Abstract: Health has aroused increasing concerns among people. More and more people have begun to take various exercises for health promotion. Therefore, exercise is becoming increasingly important in people’s daily life. All people, whether they are young or old, should take proper exercises based on their health status. However, excessive exercise can lead to physical discomfort and even physical fatigue, thereby influencing working efficiency, and even causing various physical injuries and damaging health. In this article, we describe the signaling pathways related to exercise fatigue at the molecular level. Meanwhile, we systematically discuss the association of exercise fatigue with the synthesis of skeletal muscle proteins, reactive oxygen species-mediated skeletal muscle protein degradation, and glycogen metabolism in skeletal muscles. Moreover, given the advantages of soybean polypeptide such as ease of absorption, rich nutrition, strong antioxidant capacity and rapid regulation on blood glucose level, we also present theoretical evidence for the potential of soybean polypeptide as a nutritional supplement to alleviate exercise fatigue on the basis of the existing experimental data.

Key words: exercise fatigue, soybean peptide, oxidative stress, synthesis and degradation of protein in skeletal muscles, glycogen reservation