The balance of muscle oxygen supply and demand reveals critical metabolic rate and predicts time to exhaustion

Abstract

Dynamic muscle O2 saturation discriminates boundaries between exercise intensity domains, exposes a critical metabolic rate as the highest rate of steady state O2 supply and demand, describes time series depletion and repletion for work above critical power, and predicts time to exhaustion during severe domain whole body exercise. These results highlight the matching of O2 supply and demand as a primary determinant for sustainable exercise intensities from those that are unsustainable and lead to exhaustion.