Heart Rate’s Response during Bruce Treadmil Test in Adult Soccer Players

Objectives: To determine the average pulse curve and analyzed the heart rate’s response during ergometrical testing in adult male soccer players. Design: Retrospective analysis of results of 708 soccer players, age span 18 – 34 years, mean age 25.34  3.73. Methods: The Bruce treadmill protocol was used. The pulse curve is formed of 12 points, starting from heart rate at rest (HRRest), average heart rates at the end of ten minutes of the test and heart rate at the recovery (HRRec), expressed by beats per minute (bpm). Results: The average pulse curve for the whole group was consisted of: HRRest=70.99; HR1=93.72; HR2=93.3; HR3=94.22; HR4=105.19; HR5=106.76; HR6=108.45; HR7=120.75; HR8=123.27; HR9=125.89; HRRec=93.82bpm. The group was divided in a six age different subgroups, from range up to 20, until the 28+ year. The analysis of different time points of Bruce curve showed highly significant inter-groups differences for all heart rate points (p=0.00001), except for the HRRec (p=0.68). The resting heart rate showed a weak negative correlation between to the duration of the test and the oxygen consumption (-0.276). The average positive correlation coefficient between HRrest and HRrec (0.549) showed that examinees with lower HRRrest also had lower heart rate during the recovery which are indictors of successful cardiovascular response during effort. Conclusions: These results could be used as normative values for Bruce test in adult soccer players in our country and they could be useful information for medical and sport experts in estimation of athlete’s success of training process.