Changes in muscle metabolites in females with 30-s exhaustive exercise

The purpose of this study was to quantify the changes in selected intramuscular metabolites associated with non-oxidative energy metabolism after performance of the Wingate Test (WT), a widely used, exhaustive, 30-s cycle test of short-time muscular power. Muscle biopsies were taken from the m. vastus lateralis of nine female physical education students at rest and immediately after performance of the WT. The concentrations of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), creatine phosphate (CP), lactate, and glycogen were determined. The ATP decreased from 20.9 to 13.8; CP decreased from 62.7 to 25.1; lactate increased from 9.0 to 60.5; and glycogen decreased from 360 to 278 (all concentrations are mmol X kg-1 dry muscle). The absolute changes in CP and lactate were not as large as those reported in other exercise studies. Based on the metabolite changes, it was concluded that the WT is a satisfactory test of the maximal muscular power that can be generated from non-oxidative metabolism, but that the 30-s duration of the test probably does not tax the maximal capacity of such energy metabolism.