INTRODUCTION: In alpine skiing, most of the required energy for Slalom skiing comes from an anaerobic glycolytic System (Andersen, Montgomery, 1988; Tesch, 1995). This causes the rapid onset of fatigue. Following a race, blood lactate concentration averages from 9 to13 mmol/l (Andersen, Montgomery, 1988), hence the fatigue is beyond the anaerobic threshold. Fatigue beyond anaerobic threshold disturbs the body's balance (Nardone et al., 1997), which results in a slowing of the learning process. The blood lactate concentration does not reach anaerobic threshold if the slalom course is shortened to 15 gates (Dolenec et al., 2006). Therefore, skiing on a 15 gate course with appropriate rests might be suitable for learning a skiing technique. The aim of this experiment is to find the level of blood lactate concentration that appears in slalom skiers on a 15 gates course with a five minute rest between runs. METHOD: One alpine skier (age 18 years; height 195 cm; weight 87 kg) from the Slovenian national team participated in the experiment. After warm up, he performed nine runs on a 15 gate slalom course. The rest time between runs was five minutes. Immediately after each run, we took blood samples from the ear to determine the level of lactate concentration. RESULTS: After warm up, the blood lactate concentration was 2.4 mmol/l. During skiing, the blood lactate concentrations ranged from 2.2 - 3.3 mmol/l, The blood lactate concentration for each run is shown in Figure 1. DISCUSSION: Skiing a 15 gate slalom course results in a fatigue level that is under the anaerobic threshold (Dolenec et al., 2006). In our experiment, resting for five minutes between runs Shows that the blood lactate concentration never reaches the anaerobic threshold. The subject could perform nine runs without significant fatigue caused by high blood lactate concentration. Consequently, the body balance is not disturbed (Nardone et al., 1997), and this kind of fatigue does not interfere with the learning process. In the future, it would be interesting to see if the learning process is really more efficient on slalom courses with 15 gates than it is on slalom courses with more than 15 gates, as we speculate.
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