Comparison of anaerobic and aerobic fatigue on visual skills
Exercise-induced fatigue is a common concern among individuals performing physical activities either for training and/or athletic performance. An enormous amount of research has been conducted on exercise-induced fatigue and its effect on physiological and physical functions. However, it is only supposed that maximal and supra-maximal exercise efforts may be responsible for decreases in sports vision performance and that physical conditioning may increase an athlete’s ability to delay mental fatigue and thus deterioration in sports vision performance. However, previous research has demonstrated that anaerobic alactacid and anaerobic lactacid exercise improves components of sports vision (i.e. peripheral threshold detection and coincidence-anticipation) and may result in instantaneous improvements in sports vision performance. Thus, the primary aim of the study was to investigate the effects of short- and prolonged-duration maximal exercise effects on visual performance. The secondary aim was to examine and compare whether short- and long-duration maximal exercise most affects visual performance. Sixty untrained males were assigned to a control group (n = 30) or treatment group (TG) (n = 30) and underwent a sport vision test battery consisting of quantitative testing for accommodation facility, saccadic eye movements, speed of recognition, hand-eye coordination, peripheral awareness, and visual memory. One week later, the TG participants returned to complete a short supramaximal effort cycle ergometer test (SCT) immediately followed by the sports vision test battery. One week thereafter, TG participants returned a second time and completed a prolonged incremental maximal treadmill test (PTT) immediately followed by the sports vision test battery. In the SCT, significant (p ≤ 0.05) changes were found for five of the six sports vision performance measures (p = 0.000), except visual memory (p = 0.242). In turn, following the PTT, significant changes were found for all sports vision performance measures (p = 0.000 for all measures). Results further indicate that only accommodation facility (p = 0.005) and saccadic eye movement (p = 0.026) were statistically different between the SCT and PTT with these variables being significantly higher following the PTT. This study’s findings point to a beneficial immediate improvement in sports vision performance following short-supramaximal or prolonged-maximal exercise efforts, with the latter being found to be even more effective. Combining such exercise regimes as a functional warm-up may attenuate improvements in sports vision performance, especially in those sports requiring a great deal of visual processing and performance.
Exercise-induced-fatigue, metabolic fatigue, treadmill running, visual performance
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