Abstract
When athletes are injured, various physical parameters decline due to the difficulty in maintaining the training volume and intensity. Among such physical factors, maintenance and improvement of aerobic fitness is considered to be one of the top priorities that the athlete must maintain or improve on in order to return to competition. The High Performance Gym (HPG) at the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences (JISS) conduct exercise training with the aim to improve aerobic capacity of athletes in rehabilitation phase. The purpose of this study was to analyze the data obtained from endurance training in athletes undergoing rehabilitation and to determine the duration and amount of training required to enhance their aerobic capacity. Twelve Japanese elite athletes underwent endurance training used by electronic-braked cycle ergometer in 2 sessions per day, each session lasting for 30 minutes with a rest interval of 5 minutes between the sessions. The athletes trained for 3-4 times per week a fixed period of time. The lactate curve test was applied before and after the training in order to determine the training load-value, and to validate the effectiveness of the endurance training. The average power at the lactate threshold (LT2) level increased by 23.8%, and the average power at the onset of blood lactate accumulation (OBLA) also increased by 16.4%. In addition, there was a significant correlation between the amount of the training and the rate of increase of average power at the LT2 level. These results indicate that an appropriate amount of endurance training could be employed based on the improvement ratio aimed by athletes.
