Media Release
March 19 2012
Pleasant, enjoyable exercise has health benefits
Exercise
doesn’t need to be all about ‘no pain, no gain’ to reap the associated
health benefits, according to research published in two top-ranking
journals.
The research showed that exercising at a ‘somewhat hard’ intensity, was
perceived to be ‘pleasant’, and resulted in increased aerobic capacity,
and improved physical health including improved body mass index, blood
pressure and blood lipid profile.
The research was published in A and A* ranked journals by
University of South Australia
academics
Professor Roger Eston, who is Head of the
School of Health Sciences,
and
Associate Professor in Exercise and Sport Psychology Gaynor Parfitt,
along with their PhD student Harrison Evans from the University of
Exeter in the UK, now a PhD student at UniSA.
Prof Eston says the first study, published in ‘Medicine & Science in
Sports & Exercise’, the official journal of the American College of
Sports Medicine, is significant because a recent position statement of
the American College of Sports Medicine stated there was insufficient
evidence to support using the rating of perceived exertion as a primary
method of exercise training.
“However, we now have excellent evidence to show that it can be used to
improve aerobic capacity,” Prof Eston says.
“This first-time study observed a 17 per cent increase in aerobic
capacity from a self-paced, eight-week treadmill training program where
previously sedentary participants exercised for 30 minutes, three times
per week, at a level they perceived to be ‘somewhat hard’.
“Their aerobic function was improved so that as the program went on,
they could work physiologically harder, but their rating of perceived
exertion was the same. So they increased their fitness levels and
received associated health benefits such as improved body mass index and
reduced blood pressure.”
Prof
Eston says that a most important component of the program was that
participants perceived the exercise to be pleasant.
“If you’re going to prescribe someone exercise, you’re going to have a
much stronger chance of having them stick with it if they’re enjoying
it. And these people actually enjoyed the experience. They found it to
be pleasant,” he says.
“Another important thing here is the intensity was left to the
individuals to set for themselves, so they were given the autonomy to
control the exercise, the speed and the gradient of the treadmill
according to this level of perceived exertion. That’s important because
you’re giving the individual the autonomy to control the exercise
intensity ... and at the end of the day the brain is in control.”
The second study, published in the European Journal of Applied
Physiology, showed using the rating of perceived exertion was just as
effective as a VO2 max test to measure cardiovascular fitness.
“With a VO2 max test you keep cranking up the treadmill until you
physically can’t keep going anymore, which has risks in sedentary and
middle-aged populations, but with our study we were able to show that
when individuals were instructed to exercise at four incremental,
perceptually regulated intensities set at levels perceived to be ‘very
light’, ‘light’, ‘somewhat hard’ and ‘hard’ we could reliably predict
their maximal aerobic capacity,” Prof Eston says.
“This was possible because of the very strong linear relationship
between the ratings of perceived exertion and submaximal measures of
physiological intensity such as oxygen uptake and heart rate. The RPE is
as good as or better than heart rate for predicting maximal oxygen
uptake.
“This study has implications for the clinical environment because we
should be able to use this sort of predictive protocol for cardiac
patients and in other clinical settings.”
Media contact
- Kelly Stone office (08) 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861 832 email kelly.stone@unisa.edu.au