Influence of Training Session Duration on Improvements in Physiological Resilience to Exercise

Overview

During prolonged endurance exercise, certain physiological variables deteriorate depending on the duration of the exercise. Physiological resilience has therefore been defined as the ability to resist these changes and appears to be an important performance factor in endurance sports. For example, most studies in this field have investigated changes in cycling power output associated with the first ventilatory threshold (VT1), a marker of an individual's endurance capacity, after prolonged endurance exercise. To date, only two studies have examined the effects of training on resilience. The first compared the effectiveness of two training programs, one with low-intensity sessions and the other with high-intensity sessions, with no difference between the conditions. The second study showed that incorporating strength training into a running training program was more effective at improving resilience than running alone. However, the influence of training session duration on resilience remains unknown. Only one observational study has shown that in a group of runners of similar ability, those who were used to doing long sessions had better resilience than those who only did short sessions.

We hypothesize that at equal intensity and volume, a less frequent training consisting of long sessions would be more effective in improving physiological resilience than a more frequent training composed of short sessions.

Conditions