Required first step · before any VST decision
Two days to integrate ventilation, muscle and aerobic capacity, locate the priority constraint, establish individual reference points and decide whether VST offers a genuinely usable margin.
Why profile first
Profiling asks two different questions: what can the rider’s ventilatory system produce? and what does the rider actually deploy as intensity and duration increase?
The objective is not to isolate a single cause artificially, but to identify the system with the smallest functional margin. Profiling is not designed to justify a protocol decided in advance: its conclusion may be that VST is not the current priority.
Static functional assessment, progressive exercise test, cardiac recovery, thirty-second Wingate, then sustained work at VT1 and VT2. The order protects the measurements most sensitive to fatigue.
Four ten-minute series bracketing VT1, followed by three eight-minute series at VT2. Recovery remains measured. Day two turns an estimate into individual operating reference points.
Complete measurement sequence
The order preserves the most fatigue-sensitive measurements and separates initial mapping from the repeated work used to delimit the individual boundaries.
Open full-size visual ↗The profiling pathway
Measure inspiratory and expiratory volumes, flows and maximal pressures before any exercise-induced fatigue.
Combine gas exchange, Rf, Tv, power, cardiac response and NIRS during a progressive test to exhaustion.
Extend observation at VT1 and VT2 to see whether volume is maintained, Rf drifts and muscular responses change with duration.
Bracket VT1 with four ten-minute series, then test reproducibility at VT2 over three eight-minute series.
Identify the system with the smallest functional margin and tell the staff what to work on, in what order and why.
Classify VST as a priority, a secondary opportunity or not indicated. Profiling must be able to conclude that ventilatory work is not the priority.
What is measured
No isolated score decides the conclusion. Each metric is interpreted in context, with its methodological limits stated in the staff report.
Controlled capacity
Exercise response
Each sensor provides SmO₂ and THb together. The temporal comparison of quadriceps, intercostal muscles and a non-locomotor control site is used to look, in that athlete, for a signature compatible with circulatory redistribution as ventilatory work rises—without reducing the interpretation to an isolated desaturation.
Static assessment · before exercise
Volumes, flows and maximal pressures are not treated as an isolated list. They are combined into ratios, then interpreted against the absolute level available to that rider.
Open full-size visual ↗Integrated measurement architecture
The interpretation comes from convergence or divergence between ventilatory organisation, cardiovascular transport and muscular utilisation—not from one channel viewed alone.
Open full-size visual ↗
Open full-size visual ↗HNS Profiling Atlas
The Atlas transforms the profiling dataset into a structured system-level reading. Every card states its formula, interpretation, benchmark source and validation boundary. Internal or provisional reference grids are identified as such—not presented as external consensus standards.
Full-size pages open on selection. HNS indices support integrated interpretation; no isolated index determines diagnosis or VST indication.
From profile to targets
When the signal is robust, it becomes an individual operating framework: target frequency, target tidal volume, expected ventilation and preferred route by intensity zone.
Targets are tied to power domains and the rider’s available mechanical window.
Route is prescribed by feasibility and intensity—not by a generic ventilatory doctrine.
Preparation, effort regulation and recovery are treated as one continuous strategy.
Operational output
This anonymised Ath-03 reference shows how controlled measurement is converted into a usable Ventilatory Performance Profile: route-specific calibration, iRf / iTv / VE targets by intensity and an explicit ventilatory-pattern transition.
View the complete VPP →The decision
A clear, actionable ventilatory limiter or inefficient dynamic pattern is present and VST offers a plausible individual margin.
A ventilatory opportunity exists, but another system or training priority should lead the performance plan.
The profile does not justify longitudinal VST at this stage. The rider leaves with the baseline and the reasons for the decision.
Staff deliverables
Controlled assessment, ecological validation and an integrated staff report.
Individual targets, field transfer, monitoring and progressive recalibration.
HNS profiling is performance analysis, not medical diagnosis. Abnormal or clinically relevant findings remain under the authority of the team physician and medical staff.
