During a karate competition, a competitor in the kata discipline may choose one kata of 102 katas on the list. This kata must not be repeated. Katas differ in duration, complexity, number of fast and slow techniques, which also means different intensity, physiological response of the karateka body and energy coverage.
Problems and Aim. In our study, we focused on the identification and assessment of the duration and difficulty of selected katas by monitoring the internal response of the human body (heart rate, lactate) of three top women´s Slovak national team karate competitors of kata individual categories during training and competition.
Methods. The research sample consisted of 3 karate kata athletes (age 17.3 years, body height 161.7 cm, body weight 55.7 kg), who trained kata on average 7 years. To evaluate the indicators of the internal body load in selected katas we used mean, standard deviation, min-max.
Results. The highest mean maximum heart rate values athletes had during performance kata Gojushi Ho (187 ± 8.2 bpm). The highest average heart rate values were observed during performance kata Chatanyara Kushanku (171 ± 9.9). Similarly, we found the highest mean values of blood lactate 4 minutes after performance kata Chatanyara Kushanku. (7.6 ± 2.5 mmol.l-1). The longest duration had the kata Suparinpei (204 ± 13 s). There was a significant difference in level of blood lactate reached in different katas (p ≤ 0.05) and the duration of katas.
Conclusions. The duration of 5 most common katas used at the high level competition is different (p ≤ 0.05), thus the intensity expressed by the frequency of the techniques, and heart rate and blood lactate concentration. ATP-PCr energy system seems to be the major contributor while contribution of the aerobic energy system rises with the increase in duration of kata.
