (TTE) reached in the graded exercise test]. Additionally, participants spent approximately 10 h day-1 in either a normobaric hypoxic environment (14.5% FiO2; ~ 3000 m) or a control condition (i.e., staying in similar tents on ~ 530 m). Thereafter, participants underwent a taper protocol consisting of six additional training sessions with a reduced training load. SpO2 was lower, and the hypoxic dose was higher in LHTL compared to CON (p < 0.001). After 4 weeks, glycogen had increased significantly only in the TLNOR and TLHYP groups and remained elevated after the taper (p < 0.016). Time to exhaustion in the LHTL increased after both the 4-week training period and the taper compared to the baseline (p < 0.001). Although the 4-week training promoted substantial increases in muscle glycogen content, TTE increased in LHTL condition.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Short- to middle-term plyometric training has been shown to be an effective method to promote youth fitness and health. However, there is no knowledge of previous studies that investigated the sex and age effects on physical fitness following different PT surfaces (i.e., firm vs. sand) in schoolchildren. This study examined the effects of age and sex on explosive and high-intensity responses following plyometric training (4 weeks, twice/week) performed on firm vs. sand surfaces in untrained schoolchildren. Ninety girls and ninety boys (under 8: age = 7.1 ± 0.5 and 7.1 ± 0.4 years; under 10: age = 9.0 ± 0.4 and 9.0 ± 0.5 years; under 12: age = 11.0 ± 0.5 and 11.0 ± 0.5 years, respectively) participated in a randomized and parallel training design with pre-to-post testing. Participants were allocated (i.e., 30 boys and 30 girls for each group) into either two experimental groups (firm group: performing plyometrics on a clay surface and sand group: performing plyometrics on a dry surface of 20 cm deep sand) or a control group (CG, habitual physical education classes) within their corresponding age groups. Children were tested for sprint, jumping and change of direction speed performances before and after 4 weeks of plyometric training. Both experimental groups induced more significant improvements in all assessed variables than CG (p < 0.0001; effect size > 0.80), whereas both surfaces induced similar improvements (p > 0.05). Older boys achieved better performances than their younger counterparts (p < 0.05) and older girls (p < 0.0001), respectively. This finding showed that age and sex could affect explosive and high-intensity performances during childhood after a short-term plyometric training. In contrast, the training-induced fitness changes were not influenced by the type of surface.

RESUMEN

The concept of recovery strategies includes various ways to achieve a state of well-being, prevent underrecovery syndromes from occurring and re-establish pre-performance states. A systematic application of individualised relaxation techniques is one of those. Following a counterbalanced cross-over design, 27 sport science students (age 25.22 ± 1.08 years; sports participation 8.08 ± 3.92 h/week) were randomly assigned to series of progressive muscle relaxation, systematic breathing, power nap, yoga, and a control condition. Once a week, over the course of five weeks, their repeated sprint ability was tested. Tests (6 sprints of 4 s each with 20 s breaks between them) were executed on a non-motorised treadmill twice during that day intermitted by 25 min breaks. RM-ANOVA revealed significant interaction effects between the relaxation conditions and the two sprint sessions with regard to average maximum speed over all six sprints, F(4,96) = 4.06, P = 0.004, [Formula: see text] = 0.15. Post-hoc tests indicated that after systematic breathing interventions, F(1,24) = 5.02, P = 0.033, [Formula: see text] = 0.18, participants performed significantly better compared to control sessions. As the focus of this study lied on basic mechanisms of relaxation techniques in sports, this randomised controlled trial provides us with distinct knowledge on their effects, i.e., systematic breathing led to better performances, and therefore, seems to be a suited relaxation method during high-intensity training.

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