Cardiorespiratory endurance: Aerobic Test and Exercises, what is a Cardiorespiratory endurance workout or exercise, how can anyone increase overall fitness and endurance by following these tips?
Cardiorespiratory conditioning consists of both aerobic exercise, which requires oxygen to sustain muscle activity, and anaerobic exercise, which does not use oxygen for the short bursts of highly intense activity. Most daily work and activities are aerobic in nature, and thus, improving the delivery of oxygen to the working skeletal muscle will improve work performance. Your ability to utilize oxygen for exercise depends on a variety of processes including:
Cardiorespiratory endurance
- The functioning of your muscles of respiration or pulmonary ventilation.
- The ability of oxygen to diffuse across the lungs into your blood.
- The ability of the heart to increase the rate of beating and the amount of blood pumped with each beat.
- The ability of blood vessels in and surrounding skeletal muscle to regulate blood flow.
- Ability to contract the skeletal muscle to extract and use oxygen in the blood.
All of these factors are important in determining your ability to sustain a submaximal workload, and your maximal aerobic capacity. Two other factors that help determine maximal aerobic capacity are your percentage of specific muscle fiber types and your genetic makeup.
Some persons are endowed with a high aerobic capacity, whereas others are not. However, everyone can and will improve if the cardiorespiratory conditioning program is followed.
Terms Related to Conditioning
Many terms are used to define or describe exercise conditioning and work rate also referred to as exercise intensity or workload. The two terms used throughout this Article for describing how to gauge your work rate will be maximal oxygen uptake and energy expenditure as calories/hour, or kcal/hr. Other terms to describe the work rate and their interrelationships will be discussed at the end of this article.
Maximal Oxygen Uptake
The primary measure or predictors of one's capacity to sustain work performance is maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) or maximal aerobic (cardiorespiratory) capacity. VO2max is measured in milliliters per minute (ml/min), Liters/min, or after adjusting for body weight in kilograms, as ml/kg/min; a higher value indicates a higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness
Your maximal aerobic capacity or oxygen uptake
is the best indicator of how much work you
can sustain without fatigue.
Typical VO2max values range from 30 ml (of oxygen)/kg/min for an unfit person up to 80 ml/kg/min for an exceptional fit, endurance athlete. If the unfit and highly fit persons both weighed 70 kg (155 lb) then their respective absolute maximal aerobic capacities would be 2.1 liters (of oxygen)/min and 5.6 liters (of oxygen)/min.
Using 1 liter of oxygen/min is equivalent
to expending 5 kcal/min
As such, the unfit person can only work at a rate of up to 10 kcal/min (2.1 L x 5) whereas the highly fit could work at up to 25 kcal/min (5.6 L x 5 kcal) if needed. If a specific task required 2 L/min, then this would amount to 10 kcal/min of energy.
Resting energy expenditure requires less than one kcal/min, or about 0.200 to 0.250 L (of oxygen)/min. In order to account for different body sizes, resting energy expenditure for an individual is usually defined as:
Resting energy expenditure requires less than one kcal/min, or about 0.200 to 0.250 L (of oxygen)/min. In order to account for different body sizes, resting energy expenditure for an individual is usually defined as:
3.5 ml of oxygen/kg body weight/minute.
Thus, for a 70 kg (155 lb) PERSON, resting energy expenditure would be approximately 245ml/min or 0.245 L/min (3.5 x 70). This is equivalent to expending around 1 to 1.25 kcal/min
Anaerobic Power
How much strenuous work can you sustain without oxygen? Most people can do very little for more than a couple of minutes. It is very important to realize that most people cannot work for very long at even 90% of their maximal aerobic capacity. This is because everyone has a threshold at which the balance between aerobic and anaerobic energy systems begins to favor the anaerobic; your muscles cannot extract enough oxygen to produce the required energy.
This is called your anaerobic threshold; the turning point can be monitored by the accumulation of lactate in your blood. Of course, your body will know when there is too much lactate because once lactate goes above a certain value, it starts to accumulate and unless you decrease your work rate, you will become too tired to continue working.
This anaerobic threshold, or “breakpoint” varies among individuals, but ranges between 60% and 100% of your VO2max; all PERSONs should be able to work at 70% of their VO2max for an extended period, and should have a breakpoint above 70%. Conditioning programs for PERSONs should strive to raise the anaerobic threshold or breakpoint to as high as possible because that means you can work at a higher rate for a longer period of time
Interval workouts stress the anaerobic energy systems
and will increase your anaerobic threshold and power.
Interval and fartlek workouts for running and swimming are described in this article, and such workouts for other forms of exercise are described later.
Determination of Work Rate
One common denominator across all types of cardiorespiratory conditioning programs is exercise intensity and work rate. The term exercise intensity typically refers to how hard you are working as a percent of your maximal aerobic capacity. For example, you could work at an intensity equivalent to 50% (easy), 70% (moderate), or 90% (strenuous) of your maximal aerobic capacity or maximal heart rate.
You will learn how to estimate your maximal aerobic capacity below, but on average, a maximal capacity of 45 to 55 ml of oxygen/kg/min and a maximal heart rate of 200 beats per min would be typical for a 20 to 29-year-old person. Table 3-1 presents the relation between exercise intensity, oxygen uptake, and heart rate for a 20-year-old PERSON with a maximal heart rate of 200 and a maximal oxygen uptake of 55 ml of oxygen/kg/min.
Easy exercise would use 25 to 30 ml of oxygen/kg/min or a heart rate of about 130 bpm, whereas strenuous exercise would require a heart rate of around 180 bpm. However, you must know your maximal capacity or your maximal heart rate to actually quantify your exercise intensity in this way.
Factors Affecting the Training Response
The terms duration, frequency, and intensity are commonly used when talking about training for fitness or health. All training programs, whether running, biking, swimming, or climbing, strive to vary in duration, frequency, and intensity so as to optimize conditioning and minimize injuries. Five major factors determine the extent of your maximal aerobic capacity and the magnitude of your response to training. These include:
- The initial level of aerobic fitness.
- Duration of exercise.
- Frequency of exercise.
- The intensity of exercise.
- Genetics/heredity.
General principles apply to all types of physical activities. Take the following general principles and apply them to your individual program.
- The degree of aerobic training is closely tied to the intensity and total work, not to the frequency of training. However, a minimum of 3 days per week is recommended.
- A greater training improvement (up to a point) will be noted if you exercise above 85% of VO2max or 90% of your maximal heart rate once a week or every other week: interval training.
- Aerobic capacity will improve if exercise increases your heart rate to at least 70% of your maximum heart rate.
- Lower exercise intensity can be offset by the exercise of a longer duration.
- Maximal heart rate for swimming and other upper body exercise is lower than the maximal heart rate for leg or whole-body exercise. Thus, training heart rate (THR) can be 13 to 15 bpm lower for swimming/upper body exercise than when running, biking, or other whole-body exercises.
- A threshold duration per workout has not been identified to maximize aerobic capacity.
Active Recovery
Throughout this guide, we will continually stress the importance of warming up, cooling down, and stretching. These are integral parts of any workout, regardless of the activity. The cool down, or recovery period, is very important because it will determine how you feel several hours after your workout.
There are two types of recovery:
active and passive. Passive recovery, in other words, just resting, was recommended many years ago, and is still recommended when you exercise below 50% of maximal capacity. Active recovery is now preferred for exercise exceeding 60% of maximal capacity to accelerate the removal of lactate. This may help prevent muscle cramps, stiffness, and preserve performance during subsequent strenuous exercise.
Active recovery involves exercising at 30% to 50%
of maximal capacity for 5 to 10 minutes after
a strenuous workout.
Blood lactate removal after strenuous exercise is
accelerated by active recovery: mild aerobic exercise.
Related articles:
0 Comments
Please Do Not Spam