The Effect of Swimming on Blood Lactate and Sleep, after Intense Efforts in Handball Players

Abstract

Handball is a dynamic game and requires from the subjects an intense physical effort and a great psychic commitment. The handball training process has to solve a whole series of performance skills that are found in the handball game, in this respect in order to achieve both the offensive actions with accuracy and speed and to block the actions of the opposing team. The sooner handball players recover after training or matches, the more work can be done, and the increased levels of training translate into more efficient games. Swimming in general is associated with performance sports but also as a means of recreation and improvement of the quality of life, the horizontal position favouring this. In this regard we have investigated the efficiency of swimming in eliminating lactate from the blood, and increasing the quality of sleep after intense efforts, in the sense of optimizing sports efficiency. The study carried out on twenty amateur athletes handball players, aged between 19 and 25 years, being divided into two equal groups. The experiment group (Group 1), after intense effort, performed an active recovery with specific elements of swimming for 20 minutes at an intensity of 55-60% relative to the maximum heart rate, and the control group (Group 2) during this time achieved a passive recovery. The results of the study have shown that specific elements of swimming, after intense efforts, cause significant changes in the elimination of lactate from the blood and provide a quieter sleep for amateur athlete’s handball players members of the experiment group.