Changes in ventilation at the end of heavy exercise of different durations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of duration and the concomitant ventilatory drift of heavy exercise on the changes in ventilation following the cessation of exercise. Seven male subjects ran on a motor-driven treadmill at a constant work-rate of 90% of VO2max for either 5 min or 7 min on 60 occasions. The exercise was terminated abruptly by stopping the treadmill with a remote switch while recording inspired minute ventilation (VI) breath by breath. The fast drop in VI at the end of exercise is significantly less than the corresponding increase at the onset of exercise (P less than 0.05) and this difference is greater with longer duration of exercise. The time constants of the slow ventilatory decline are significantly increased following 7 min of exercise (P less than 0.05). They are also positively related to the drift in VI that occurs with the continuation of heavy exercise beyond 3 min. This relationship is however not statistically significant (P greater than 0.05). These results indicate that the rate of ventilatory decline is slower after the end of a longer duration of exercise and this is caused by mechanism/s that also contribute/s to the ventilatory drift of heavy exercise. As, of the many different possibilities, only the respiratory after-discharge (central neural reverberatory) mechanism is likely to be more activated with a longer duration of exercise and on the basis of our previous observations (Jeyaranjan et al. 1988, 1989), the results suggest that the mechanism of after-discharge is an important mediator of ventilatory response during as well as after the cessation of heavy exercise.