Cardiovascular responses to leisure alpine skiing in habitually sedentary middle-aged men.

In order to evaluate the cardiovascular responses to leisure alpine skiing of habitually sedentary and not particularly active adult men, a series of continuous recordings of heart rate (HR) was performed on 10 subjects aged 51.0 +/- 1.3 years (x +/- s.e.) during a 6-day ski trip at an altitude of 1000-2485 m. From the very first day, the subjects spontaneously adopted a regimen of intense physical activity, since 17.9% of the HR values recorded on the ski runs were higher than 85% of the maximal theoretical HR [THRmax (beats min-1) = 220 age (years)], which represented 19.5% of the actual skiing time. On day 2, 10.7% of the HR values were higher than 85% THRmax, or 17.9% of actual skiing time. For the entire ski trip, the mean HR during skiing was 126 beats min-1, which corresponds to 75% THRmax. At rest, HR in the morning did not change significantly from days 2 to 6 (from 80 +/- 4 to 75 +/- 4 beats min-1, P0.05), whereas HR in the evening correlated significantly with the duration of physical activity during the day (r = 0.487, P 0.001). In all cases, HR at rest was significantly higher than before the trip, except in the evening of day 4, the day on which the subjects skied less because they were fatigued after skiing in the morning. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) at rest was always lower than the control established before the trip, whether taken in the morning or in the evening. The evening SBP correlated significantly to the SBP of the following morning (r=0.568, P0.001). Our results show that (1) leisure alpine skiing constitutes intense physical exercise over 6 consecutive days and (2) HR at rest remained high at all times and sleep had little influence on the SBP values when the activity during the day before was relatively intense and prolonged.