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Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance

In the past decades, researchers have extensively studied (elite) athletes' physiological responses to understand how to maximize their endurance performance. In endurance sports, whole-body measurements such as the maximal oxygen consumption, lactate threshold, and efficiency/economy play a ke...

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Autores principales: van der Zwaard, Stephan, Brocherie, Franck, Jaspers, Richard T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8371266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34423293
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.719434
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author van der Zwaard, Stephan
Brocherie, Franck
Jaspers, Richard T.
author_facet van der Zwaard, Stephan
Brocherie, Franck
Jaspers, Richard T.
author_sort van der Zwaard, Stephan
collection PubMed
description In the past decades, researchers have extensively studied (elite) athletes' physiological responses to understand how to maximize their endurance performance. In endurance sports, whole-body measurements such as the maximal oxygen consumption, lactate threshold, and efficiency/economy play a key role in performance. Although these determinants are known to interact, it has also been demonstrated that athletes rarely excel in all three. The leading question is how athletes reach exceptional values in one or all of these determinants to optimize their endurance performance, and how such performance can be explained by (combinations of) underlying physiological determinants. In this review, we advance on Joyner and Coyle's conceptual framework of endurance performance, by integrating a meta-analysis of the interrelationships, and corresponding effect sizes between endurance performance and its key physiological determinants at the macroscopic (whole-body) and the microscopic level (muscle tissue, i.e., muscle fiber oxidative capacity, oxygen supply, muscle fiber size, and fiber type). Moreover, we discuss how these physiological determinants can be improved by training and what potential physiological challenges endurance athletes may face when trying to maximize their performance. This review highlights that integrative assessment of skeletal muscle determinants points toward efficient type-I fibers with a high mitochondrial oxidative capacity and strongly encourages well-adjusted capillarization and myoglobin concentrations to accommodate the required oxygen flux during endurance performance, especially in large muscle fibers. Optimisation of endurance performance requires careful design of training interventions that fine tune modulation of exercise intensity, frequency and duration, and particularly periodisation with respect to the skeletal muscle determinants.
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spelling pubmed-83712662021-08-19 Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance van der Zwaard, Stephan Brocherie, Franck Jaspers, Richard T. Front Sports Act Living Sports and Active Living In the past decades, researchers have extensively studied (elite) athletes' physiological responses to understand how to maximize their endurance performance. In endurance sports, whole-body measurements such as the maximal oxygen consumption, lactate threshold, and efficiency/economy play a key role in performance. Although these determinants are known to interact, it has also been demonstrated that athletes rarely excel in all three. The leading question is how athletes reach exceptional values in one or all of these determinants to optimize their endurance performance, and how such performance can be explained by (combinations of) underlying physiological determinants. In this review, we advance on Joyner and Coyle's conceptual framework of endurance performance, by integrating a meta-analysis of the interrelationships, and corresponding effect sizes between endurance performance and its key physiological determinants at the macroscopic (whole-body) and the microscopic level (muscle tissue, i.e., muscle fiber oxidative capacity, oxygen supply, muscle fiber size, and fiber type). Moreover, we discuss how these physiological determinants can be improved by training and what potential physiological challenges endurance athletes may face when trying to maximize their performance. This review highlights that integrative assessment of skeletal muscle determinants points toward efficient type-I fibers with a high mitochondrial oxidative capacity and strongly encourages well-adjusted capillarization and myoglobin concentrations to accommodate the required oxygen flux during endurance performance, especially in large muscle fibers. Optimisation of endurance performance requires careful design of training interventions that fine tune modulation of exercise intensity, frequency and duration, and particularly periodisation with respect to the skeletal muscle determinants. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-08-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8371266/ /pubmed/34423293 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.719434 Text en Copyright © 2021 van der Zwaard, Brocherie and Jaspers. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sports and Active Living
van der Zwaard, Stephan
Brocherie, Franck
Jaspers, Richard T.
Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance
title Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance
title_full Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance
title_fullStr Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance
title_full_unstemmed Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance
title_short Under the Hood: Skeletal Muscle Determinants of Endurance Performance
title_sort under the hood: skeletal muscle determinants of endurance performance
topic Sports and Active Living
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8371266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34423293
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2021.719434
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