Abstract
There is clear evidence regarding the health benefits of physical activity. These benefits follow a dose-response relationship with a particular respect to exercise intensity. Guidelines for exercise testing and prescription have been established to provide optimal standards for exercise training. A wide range of intensities is used to prescribe exercise, but this approach is limited. Usually percentages of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2) or heart rate (HR) are applied to set exercise training intensity but this approach yields substantially variable metabolic and cardiocirculatory responses. Heterogeneous acute responses and training effects are explained by the nonuniform heart rate performance curve during incremental exercise which significantly alters the calculations of %HRmax and %HRR target HR data. Similar limitations hold true for using %VO2max and %VO2R. The solution of these shortcomings is to strictly apply objective submaximal markers such as thresholds or turn points and to tailor exercise training within defined regions.
Highlights
Evidence regarding the health benefits of physical activity is overwhelming and there is no doubt about the impact of exercise training on health and fitness [1,2,3]
Heterogeneous acute responses and training effects are explained by the nonuniform heart rate performance curve during incremental exercise which significantly alters the calculations of %HRmax and %heart rate reserve (HRR) target HR data
It may be concluded that the upper limit of target heart rate for exercise prescription should not be assessed by means of a particular percentage of HRmax, HRR, VO2max, or VO2 reserve (VO2R), but by using intensities related to a certain threshold or turn point
Summary
Evidence regarding the health benefits of physical activity is overwhelming and there is no doubt about the impact of exercise training on health and fitness [1,2,3]. Of 3 d·wk−1, no more than 2 consecutive days without activity no consistent model of exercise prescription fulfilling the optimal individual needs for training studies in healthy subjects and patients. Guidelines for exercise testing and prescription have been established to provide optimal standards for exercise training in healthy subjects as well as for cardiac rehabilitation and secondary prevention programs [12, 14,15,16] These standards give a broad spectrum of possibilities for the attending physician by defining safe and effective upper and lower limits in general terms. (lower limit) and, even much more important, which is the optimal definition of exercise intensity for scientific investigations to evaluate training effects in healthy subjects and patients suffering from various chronic diseases [13, 27, 28]. As exercise intensity is suggested to be the leading component of exercise prescription we draw our attention especially to this specific component, one should be aware of the fact that all components of exercise training and their combination are substantial parts of the action of exercise training
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