Effect of the number of sprint repetitions on the variation of blood lactate concentration in repeated sprint sessions

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of number of sprint repetitions on the variation of blood lactate concentration (blood [La]) during different repeated-sprint sessions in order to find the appropriate number of sprint repetitions that properly simulates the physiological demands of team sport competitions. Twenty male team-sport players (age, 22.2 ± 2.9 years) performed several repeated-sprint sessions (RSS) consisting of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, or 10 repetitions of 30 m shuttle sprints (2 × 15 m) with 30 s recovery in between. The blood [La] was obtained after 3 min of recovery at the end of each RSS. The present study showed that for RSS of 3 sprints (RSS3) there was a high increase (p>0.001) in blood [La], which reached approximately fivefold resting values (9.4±1.7 mmol · l-1) and then remained unchanged for the RSS of 4 and 5 sprints (9.6±1.4 and 10.5±1.9 mmol · l-1, p=0.96 and 0.26, respectively). After RSS9 and RSS10 blood [La] further significantly increased to 12.6 and 12.7 mmol · l-1, p>0.001, respectively. No significant difference was found between RSS3, RSS4 and RSS5 for the percentage of sprint speed decrement (Sdec) (1.5±1.2; 2.0±1.1 and 2.6±1.4%, respectively). There was also no significant difference between RSS9 and RSS10 for Sdec (3.9±1.3% and 4.5±1.4%, respectively). In conclusion, the repeated-sprint protocol composed of 5 shuttle sprint repetitions is more representative of the blood lactate demands of the team sports game intensity.