Abstract

The attainment of an oxygen uptake (VO2) plateau during maximal incremental exercise is often considered as a criterion for the elicitation of a maximal effort. However there is growing evidence that a (VO2) plateau does not occur in all adult subjects despite exercise to volitional exhaustion. One school of thought is that aerobically trained subjects or subjects with a higher maximal VO2 were more likely to demonstrate the VO2 plateau phenomenon than subjects with lower maximal VO2. The study investigated the frequency of occurrence of the VO2 plateau, defined as an increase in VO2 of less than 1.5 ml/kg/min in trained Asian male (n=158, age=21.7 ± 4.9 y; body mass=64.8 ± 8.6 kg) and female (n=28, age=21.9 ± 7.0 y; body mass=53.0 ± 7.0 kg) athletes during a maximal treadmill run to volitional exhaustion, to determine maximal VO2. The VO2 plateau phenomenon was only detected in 53 % of the male athletes and 64 % of the female athletes, despite the lower ratio-scaled peak VO2 values (48.4 ± 7.2 vs. 58.0 ± 6.9 ml/kg BM/min; p < 0.05) of the female athletes compared to the male athletes. These data refuted the assertions that athletes with higher aerobic fitness were more likely to show a VO2 plateau, and that the lack of a VO2 plateau was due to poor motivation on the part of untrained adults to give a maximal effort. Verf.-Referat