Searching for minimally invasive, minimally disturbing indicators of training status in athletes has been always a matter of interest in exercise physiology and sports medicine. To this aim, several variables have been monitored, mostly related to adaptive changes in the neuroendocrine system and particularly heart rate (HR), because HR represents one of the most accessible, noninvasive and lowcost physiological measures in sports medicine. In this context, spectral analysis of shortterm HR variability (HRV) has been shown to be capable to detect the complex adaptational changes in sympathovagal control attending physical training. Indeed, we and other groups reported the feasibility and reliability of HRV in monitoring autonomic nervous system (ANS) changes with training in healthy subjects (Iwasaki et al. 2003; Okazaki et al. 2005) cardiac patients (Iellamo et al. 2013) and athletes (Iellamo et al. 2002, 2004; Manzi et al. 2009). However, most of the studies performed so far, investigated ANS changes occurring with endurance, aerobic training, and showed a dose-response relationship of ANS responses to training, best described by a second-order regression model (Iwasaki et al. 2003; Okazaki et al. 2005; Manzi et al. 2009; Iellamo et al. 2013) with different and reciprocal shapes for parasympathetic and sympathetic indicators. Aerobic exercises consist of activities performed for prolonged periods that involve large muscles masses (e.g., running and cycling). Aerobic exercise induces many physiological adaptations, mediated at both central and peripheral sites (Wilmore et al. 2008). The main metabolic adaptations to aerobic exercise at muscular level are a slower consumption of muscle glycogen, a larger reliance on fat oxidation, and less lactate production during exercise at a given intensity (Wilmore et al. 2008). To what extent adaptations in ANS regulation observed in endurance athletes extend to markedly different exercise training modes, for example, strength training, has been much less investigated. Strength training is a type of physical exercise that provides meaningful functional benefits to the health and athletic performance, including muscle hypertrophy and, possibly, hyperplasia (Folland and Williams 2007; Roberts et al. 2015). Traditionally strength training programs consist of exercises with resistance or added weight, comprising repetitions before muscle exhaustion and in weight lifters include to a large extent, Olympic lifts (snatch, clean and jerk), powerlifts etc. (see Methods). To the best of our knowledge, no study has analyzed the relationship between training load and ANS parameters in high-level strengthtrained athletes. In the present investigation, we assessed the changes in cardiac ANS parameters with training load in weight lifters of the national Italian team preparing for the European Championship 2016 and tested the hypothesis that changes in ANS with weightlifting-specific training are different from those described with endurance training, being therefore sports-pecific.
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