Sports Performance Evaluation Ioan Stoian National Institute Of Sports Medicine

Introduction: In this experiment, cardiovascular fitness is being determined by measuring how long it takes for the test subjects' to return to their resting heart rate. Cardiovascular fitness is the ability to "transport and use oxygen while exercising" (Dale 2015). Cardiovascular fitness utilizes the "heart, lungs, muscles, and blood working together" while exercising (Dale 2015). It is also how well your body can last during moderate to high intensity cardio for long periods of time (Waehner 2016). The hypothesis is that people who exercise for three or more days will return to their resting heart rate much faster than people who only exercise for less than three days.

The effects of heart rate on differing durations of exercise were studied in this experiment. For people, heart rate tends to increase as they perform physical exercises. The amount of beats per minute gradually increases as people perform physical activities. Heart rates taken before exercise are relatively low, and heart rates taken one minute after exercise increase significantly. Heart rates slowly begin to decrease after they are taken two minutes and three minutes after performing the step test, which is to be expected. The rates of intensity throughout exercise relates with changes in heart rate throughout the step test performed in the experiment (Karvonen 2012). The age of the participants affected the experiment, since the heart rate during physical exercise, in this case the step test, is affected by age (Tulppo 1998).

In the study conducted by Edward H Robinson and Jeffrey R Stout, the use of one weekly interval session at vVO₂max led to a 3% improvement in vVO₂max and a 6% improvement in running(4).The interval duration was set to be 50% of the individual time that the athletes could sustain vVO₂max (the time that VO₂max can be sustained is called tlimvVO₂max or Tmax) which averaged around 3 minutes. The optimum length of VO₂max intervals is not clear although positive results have been found with a range of different interval lengths from 30 seconds up to 3-4

Interval training and continuous aerobic exercise are two of the most common cardio exercises practiced by athletes today. However, one is slightly better than the other when looking at performance increases. An easy way to measure performance increases is to examine the VO2 max of an individual before and after a training period. VO2 max is the measure of how much oxygen a body can take in from the air. It is a great reflection of physical fitness because it reflects how efficiently a person can use oxygen which is needed for most exercises, especially cardio. Interval training is when a person switches between two activities that vary in intensity or effort. Continuous aerobic exercise is when a person performs an activity at the same intensity

Intensity is the difficulty or effort applied of which an athlete works out to each session. In particular, the level of intensity is directly related to an individual's heart rate. An unfit athlete would reach a heart rate of 60 to 80% of their maximum heart rate capability after performing an activity such as running a set distance. With this, if an unfit athlete experiences a higher that usual insentisty it puts the individual at risk of overbeating or skipping a beat, potentially causing fatigue. Though an Olympic Marathon runner would experience high levels of intensities, reaching the heart rate between 85 to 100%. This level of intensity can be matched in fitness tests through the combination of the Maximum Oxygen Consumption test as well other various tests that involve the components of fitness. With these tests it will force the athlete to reach their VO2Max, peaking at their lactating threshold whilst also reaching their maximum possible heart rate. Overall, different levels of intensities are required to be applied to athletes with different levels of fitness to suit their physical capabilities and

VO2 max is the maximum oxygen intake during a high intensity exercise. The test is typically done on a treadmill, or cycle ergometer. The VO2 max test reflects the aerobic fitness of the test subject and the endurance the subject has during prolonged exercise. The subject who are fit usually have a greater VO2 max, and can exercise for longer periods of time than other who are not physically fit. Pro athletes usually have a higher VO2 max because they train hard in order to be physically fit.

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether athletes or non-athletes will recover faster in a span of 10 minutes from an increased heart rate after running one lap around the track. Extra Research: To determine what a subject’s heart rate should be after exercising, the “target heart rate zone” was discovered through research. The target heart rate zone can be determined by calculating 50% - 85% of the subject’s maximum heart rate, which is their age subtracted from 220 BPM. Hypothesis: If five athletes and five non-athletes run one lap around the high school track, the heart rate of the athletes will recover faster because their heart rate will resemble their resting heart rate more after 10 minutes, in comparison to

Performance profiling is used in many sports and has been found to enhance coach-athlete communication by enabling the coach to understand how the athlete currently feels about their training or performance. This information has been found to assist the coach in the development of training sessions that take into account the athlete’s perspective.

In the research paper, ACTN3 Genotype Is Associated with Human Elite Athletic Performance by Nan Yang and his colleagues, the idea of athleticism is inheritable is explored. Nan Yang first explains that there are a plethora of studies and evidence that illustrates that athletic performance is highly influenced by the genetics of an individual. Also apparently studies have shown that there is some sort of evolutionary trade-off between traits that encode for speed and endurance. Now looking at the genome of a human, studies have discovered that the actin binding protein alpha-actinin-3 is absent in the majority of the general population due to a stop codon in ACTN3. Alpha-actinins are a family of proteins that encode for two types of skeletal muscle proteins: ACTN2 (in fibers) and ACTN3 (in fast fibers). Over the years evidence has elucidated that

Cardiovascular fitness is a very important aspect of fitness and is even inversely related to coronary heart disease and fundamentally all-cause mortality. One study from the Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise Journal found that “the longitudinal development of physical activity and VO2max were related to a healthy CVD risk profile” (Twisk, J. W., Kemper, H. C., & Mechelen, W. V., 2000). They also found that “the relationships among physical activity,

The results of this test show that it provides a valid test to estimate aerobic capacity and shows there is a small measurement of error. A polar heart rate monitor was used to measure the heart rate with a step of 30cm in height with a metronome with a beat at 15 steps, per minute and increased by 5 steps every minute for 5 stages or until 80% of the maximum estimated heart rate was reached. The results demonstrated that the Chester Step technique is a valid predictor of aerobic capacity in males and females from a wide range of ages and fitness levels.

VO2max can be defined as the maximum oxygen uptake. This entails the maximum rate at which oxygen is readily available in the body to be taken up and used during aerobic exercise. (Fletcher et al.) It is a very important and commonly used indicator of a person or athletes level of cardiovascular fitness. A high VO2max demonstrates a high level of aerobic fitness, where as a low VO2max indicates a low rate of aerobic fitness. There are two factors that are important in determining a persons VO2max, which are the hearts ability to deliver oxygen to the muscles and the muscles ability to extract the oxygen from the blood and use it (Brown, Miller and Eason). This means that when a person has a high VO2max their body is able to deliver oxygen through the blood efficiently to the muscles in order to maintain high levels of aerobic exercise over an extended period of time. VO2max is a valued measurement of cardiovascular fitness in the Sport industry due to its ability to indicate cardiovascular fitness, as well as the pulmonary and muscular systems efficiency throughout the duration of the exercise (Brown, Miller and Eason). There are multiple tests that can measure VO2max

A sport physiologist's job is to examine their patients (Athletes) health and muscular activity in order to maintain or improve it. This can be for a range of sports for example a runner, a sports physiologist may look at oxygen intake as it is an essential part to running and they will look at ways they can improve this, an example would be breathing at high altitudes.

Athletes are all the time looking to better their performance scientifically which can be possible only if their training schedules and exercise workouts are increasing in terms of frequency duration and intensity. The article describes the current scientific information available relating to tools for monitoring training load in athletes and to outline some of the practical considerations when both planning and implementing monitoring in athletes.

I believe that the VO2 Max is reasonable way to determine your fitness after doing heavy exercise. Although some people get weird scores according to them (an athletic person gets a poor score or a nonathletic person gets a great score), the majority of people get reasonable scores according to their body type. After trying this technique out, I would not mind using VO2 Max again because it was a simple and easy way to reaching better fitness. In conclusion, physical fitness is vital in everyone’s life and VO2 Max can help reach better fitness