This study aim to determine the effect of fatigue on arm extensor muscles upon power, velocity, strength and rate of force development (RFD) output levels, throughout a simulate contest in judo athletes. Sixty-three male judo athletes of five national teams participated in this study, and were classified in two performance groups (elite, n=30; sub-elite, n=33). All participants performed an intermittent judo test - the COPTEST (a 5 minutes duration test, with 9 Nage-komis, 9 Uchi-komis, 9 Juji-gatame and 4 repetitions of Bench-press (BP) with the power-load in each minute, i.e., T1 to T5). BP load was the previous calculated power-loadings of the arm extensor muscles, and 3 measures were collected: (1) power, (2) velocity, and (3) RFD. Power-load (~50%1RM) was tested on a free-weights BP exercise, and an Isocontrol . Dynamic 5.1 Software was used to collect data. Standard statistical methods, one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA), and the repeated measures analysis of variance (between T1-T2 till T5) were used. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Significant differences were observed between: (1) performance groups in power, strength and RFD; (2) evaluations (T1 to T5) in power, velocity, and RFD. Moreover, the effect of fatigue on power, strength, velocity, and RFD (all, p=NS) is independent of performance group. Results showed that elite athletes were powerfull (+69 W to 200 W), stronger (+69 N to 184 N) and have superior explosive muscle strength (+15778 N.s-1 to 32648 N.s-1). In accordance, the maximization of the power development capacity must be a key component of judo training programs. Nevertheless, during the contest, the observed slight reduction in power and velocity (in both, elite and sub-elite groups) musts be investigated (i.e., changes in the contractile apparatus vs reduced muscle activation).
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