Iñigo Mujika, fisiología del deporte y entrenamiento

Fitness determinants of repeated-sprint ability in highly trained youth football players

By Iñigo Mujika on April 9th 2012

Matt Spencer, David Pyne, Juanma Santisteban, Iñigo Mujika.

International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. 2011 Dec; 6(4):497-508.

Variations in rates of growth and development in young football players can influence relationships among various fitness qualities. Purpose: To investigate the relationships between repeated-sprint ability and other fundamental fitness qualities of acceleration, agility, explosive leg power, and aerobic conditioning through the age groups of U11 to U18 in highly trained junior football players. Methods: Male players (n = 119) across the age groups completed a fitness assessment battery over two testing sessions. The first session consisted of countermovement jumps without and with arm swing, 15-m sprint run, 15-m agility run, and the 20-m Shuttle Run (U11 to U15) or the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test, Level 1 (U16 to U18). The players were tested for repeated-sprint ability in the second testing session using a protocol of 6 × 30-m sprints on 30 s with an active recovery. Results: The correlations of repeated-sprint ability with the assorted fitness tests varied considerably between the age groups, especially for agility (r = .02 to .92) and explosive leg power (r = .04 to .84). Correlations of repeated sprint ability with acceleration (r = .48 to .93) and aerobic conditioning (r = .28 to .68) were less variable with age. Conclusion: Repeated-sprint ability associates differently with other fundamental fitness tests throughout the teenage years in highly trained football players, although stabilization of these relationships occurs by the age of 18 y. Coaches in junior football should prescribe physical training accounting for variations in short-term disruptions or impairment of physical performance during this developmental period.

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From superfit to superfat

By Iñigo Mujika on September 22nd 2011

As some of you already know, I have been an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance since the journal was created back in 2005. The stated mission of the Int J Sports Physiol Perform is to advance the knowledge of sport and exercise physiologists, sport scientists, sport physicians, and sport-performance researchers. The journal promotes the publication of research in sport physiology and related disciplines that has direct practical application to enhancing sport performance, preventing decrements in performance, or enhancing recovery of athletes.

One of my tasks as Associate Editor is to write the editorial for the journal every so often. The September 2011 issue just published my latest editorial, entitled “From superfit to superfat”, which deals with the similarities between the metabolic changes that highly trained athletes suffer when they stop training, and the characteristics of the metabolic syndrome, which is induced by insufficient physical exercise and poor dietary habits and is fast becoming a global epidemic of apocalyptic proportions.

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Wild baboons with high cholesterol

By Iñigo Mujika on August 8th 2011

Baboon. (Photo: Dick Mudde)

Robert M. Sapolsky is Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Stanford University. For over a decade, he has been spending his summers in the Masai Mara National Reserve in the Serengeti Plain of Kenia, studying the relationships between social behavior and dominance rank in wild baboons, the amount of social stress they experience, and how their bodies react to stress.

According to Robert Sapolsky, “an average baboon in the Serengeti spends 30 to 40 percent of each day foraging – climbing trees to reach fruit and leaves, digging laboriously in the ground to unearth tubers, walking five or ten miles to reach sources of food. Their diet is spartan: figs and olives, grass and sedge parts, corms, tubers and seedpods. It’s unusual for them to hunt or scavenge, and meat accounts for less than 1 percent of the food they consume. So the typical baboon diet teems with fiber and is very low in fat, sugar, and cholesterol.”

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Ainhoa Murua: the way to London

By Iñigo Mujika on July 14th 2011

Coach Inigo Mujika with Olympic triathlete and coachee Ainhoa Mujika

With Ainhoa Murua in Zarautz (Photo: Finisher Triatlon magazine).

Finisher Triathlon magazine has just published in its issue 127 an interview with Olympic triathlete Ainhoa Murua, with whom I work since 2004. The article includes a text that I wrote on Ainhoa’s preparation for the 2012 London Olympic Games, reproduced below:

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Hunter-gatherer fitness

By Iñigo Mujika on April 14th 2011

Two days ago I tested on the cycle ergometer a 61-year-old recreational cyclist. He performed a progressive test to exhaustion, starting at 100 W, with 25 W increments every 3 minutes, and was able to hold 325 W for 68 seconds, to achieve a peak aerobic power of 309 W (4.41 W/kg). He said he cycled year long, for a total of about 10,000 km per year, or about 192 km per week (about 6-8 hours of cycling per week).

Cariban gatherer and hunter (from the book "Na'na Kali'na: Une histoire des Kali'na en Guyane").

I was impressed by his fitness level, and so was our sports cardiologist. He was not overweight, had no hypertension, no insulin resistance, took no medication. Imagine the reduction in the public health budget if everyone around remained as active…

Today I came accross an excellent scientific article by James H. O’Keefe and colleagues entitled “Achieving hunter-gatherer fitness in the 21st century: back to the future”. And I thought I should share some of its contents with the readers of this blog:

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Eneko Llanos: “I think I still have room for improvement”

By Iñigo Mujika on February 15th 2011

A few days ago Eneko and I were interviewed by the journalist of Diario de Noticias de Álava Borja Lazkano at USP Araba Sport Clinic, where Eneko had to do a cycle ergometer test to evaluate his fitness level and adjust his preparation for the Abu Dhabi Triathlon taking place next 13th of March.

In the interview, the Long Distance Triathlon European Champion (among many other titles) stated that he still has room for improvement, and I totally agree. As a matter of fact, the results of the test we carried out that day indicated some degree of progression with respect to the values obtained in previous years. Although we both know that anything can happen during competition and that every race is a whole new world, we are optimistic for this season, characterised by less racing than 2010, but equally exciting.

Read the interview in Diario de Noticias de Alava (Spanish):

Read the interview (PDF, Spanish):

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Prevention of sudden death in sport

By Iñigo Mujika on February 8th 2011

The death of well known athletes during or little after taking part in sport activities has a major impact in the media, and besides being a terrible tragedy for those closer to the affected athlete and the sport, it produces social alarm and rises the following question: how is it possible that an apparently healthy athlete undergoing continuous medical evaluations can lose their life while practising a supposedly healthy activity?

At USP Araba Sport Clinic we consider that part of the solution lies in prevention, and we do our best to offer athletes of all levels the most complete screening tests, carried out by highly qualified specialists, such as our sport cardiologist Dr. Angel Alonso.

Angel was interviewed this week by Diario de Noticias de Álava on the subject of sudden death in sport and its prevention.

Here is the interview (in Spanish), hoping that we all understand the importance of safe sport practice.

Read the interview (PDF): El camino hacia un deporte más seguro