Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Which type of exercise will increase heart rate the most?

1. jogging
2. exercise video
3. Dance Dance Revolution
4. Jump roping


thanks!

jchevrie

jchevrie wrote:Which type of exercise will increase heart rate the most?

1. jogging
2. exercise video
3. Dance Dance Revolution
4. Jump roping


thanks!

jchevrie

Please don't post multiple times! I'm sure you will get a response when an expert familar with this subject logs on.

Have you tried googling for this information?

Some things to think about:
1) Jogging at different speeds will change your heart rate
2) Exercise videos come in all different types- aerobics, strength training, yoga... each one will have a different effect.
3) DDR has different levels right- and the moves get more complicated and faster. How do you compare the easiest to the hardest? And maybe jump rope is harder than the first level, but easier than the hghest level. People actually use DDR as an exercise program, so it does get your heart rate up!
4) Jump roping at different speeds?


Think about how you would minimize these variations...

Louise

Everybody has an individual maximum safe heart rate that you should NEVER exceed when exercising. Cardiac stress tests are one way for physicians to help determine what that is. Blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen saturation are all monitored and a cool down is started at the first sign of trouble.

The goal of exercise should not be to literally kill you so I wouldn't want to be your test subject for an experiment to determine this. Exercise subjects also don't want to stay in an anaerobic range (needing more oxygen than you are taking in) and building up lactic acid and depleting creatine phosphate reserves.

Think of a related question that is safer to attempt to find the answer to combined with thinking about the factors that Louise suggested might influence heart rate.

Hopefully our resident anesthesiolgist will chime in too!

There is too much person-to-person variability to answer that question in a scientific manner (unless you had a huge sample size).

People's heart rate maximums depend on their physical condition, duration of exercise, strength of their particular muscle groups, hormonal and neurological influences, their pulmonary capacity and the maximum amount of oxygen (VO2) that they can utilize (Lance Armstrong is the God of that measurement), etc. You would have to make sure that the person wasn't taking any medications designed to slow the heart rate. And since I can't dance, you would have to kill me to do Dance Dance Revolution, so already you have incomplete data.

It's unlikely that going for maximum heart rate will kill anyone without heart disease (or with heart disease for that matter) and I do it quite often when cycling, but it won't prove your point. And as Craig said, it's not a good idea. Plus, you might have issues with the committee judging your project due to potential harm to living creatures.

You can do a google search on exercise physiology. It's quite interesting.

You could look at the duration of exercise and heart rate, which would be equally interesting (I would think) and not have the safety/sample size issues.

Also, think carefully about the points that Louise brought up. There are many, many variables when dealing with human research. You need to make as many of them constant as possible. The more you do, the better the research.

Oh, and if you know someone who has a heart rate monitor (like a Polar) that can hook up to a computer, you can get solid data and graphs straight from a computer.