ENTRAINMENT DURING BICYCLE ERGOMETRY IN ELITE CYCLISTS

Abstract

While it is widely accepted that ventilation increases abruptly at the onset of muscular exercise (D'Angelo and Torelli, 1971; Jensen, Vejby-Christensen and Petersen, 1972; Krogh and Lin~~ard, 1913) the control of the respiratory pattern, i.e., the relationship between ventilation (V', Vi', Ve'), tidal volume (Vt), and respiratory frequency (fR) or respiratory cycle times (Tt, Ti, Te) is not clearly understood (Wasserman, 1978). There are a number of factors, which may be classified as humoral, neurogenic, or neurohumoral, involved in respiratory regulation (Dejours, 1960), but the importance of any single factor is difficult to determine because of the associated problems of controlling for the other variables involved in the total response. One such factor is the coordination of the respiratory pattern to the movement pattern referred to as entrainment. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between the variables that control the respiratory pattern and to test the hypothesis that entrainment would be more prevalent in athletes who were highly trained for a particular mode of exercise, based on a work minimization theory (Priban and Fincham, 1965; Yamashiro and Grodins, 1973; Cherniack, 1980), than in non-athletes unaccustomed to the exercise.