Fig. 1

Schematic illustration of an incremental test followed by either a square-wave (a) or a multistage (b) verification phase. Incremental protocol consists of a 5-min warm-up followed by 1 km h⁻¹ increments every minute until exhaustion (i.e. 19 km h⁻¹). After 10 min of passive recovery, an effort at one stage higher (20 km h⁻¹) than the last stage completed during the incremental phase is performed directly (a) or preceded by a “warm-up” corresponding to 2 min at 50% and 1 min at 70% of the maximal velocity reached during the incremental phase (b)