Background and Objectives: Nowadays,nutritional strategies are considered as a solution to deal with the negative effects and repeated threats of maximal activities on the optimal performance of elite athletes. therefore, in the present study, the effect of one week of consumption of spinach and NBS superfood supplement on neurophysiological responses and performance Cognition was investigated in three parts of the Wingate lower body test.
Methods: Fifteen healthy trained men voluntarily with weight = 56/2±11/60 ،BMI = 15/21, age 3±1/22and height4/1±89/176 participated in this within-subject and counter-balanced study. Participants were exposed to three different conditions including: 1)seven days of raw spinach supplementation (daily dose of 70 g); 2)seven days of NBS superfood supplementation (daily dose of 10 g); and 3)the control condition.One week of wash-out was applied between the conditions. One day after the supplementation period, participants came to the lab and performed 3 bouts of 30-second Wingate test with 4-minute rest intervals.The level of pressure perception or RPE, pleasure, arousal and muscle pain index was recorded two minutes after each point of the Wingate test.Stroop word color test and selective reaction time were measured at the beginning and after the completion of the entire anaerobic test. Two-way repeated measures ANOVA were used for statistical analysis.
Results:RPEvalues or pressure perception in the first(p = 0.001), second(p = 0.002) and third(p = 0.001) values of the spinach conditions were significantly lower than the control and superfood conditions. The pleasure values in the first(p = 0.001), second(p = 0.001) and third(p = 0.01) values of the spinach conditions were significantly higher than the control conditions. Also, the pleasure values in the first(p = 0.03), second (p = 0.001) and third (p = 0.001) levels of the superfood conditions were significantly higher than the control conditions. The level of arousal in the first(p = 0.001), second(p = 0.001) and third(p = 0.03) levels of the spinach condition was significantly higher than the control condition. Also, the level of arousal in the first(p = 0.002), second(p = 0.002) and third(p = 0.001) levels of the superfood condition was significantly higher than the control condition.The results showed that the Stroop test score in the spinach condition was significantly higher before(p = 0.004) and after(p = 0.001) the execution of the Wingate test than in the control and superfood conditions.The values of selective reaction time in spinach conditions were significantly lower before(p = 0.017) and after(p = 0.01) Wingate test than in control and superfood conditions.
Conclusion:According to the results obtained from the present study, it seems that 7-day supplementation of raw spinach and superfood NBS can have promising effects on RPE, perceptual responses and cognitive performance after repeated bouts of Aerobics should have a Wingate test.