Ten Minutes Extension Endurance Test in Healthy Inactive vs. Active Male People
Author(s): Christoph Anders, Tim Schönau
Purpose: Intense endurance and strength training mark virtually opposite parts of basic motor skills. Extreme high load physical demands are getting sparer but endurance demands are still present. Therefore, we exposed healthy controls and endurance and strength trained athletes at competition level to a submaximal endurance test of their back muscles' endurance.
Methods: In this pilot study 38 healthy male subjects participated: physically inactive controls (C, n=12), endurance trained (ET, n=13), and strength trained subjects (ST, n=13). We asked all participants to finish a ten minutes back muscle endurance test at 50% of their upper body weight. After every completed minute participants were prompted to rate their level of perceived exertion according to the well-established Borg-scale.
Results: Maximum holding times were shortest in the ST group (469 ± 142 s; ET 600 ± 0 s; C 600 ± 0 s), but statistical significance could only be proven for ET vs. ST (p<0.01). Hedges gs values for comparisons of maximum holding times showed relevant differences among all groups: ET vs. ST 10.64; ET vs. C 2.38; ST vs. C 0.78. Values of perceived exertion increased over time with lowest values for the ET group, except after the first minute. Especially between 180s and 420s ST group showed highest exertion values, but between group differences could not be determined.
Conclusions: Static back muscle endurance capacity of strength trained subjects is considerably reduced in comparison to endurance as well as untrained healthy subjects. The results suggest adverse effects of strengthonly training when endurance tasks have to be compensated.