High competition

Achieving a training state that permits participating in high competition sports requires a hard and sustained training.  But the fitness acquired by so much effort can be lost very quickly.

According to a Spanish research published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, a short time without training is enough for an athlete to loose fitness.

High competition athletes that interrupt their training in ten days start experiencing changes in their body associated to untraining.  That was proven by researches of the Medical Services of the Athletic Club of Bilbao. According to them, in a few days the absence of stimulation starts producing the total or partial loss of the organic adaptations induced by training.

One of the fundamental alterations is the rapid deterioration of the cardio-respiratory condition.  For these athletes, submitted to intensive training sessions, a period with lack of work seems to produce and accelerated decrease of the maximum oxygen consume.  This is one of the most important laboratory parameters for evaluating an athlete’s resistance.

When an athlete is in a high level of training there is a certain degree of hemodilution, which increases the blood volume.  When not training, there is a reduction of this volume, which also lowers the amount of blood emitted by the heart with each beat.  The Spanish research indicated that even the size of the internal cavities of the cardiac muscle also decrease when training is interrupted.  The consequence is that the efficiency of the breathing function rapidly decreases when the stimulation of the physical preparation stops.

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