Prerequisite assessment (cardiopulmonary exercise test)
fatigue
This test was conducted one time only (before the conduction of the first HIIAB session in both study DE groups on an ergometer cycle). In order to make the patients adapt to the test steps during the test’s beginning, unloaded cycling was maintained for 3 min. To incorporate the patients in warming up, the cycling was loaded by 40 Watt. After the termination of the warm-up that reached 3 min, the examiner started to increase the load on the patient to 20 Watts every 60 s. The aim of this incremental loading was to reach the DE patients to one of the two following notices: patients’ sensed fatigue or 90% of MHR. If one notice was achieved, cooling down was started with the same criteria of warming up. The test was finalized with the unloaded cycling (0 watts for 3 min) [