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VALIDITY OF A NEW RECLINE CYCLE ERGOMETER USING THE ANAEROBIC TREADMILL TEST

Abstract

Every new piece of equipment introduced for laboratory or fitness purposes must be properly validated. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of a new commercially available recline cycle ergometer for anaerobic testing when compared to the established anaerobic treadmill test. METHODS: a convenience sample of 8 college-age students (n=4 males age 21.7±0.9 years, 80.4±6.8 kg and n=4 females, age 20.5±0.5 years, weight 61.8±8.2 kg) performed maximal effort using a Wingate test on the recline cycle ergometer and an anaerobic treadmill test (speed 7 mph, 20% grade to volitional fatigue). Total work output, heart rate, and maximum blood lactate levels were measured for each participant after each of the trials. Experimental validity was established using a Pearson correlation test (r) and differences between tests for each variable were established using paired sample t-test to assess differences (=0.05 for all analyses). All procedures were approved by the Institutional review Board. RESULTS: Compared to the treadmill, the recline cycle ergometer proved yielded lower work values (24.6±15.5 kJ vs. 19.9±6.6 kJ), heart rate (177.7±7.1 vs. 174.7±21.9 bpm), and peak blood lactate levels (11.4±3.3 vs. 9.3±2.9 mmol/L), although none of these differences were statistically significant (p=0.21 for work, p=0.63 for heart rate, and p=0.053 for peak lactate). The two modalities were highly correlated for work (r=0.94), and moderately correlated for heart rate (r=0.73) and peak blood lactate (r=0.66). CONCLUSION: With regard to maximal anaerobic testing, we conclude that the new recline cycle ergometer yielded results comparable to the treadmill. We hypothesize that the lower values obtained during the cycle ergometer were due postural differences during the two exercise modalities.

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