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A Brief Method for Assessing the Metabolic Basis of Physical Fitness (both anaerobic and aerobic fitness)

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Assessing the Metabolic Basis of Physical Fitness

*Abstract

Runners, cyclists, swimmers, and other athletes can attain speeds and power outputs for a few seconds that are considerably greater than those outputs they can maintain for several minutes or hours. For different human athletes as well as for canine, equine, and other animals, all-out performance drops markedly as the duration of exercise effort becomes more prolonged. Specifically, peak rates of anaerobic energy release, which fuel brief maximal efforts, decline rapidly as the duration of activity increases.

Standardized tests of aerobic power have been available for some time and are known to provide accurate predictions of performance across a wide range of endurance events. But for short-duration events, an equivalent relationship between metabolic power and performance is not available. Establishing an accurate method for assessing physical fitness for short bursts of exercise has been an unsolved challenge that has vexed physiologists and exercise specialists for more than half a century. Health clubs, physiological laboratories, and fitness testing centers offer elaborate and lengthy tests to assess physical fitness that are often not based on metabolic relationships, expensive, and inaccurate for efforts of short and intermediate duration.

Researchers in Rice's Kinesiology Dept. have identified (and quantified) a biological relationship that relates exercise performance capabilities to the time course of the availability of metabolic power from different chemical energy sources in the body. This method provides a more practical and accurate technique for assessing physical fitness based on brief maximal efforts from 3 seconds to 5 minutes, and perhaps beyond. The algorithms developed for this test can be incorporated into a software program that will allow users to obtain accurate estimates of their metabolic power, anaerobic fitness, aerobic fitness, and performance capabilities over a wide range of exercise distances and durations from a very limited amount of personal performance data. Used as a fitness test, the technique would require no more than two measured running distances and a stopwatch.

When this technique is fully developed and introduced into software, it could be used to monitor personal fitness and the physiological status of the user while he or she is using various types of exercise equipment (pedometers, treadmills, bicycles, roller blades, etc.). This discovery could prove very valuable to individuals and organizations who have a need to estimate and assess the capacity for intense exercise performance.

Athletes, strength and conditioning coaches, personal trainers, soldiers, firefighters, and others could utilize such fitness tests to evaluate and advance the physiological progress of their patient-clients.

Inquiries

Mark Staudt
713-348-5580
mstaudt@rice.edu

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美國