Ten thousand steps and more. How the athletes Martin Fourcade, or more recently Quentin Fillon Maillet, during the last Olympic Games in Beijing – where he won five medals – manage to shoot with such precision, barely arriving from their cross-country skiing race, during the biathlon races? They have in common that they are able to slow down their heart rate very quickly when approaching the launch pad.
During physical exercise, it increases in proportion to the energy needs of the effort, in order to meet the metabolic demand of the muscles. “We often measure the heart rate at rest or during exercise, which depends in particular on the level of endurance, the volume of the heart, but we very often overlook the recovery phase, which follows the exercise”regrets Sébastien Ratel, teacher-researcher in exercise physiology at the University of Clermont-Auvergne.
Recovery can be defined as a process that allows the various physiological parameters modified by physical exercise to return to their initial values. For example, Martin Fourcade has an average heart rate at rest between 30 and 35 beats/minute (bpm) but it has happened that it drops exceptionally to 28 bpm, the average being between 55 and 85 bpm in an adult. 20 year old non-athletic. As for recovery, one minute after the end of a maximal effort, the heart rate goes from 200 to 120 bpm, in a young high-level athlete trained in endurance, while it reduces from 200 to 150 in a young adult. not athletic.
Start on another effort
“The measurement of cardiac recovery and heart rate variability provides information on the athlete’s ability to withstand training, on his physiological changes, explains Laurent Schmitt, head of the research and performance department at the National Center for Nordic and Mid-Mountain Skiing in Prémanon (Jura). This moment is an essential phase of post-effort regeneration which characterizes the level of health of the athlete or the patient. »
Rapid recovery of the heart rate can prove to be decisive in all intermittent team sports (handball, basketball, football, rugby, etc.) where the rest periods between the phases of the game are often very short. “In handball, if the slope of cardiac recovery is very fast, this means that the athlete is able to start again on another effort in better conditions”, explains Olivier Maurelli, physical trainer for the French handball team and doctor of sports sciences at the University of Montpellier. Exercises can accustom the heart to braking better, such as fartlek (which alternates phases of intense effort and more moderate effort) or interval exercises. But be careful, warns Olivier Maurelli, “In extremely rare cases, the vagus nerve is overstimulated, which can lead to cardiac arrest. In these cases, it is a heart abnormality that can be detected using stress testing and heart rate variability. »
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