REF-281 · Burnley & Jones, 2007 (Cycling Priming Review) · European Journal of Sport Science, · Paper
Oxygen Uptake Kinetics as a Determinant of Sports Performance
Key Results
VO2max, exercise economy, the lactate threshold and critical power are highly correlated with endurance performance; the review explains why through their influence on the dynamic VO2 response to exercise of different intensities
Above the lactate threshold a VO2 "slow component" appears: it reduces exercise efficiency and forces greater use of endogenous fuel stores (chiefly muscle glycogen)
Above critical power, blood acid-base status and pulmonary gas exchange cannot reach a steady state; VO2 rises with time until VO2max is reached
Exercise tolerance in this severe domain is determined by the interaction of the slow component, VO2max and the "anaerobic capacity"
Interventions such as training, prior exercise (priming) and manipulation of muscle O2 availability change VO2 kinetics and exercise tolerance in reciprocal fashion, consistent with this framework
Not from this paper: Burnley 2002 REF-271 — priming (prior heavy exercise or a 30-s sprint) reduced the slow component while passive warming did not, so the priming effect is not a temperature effect
Mechanism
The authors' framework: understanding the exercise-intensity domains (moderate, heavy, severe) and their characteristic VO2 dynamics explains the limits of endurance performance. Inference, not tested in this review: prior heavy exercise is thought to act via vasodilation of active muscle and mitochondrial enzyme activation, speeding the match of O2 supply to demand at exercise onset.
Practical Application
This narrative review (Burnley & Jones 2007) argues that endurance performance is set not just by VO2max, economy, lactate threshold and critical power as static numbers, but by how fast VO2 rises at exercise onset and how large the slow component grows above threshold — faster kinetics and a smaller slow component mean less anaerobic reserve spent and later fatigue
Inference, not tested here: athletes with slow baseline kinetics have the most to gain from a priming warm-up before events run in the heavy-severe domain; the review gives no event-duration window or effect-size figures in its abstract
Limitations
Mini-review format — limited systematic methodology
Focused on cycling; applicability to other sports inferred
Abstract-level verification only; the specific numbers the entry once carried are not in the abstract
How this entry was checked and changed
Content correction 2026-09-27
"Key determinant for events 2-15 min" and "priming → 15-30% reduction in the slow component" are not in the abstract and were removed.
"Priming effect independent of muscle temperature" and "fitter athletes still benefit" -> the temperature point is now attributed to Burnley 2002 REF-271, the training-status point relabelled as inference.
Key Results rewritten to the abstract's actual content (intensity domains, slow component, critical power, VO2max × anaerobic capacity interaction).