Self-regulation of exercise intensity by estimated time limit scale.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of the estimated time limit scale (ETL), which deals with a subjective prediction of how long the current exercise intensity can be maintained, for regulating exercise intensity using typical estimation-production procedure. Thirty-six male athletes performed a continuous incremental test and two discontinuous tests with randomized workloads (estimation tests at 65, 75, 85 and 95% of the maximal power output, and production tests: subjects have to use the ETL values which were collected for each power during the estimation test in order to manually product the corresponding workload). The intraclass correlation coefficient for the power output between estimation and production tests is good for exercises at 75, 85 and 95% MAP (0.81, 0.85 and 0.96, respectively). Moreover, mean differences both for power output and cardiorespiratory data were not significantly different between estimation and production tests for exercises at 85 and 95% MAP. Consequently, the validity to prescribe an exercise intensity from the ETL scale is attested in these athletes particularly for high exercise intensities on cycloergometer.