ABSTRACT
Over the last decades, exercise-induced muscle fatigue in children has received much more attention. One reason for this growing interest is the increasing involvement of children and youth in high-level sports. Today’s prepubertal children are often exposed to training regimens that are considered as highly demanding, even compared to adult standards. In some sports, such as female gymnastics, children and adolescents excel and reach world standards. In other sports, such as athletics or swimming, children do not reach their peak performance levels before the second decade of life, but their specialised training might start as early as the first decade. Knowledge of muscle performance and physiological demand during exhaustive exercise in children is therefore of fundamental importance for
coaches and practitioners in paediatric research. The main objective of this chapter will be to provide the reader an overview of the effects of growth and maturation on muscle fatigue during exercise. The approach of this chapter will focus on the investigation of muscle fatigue in children during prolonged sustained exercise and short-term high-intensity exercise.
