Efeito agudo da suplementação de capsaicina na percepção subjetiva do esforço de uma sessão em competidores de Crossfit

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The Subjective Effort Perception (PSE) is an important psychophysiological variable that allows measuring the degree of physical effort made during exercise. Recently, some studies have associated Capsaicin supplementation with PSE value reduction in different modalities, especially those in which the ability to resist fatigue is crucial for success, such as CrossFit OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the effect of acute Capsaicin supplementation on the Subjective Perception of Effort of a typical CrossFit session (PSEsession). METHODS: The sample consisted of 19 individuals (12 men and 7 women; mean age 27.3 ± 6.4 years; height 1.68 ± 0.07 meters; body mass 71.2 ± 9.8 kg) who completed a randomized, crossover, double-blind design: Capsaicin (12mg) condition or Placebo (starch) condition. Two meetings were held, separated by one week. The volunteers were already familiar with the modality, the protocol exercises, and the test site. After supplementation, the subjects waited 45 minutes to start the test, which consisted of 3 rounds of 3 sets of 1 minute of execution of a given exercise, with 1 minute of passive pause between sets. The exercises were: DeadLift, Hang Power Clean, and Clean & Jerk. After 30 minutes of the end of the test the volunteers pointed a value in the CR-10 scale referring to the perception of effort made in the session that, later, was multiplied by the total test time to obtain the values of PSEsession. The paired t test was used to compare the session PSE values between the Placebo and Capsaicin situations, with a significance level of α = 0.05. To verify and classify the size of the acute effect of Capsaicin supplementation, the equation proposed by Rhea (2004) was used. RESULTS: A positive effect was found with Capsaicin supplementation. PSEsession was significantly lower in the Capsaicin condition compared to the Placebo condition (83.2 ± 34.0 vs 99.3 ± 35.1; p=0.0003). The effect size found was small (0.4). CONCLUSION: It is concluded that Capsaicin supplementation was effective in reducing PSEsession values in trained individuals.