The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (USDHHS) has stated that an unsettling 82% of adults do not get the recommended amount of physical activity to improve health and well-being. Additionally, one of the goals for Healthy People 2020 urges individuals to increase muscle-strengthening activity and incorporate this type of exercise into a weekly routine in addition to aerobic exercise. Most individuals who fail to meet these directives usually relate it to a lack of time. In order to alleviate time as an exercise constraint we have developed a combined aerobic and resistance exercise routine that uses alternating short bouts of aerobic and resistance exercise. This type of exercise formatting is termed as microcycles of aerobic and resistance exercise. The purpose of this project is to determine if alternating short bouts of aerobic and resistance into one concurrent exercise routine results in similar cardiovascular, metabolic, muscular, and perceptual responses as compared to the more traditional method of exercising aerobically and then completing a resistance exercise routine separately. By tracking alterations in biological, metabolic and other physiological factors we can identify if microcycles are an effective tool for increasing aerobic and/or muscular fitness in participants. We found that the combination and cycling of aerobic and resistance exercise resulted in lower physiological and perceptual responses as compared to the more traditional form of combining aerobic and resistance exercise. By doing a combination and cycling of aerobic and resistance exercise, participants experienced the same benefits of doing both aerobic and resistance exercise but were able to get rid of lactate at a faster rate as compared with the traditional method.
Authors: Grace Chaney, Lauren Davis, Patryck Penar, Eddie Pelka
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Randal Claytor, Department of Kinesiology & Health
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