Blood lactate as an indicator of match intensity in female wrestling

Introduction

Female wrestling will feature for the first time in the Olympic Games in Athens. For both men and women the duration of a wrestling match is the same (2 x 3 min, with a 30 s break). It has been demonstrated that in male wrestlers blood lactate concentration after match is very high [1, 2, 3] which means that anaerobic metabolism is predominant energy source [6]. However there are no such data available for female wrestlers. Thus the aim of the present study was to examine wrestling match intensity in women and to compare with men basing on the post match blood lactate concentration.

Methods

The subjects of the present study were 18 female and 14 male free style wrestlers of the Polish National Team. The study was conducted during international Warsaw Cup’03 and Ziółkowski Tournament’02, respectively. The subjects were informed about experimental procedures and discomfort associated with the study before they gave their informed consent. The Ethics Committee of the Academy of Physical Education in Warsaw, approved the studies. Blood was taken from earlobe 5 min after each full-length (2 x 3 min) match. Blood lactate concentration was determined using commercial Dr Lange kits (Germany) [5]. Results were expressed as mean  SD. Differences between lactate concentrations were determined using Student t test for independent samples. The level of significance was set at p<0.05.

Results

In female wrestlers mean blood lactate concentration 5 min after match was 13.82.8 mmol/l and was significantly lower then in male wrestlers (15.82.3 mmol/l). There was no relationship between lactate concentration and the success of male and female subjects participated in wrestling matches.
Discussion/Conclusions
This study is the first to conduct an evaluation of post match blood lactate concentration in female wrestlers. It is well known that blood lactate concentration after short-term, maximal exercise is higher in men then in women [4]. However very high blood lactate concentration after matches both in male and female athletes demonstrating that the anaerobic metabolism was the dominant energy source during wrestling. The results of this study suggest that a specific anaerobic training programme should be similar for female and male free style wrestlers.

References

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