Regulation of pacing strategy during athletic competition

Athletic competition has been a source of interest to the scientific community for many years, as a surrogate of the limits of human ambulatory ability. One of the remarkable things about athletic competition is the observation that some athletes suddenly reduce their pace in the mid-portion of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2011-01, Vol.6 (1), p.e15863-e15863
Main Authors: de Koning, Jos J, Foster, Carl, Bakkum, Arjan, Kloppenburg, Sil, Thiel, Christian, Joseph, Trent, Cohen, Jacob, Porcari, John P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anticipation, Psychological - physiology
Athletes
Biology
Brain research
Competition
Decision Making
Disease
Human performance
Humans
Information processing
Laws, regulations and rules
Medicine
Metabolism
Metabolites
Muscles - physiology
Nervous system
Neuromuscular diseases
Perceptions
Physical Exertion - physiology
Physiology
Race
Running - physiology
Running - psychology
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Sport science
Sports - physiology
Sports - psychology
Surges
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Summary:Athletic competition has been a source of interest to the scientific community for many years, as a surrogate of the limits of human ambulatory ability. One of the remarkable things about athletic competition is the observation that some athletes suddenly reduce their pace in the mid-portion of the race and drop back from their competitors. Alternatively, other athletes will perform great accelerations in mid-race (surges) or during the closing stages of the race (the endspurt). This observation fits well with recent evidence that muscular power output is regulated in an anticipatory way, designed to prevent unreasonably large homeostatic disturbances. Here we demonstrate that a simple index, the product of the momentary Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and the fraction of race distance remaining, the Hazard Score, defines the likelihood that athletes will change their velocity during simulated competitions; and may effectively represent the language used to allow anticipatory regulation of muscle power output. These data support the concept that the muscular power output during high intensity exercise performance is actively regulated in an anticipatory manner that accounts for both the momentary sensations the athlete is experiencing as well as the relative amount of a competition to be completed.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0015863