Setting of Workloads for the Exercise Testing of Women with Lower Fitness Levels

The values for the lowest workload for submaximal exercise testing with bicycle ergometers currently recommended by the Japan Medical Association and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) is 25-50-75-100W, depending on the gender and fitness of the individual. However, some women are unable to complete the test suite before reaching a steady state in the third stage. The purpose of the present study is to explore this problem and identify possible solutions. Using a multi-stage incremental ergometer test with the workload between 20W and 120W, 22 (26.2%) of the 84 adult female subjects had predicted workloads of less than 75W as the criterion for terminating the submaximal test, based on the 70% heart rate reserve (HRR) method. Moreover, 29 of the 84 female subjects (34.5%) reported the workload as being "Hard" (>15 on the Borg scale) at workloads of 75W or less in tests in which the rating of perceived exertion of "Hard" is the criterion for terminating the test. Of the 84 subjects, 19 (22.6%) reported this rating at loads of 60W or below. However, only two subjects (2.4%) reported this rating at 50W or below. Therefore, it may be more useful and effective to use a lower workload value as an option (for example, a third load of 60W), due to the typically slight build of women. To set the protocol, on the other hand, we generally account for the subject's body weight when predicting the load for 70% HRR. In our group of subjects, the correlation between the load at 70% HRR and body weight was only r=0.269. However, when we used fat-free mass (FFM) instead of body weight, the correlation proved stronger (r=0.404). Therefore, it is suggested that using FFM in place of body weight can improve the precision in predicting the appropriate workload when setting the protocol for submaximal exercise testing using bicycle ergometers.