Aerobic and anaerobic threshold determined by specific test in judo is not correlated with general test

The purposes of this study were to compare and correlate the aerobic threshold (TH_aer), and anaerobic threshold (TH_anaer) measured during a new single judo-specific incremental test and treadmill test for aerobic demand evaluation. Eight well-trained male competitive judo players (24.3 ± 7.9 years; height of 169.3 ± 6.7 cm; the fat mass of 12.7 ± 3.9%) performed a maximal incremental specific test for judo mimicking the Uchi-komi drills and on the treadmill in different days. There was a difference between specific and general TH_aer (P = 0.0006) as well as a weak correlation for TH_aer (r = 0.32; R² = 0.1; P = 0.2) and TH_anaer (r = − 0.31; R² = 0.1; P = 0.12). When correlation was applied to normalized data (percentage of peak load), we observed moderate correlation for TH_aer (r = 0.76; R² = 0.58; P = 0.027), but the same result was not observed for TH_anaer. We conclude that there is a need for TH_aer and TH_anaer evaluation through a specific test for Judo.