Introduction: 

It is generally accepted that active recovery after intense exercise leads to a faster decrease of lactate concentration as well as a faster stabilisation of pH. While this is often taken as an indirect indicator for faster regeneration, which benefits following performance, this was rarely proven directly. New scientific data show a beneficial effect of passive recovery in sports applied tests (e.g. swimming). Therefore the aim of the study was to test the hypothesis under laboratory conditions.

Method: 

6 male endurance trained athletes (5 triathletes, 1 runner) were tested. Mean age, height and weight were 25.72.6 yrs, 182.54.1 cm and 77.15.1 kg. Each volunteer completed two testing sessions on a SRM cycle ergometer with a gap of 5 days. Each testing session consisted of a 10min warm up at 2 Watt/kg followed by four 30sec maximal sprints. During the whole session, the 10min recovery between the sprints were either active (ACT, cycling at 1.5 Watt/kg) or completely passive (PAS), which was assigned randomly. Peak Power (PP) and Mean Power (MP) were detected for each sprint. During the recovery intervals capillary blood was used to detect lactate concentrations at 0, 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 min. Furthermore blood gas analysis (PO₂, PCO₂ and pH) was executed at 2.6 and 9 min. During the whole test heart rate and spirometric data was measured.

Results: 

MP was 7096.109.9, 699.6115.3, 677.8121.3 and 680.7116.0 Watt for ACT and 702.5106.9, 688.487.0, 633.376.6 and 632.791.3 Watt for PAS. The difference in the 4th sprint reached statistical significance (p<0,05). PP was 1049.7104.6, 1006.3130.5, 973.3138.5 and 992.7103.5 for ACT and 997.3179.6, 999.073.9, 909.354.0 and 932.555.9 for PAS. Lactate concentrations were similar 1 and 3min after the first sprint but the concentrations in ACT decreased significantly from 5min and remained lower for all points of measurement. pH differed significantly 9min after the first sprint, when ACT showed higher values than PAS which did not change until the end of the session.

Discussion: Despite the lower lactate concentrations and the higher pH, PP was not influenced by active recovery. This shows that a lower lactate concentration and a higher pH cannot be taken as the performance limiting predictor for following intense performance. Furthermore the power output during such an intense exercise underlies several factors, which should be further investigated (e.g. lactate transporters). The results also show that there are strong individual responses to the two different recovery protocols. This is important for fitting individual strategies to optimize training and competition strategies.