Results of Assessing the Functional State of Athletes Engaged in Hand-to-Hand Combat with Semi Contact According to the Heart Rate Variability at the Pre-competition Stage

The training load during hand-to-hand combat practicing has an impact not only on the level of physical fitness of athletes, but also on the functional state of their organism. Therefore, one of the leading places in the training system of hand-to-hand fighters should be the control and correction of the influence of training and competitive loads on the functional state of their systems and organisms on the whole. Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is a method for assessing the mechanisms of physiological functions regulation, the general activity of regulatory mechanisms, heart neurohumoral regulation, and the correlation between the sympathetic and parasympathetic parts of the autonomic nervous system. The basic information about the state of the systems that regulate the heart rhythm is contained in the "scattering functions" of the duration of cardiointervals, which reflect the complex picture of various control effects on the circulatory system. The purpose of the study is to analyze the HRV characteristics of athletes engaged in hand-to-hand combat with semi contact and to determine the most informative indicators for express assessment of the functional state in the training dynamics. Material and methods. Investigation of the HRV features at rest and after exercises was conducted with the participation of 21 athletes engaged in hand-to-hand combat with semi contact, and 20 athletes-beginners. Cardiac signals registration and HRV performance calculation was done using the device "MDFR rhythmograph-1" by LLC ASTER-AITI (Kharkiv) with the software package EasyHRV. Results and discussion. The obtained results proved that trained athletes had significantly lower HRV values compared to beginners. These indicators included SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50, and deltaX. On the other hand, trained athletes had higher values of vegetative equilibrium index, a vegetative rate of rhythm, an indicator of the adequacy of regulatory processes and a tension index. This indicates that the sympathetic link of the autonomic nervous system and the central contour play a dominant role in the heart rate regulation in trained athletes, which can determine their success in hand-to-hand combat. At the same time, sympathetic effects cause excitement and long-term tension of systems, which can negatively affect the organism functional state on the whole. The spectral characteristics value of trained athletes and their dynamics indicate the unused adaptive reserves of the organism and the stress of the regulatory mechanisms of the cardiovascular system activity due to the training load. Conclusions. Signs of an athlete's urgent adaptation to physical activity in terms of heart rate variability are the following: reducing the role of the autonomous circuit of the parasympathetic nervous system and the sinus node in the regulation of cardiac activity, as well as the centralization of regulatory influence and activation of the sympathetic nervous system.