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Innovations in athlete monitoring and interventions with applications in non-functional overreaching

University of British Columbia

Background: The monitoring of an athlete’s training load and cardiac function have demonstrated to be valuable assessment tools in individual sporting events. Additionally, short-term heat acclimation has shown to be effective for stimulating hypervolemia and augmenting cardiovascular performance. A gap in the literature exists indicating further research is required into both heat acclimation protocols and the monitoring of on-field training load and its cause and effect relationship with heart rate variability in team sport. Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was twofold; 1) identify a novel form of heat acclimation using hot yoga for augmenting cardiovascular and aerobic performance, and 2) identify an effective monitoring protocol suitable for team sport using internal training load and heart rate variability. Methods: The Canadian Women’s National Field Hockey team were participants for examining heat acclimation and the relationship between training load and autonomic modulation during the 2016 Olympic cycle. A maximal graded exercise test was completed prior to and following six hot yoga sessions to examine cardiovascular and aerobic performance measures. Results: In Chapter 4, six days of hot yoga developed hypovolemia that lead to trivial improvements in aerobic power, run time to exhaustion, and a small increase in running speed at each ventilatory threshold. A non-existent relationship between markers of exercise stress and alterations in plasma volume during and post hot yoga were observed. Chapter 5 identified a large relationship between the planned and achieved on field training load over a complete mesocycle. Additionally, a moderate relationship was observed between both time spent above anaerobic threshold, training load and alterations in the Ln rMSSD:R-R ratio. Chapter 6 demonstrated how alterations in the Ln rMSSD outside of the coefficient of variation may identify the development of non-functional overreaching, while an unclear relationship was observed between weekly training load and alterations in Ln rMSSDCV. Conclusion: Hot yoga may elicit a delayed hypervolemic response when recommencing exercise. In addition, individually tailored mesocycles may prevent the development of non-functional overreaching when examined using heart rate variability while further research is required to confirm the Ln rMSSDCV relationship to accumulate weekly on-field training load in team sport.

Text

2017-04-06

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61135

Experimental Medicine

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/