Metabolic Changes During a Field Experiment in a World-Class Windsurfing Athlete: A Trial with Multivariate Analyses

Abstract

Physical exercise affects hematological equilibrium and metabolism. This study evaluated the biochemical and hematological responses of a male world-class athlete in sailing who is ranked among the top athletes on the official ISAF ranking list of windsurfing, class RS:X. The results describe the metabolic adaptations of this athlete in response to exercise in two training situations: the first when the athlete was using the usual training and dietary protocol, and the second following training and nutritional interventions based on a careful analysis of his diet and metabolic changes measured in a simulated competition. The intervention protocol for this study consisted of a 3-month facility-based program using neuromuscular training (NT), aerobic training (AT), and nutritional changes to promote anabolism and correct micronutrient malnutrition. Nutritional and training intervention produced an increase in the plasma availability of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), aromatic amino acids (AAAs), alanine, glutamate, and glutamine during exercise. Both training and nutritional interventions reduced ammonemia, uricemia, and uremia. In addition, we are able to correct a significant drop in potassium levels during races by correct supplementation. Due to the uniqueness of this experiment, these results may not apply to other windsurfers, but we nonetheless had the opportunity to characterize the metabolic adaptations of this athlete. We also proposed the importance of in-field metabolic analyses to the understanding, support, and training of world-class elite athletes.

Hair and Saliva Trace Elements Content in Young Athletes from Kazan Region, Russia

“…Sport disciplines different in speed, power, endurance, and environment have different sport-specific mineral losses [11][12][13]. We studied two groups of athletes representing field hockey and fencing, two sports quite different in the trained skills.…”

Mass spectrometry imaging: Facts and perspectives from a non-mass spectrometrist point of view

“…For example the understanding of the composition of layers of paint in the study of ancient pictures can help us to elucidate paleontological issues as well as tissue aging, separating out the information from the biological sample and the environmental contamination. Recently, using the same rationale, the knowledge of MS uses in petroleomics led to a new approach for studying metabolism, now called sportomics [12,13].…”

Investigating the Cellular and Metabolic Responses of World-Class Canoeists Training: A Sportomics Approach

“…Some of these changes in metabolism can be assessed using blood as a biological matrix. For more than one decade, our group has dedicated research efforts towards understanding changes in metabolism using exercise as an induced-stress metabolic model [3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. The Sportomics approach targets metabolic and signaling molecule evaluations during either mimicked or real conditions faced in sports situations; it combines “-omics” technique with classic clinical laboratory analyses in order to understand sport-induced modifications [16].…”

“…Since urea and urate are, respectively, the final products of ammonia and purine metabolism, the study of the kinetics of those blood analytes leads to a better understanding of the metabolic pathways of ammonia origin and the response to exercise [37]. For this reason, our group has proposed nutritional and training interventions to promote metabolic adaptations in elite athletes to enhance their performance in training and competitions [3,10]. …”