Effects of sodium bicarbonate ingestion on EMG, effort sense and ventilatory response during intense exercise and subsequent active recovery

To determine whether post-exercise ventilation is related to decrease in blood pH and also whether post-exercise ventilation, associated or not with decreased blood pH, involves an increase in central motor command during exercise, we examined the effects of NaHCO₃ ingestion on the ventilatory response (\( {\dot{\text{V}}} \)E), integrated electromyogram (iEMG) and effort sense of legs (ESL) during intense exercise (IE) and subsequent active recovery. Subjects performed two IE tests (105–110% of maximal work rate, 2 min) after ingestion of NaHCO₃ or CaCO₃. Subjects performed light load exercise (20 W) before and after IE for 6 min and 30 min, respectively. Although there was a significant difference in blood pH between the two conditions during and after IE, \( {\dot{\text{V}}} \)E, iEMG and ESL were similar. iEMG returned to the pre-IE level immediately after the end of IE, while ESL showed slow recovery. \( {\dot{\text{V}}} \)E decreased rapidly until about 50 s after the end of IE (fast phase) and then showed a slow recovery kinetics (slow phase). The ventilatory responses during the fast phase and during the slow phase were correlated with ESL at the end of IE and from 3 min after the end of IE, respectively. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the slopes and intercepts of regression lines between \( {\dot{\text{V}}} \)E and ESL under the two conditions in both phases. These results suggest that the ventilatory response after IE is associated with effort sense indirectly-elicited by central motor command, but the effort sense-mediated response is not affected by blood pH.