Heart rate variability - An indicator of the muscle fatigue after physical exercise

A main factor in the rehabilitation process is to produce functional and morphologic adaptations, These adaptations guarantee the active performance of the organism. The basic process to initiate the adaptations is the exercise related fatigue in the muscle or sensomotoric system. Fatigue after intensive and endurance muscle activity is caused by metabolic changes in skeletal muscles, At the same time the lactic or non lactic metabolic situation is the adequate stimulus for chemoafferences as an important information for the vegetative feed back control. The presented studies show the interdependencies between muscle contractile fatigue measured by muscle twitches and heart rate variability characterized by parameters of the time and frequency domain during recovery from two different intensive dynamic exercises, The produced corresponding metabolic milieu by both exercises is assumed to be the basis of this relationship, Although a load related different time course of the contractile function in the early recovery period was existent in the later part the strength of the muscle twitches and the vegetative data are in agreement, The endurance load without lactic acid accumulation loosed about the same decrease and a more delayed restoration process of the time domain parameter of the heart period variability in relation to the intensive work loads showing that the non lactic acid milieu is also a source for chemoafferences to realize the feed back control from the muscle.