Science of Sport: Fitness Testing - It's For Everyone

Fitness Testing: It's For Everyone (Part 1)

By JAMES RAIA

The most popular poster in the UC Davis Sports Performance Program office is a freeze frame of cyclist Andy Hampsten. While cresting Gavia Pass, he's riding alone en route to gaining the race leader's jersey and his eventual Tour of Italy victory.

The image spotlights performance in dramatic form. The now-retired cyclist is positioned slightly erect and forward as he progresses on a slick and slushy mountain road on a dark June day. His face, uniform and bike are covered in snow as he reaches the 8,500-foot summit.

Massimo Testa, M.D., an Italian native, was the team physician when in 1988 Hampsten became the only American to win the three-week event.

As the former sports medicine specialist for several international cycling teams, Testa helped Hampsten, Lance Armstrong and Dr. Eric Heiden, now his colleague, optimize their abilities through physiological testing. It was Heiden who several years ago persuaded Testa to move to the United States.

Testa's office and the walls of the UCD facility in midtown Sacramento have a dominating cycling motif, mostly posters and computer screensavers in homage to the sport's finest.

The Hampsten poster hangs on a wall parallel to the lab's treadmill and between two pro cyclists' signed jerseys. It's where Testa and his physician and physiologist co-workers work daily on a medical concept prevalent in Europe but fledgling in the United States: Optimal performance is for everyone.

It was certainly beneficial for one overweight patient, a business executive whose pending new overseas employer was concerned about his health. It was beneficial for a new 28-year-old Sierra Nevada foothills cyclist whose results were so impressive he's now a fourth-year professional rider.

And the testing was important to me recently as a long-distance runner with an expanding waistline, a family history of heart disease and diabetes, and with the half-century milestone on the not-to-distant horizon.

As one of an estimated 180 individuals tested per month in the third-floor lab, my athletic background fell someplace between the large, chain-smoking businessman and the unknowing adult cardiovascular wonderkind.

Like many friends, I first began running in my late 20s. High school team sports were long gone as an option. But running's simplicity provided varied, near-immediate benefits: weight loss, cardiovascular fitness and invaluable friendships.

Nonetheless, after nearly 22 years of running and completing some 75 marathons and ultramarathons, I was curious. Running is now embedded into my lifestyle, but with age 50 approaching, a closer cardiovascular assessment seemed like a good idea.

Testa and his colleagues routinely assess professional athletes, rehabilitating heart patients and variously injured others. But I'm the kind of person they'd like to see more often.

"Anyone can come in off the streets," Testa said between my two tests. "People sometimes call and say they've heard about the results of a friend and that they're interested but out-of-shape.

"They want to know if they should train first. No, they shouldn't. We have different levels of assessments and protocol. We can adapt the test to a person's level of fitness and use it as a baseline for improvement."

As the program's literature explains: "Whether you are a fitness enthusiast, a competitive athlete interested in starting an exercise program, your goals are the same: optimize performance, stay healthy and prevent or treat injuries."

The UCD program offers more than a dozen options, from $75 nutrition counseling to $450 multi-sport assessments for triathletes. The $300 Endurance Package (VO2 max and lactate threshold) was recommended and I agreed.

For runners, the tests are given on a treadmill; For cyclists, they're held on a stationary bicycle.

The lactate threshold (increased lactic acid in the blood) occurs first, followed by the V02 max (maximal rate of oxygen consumption). Both tests acutely help determine fitness levels, particularly for endurance athletes seeking better performance. But the measurements can also benefit someone who, according to Testa, "wants to know how to more efficiently walk their dog."

In either case, before the tests begin, a patient provides a medical family history in questionnaire form. Body weight and height, blood pressure and a consult with the physician and/or an exercise physiologist follow, as does an electrocardiogram.

Commonly known as an ECG or EKG, the test is given after several electrodes are attached to patient's upper torso. The tests record electrical heart activity at rest and can detect abnormal rhythms or heart muscle damage.

My evaluation revealed something first detected more than 20 years ago, an inverted T-wave, the electrical activity in the heart’s lower chambers as they begin to relax. I told Testa the condition was once described to me as "runner's heart" or an "normal abnormality." He concurred and said he would only have had reason for concern if I weren't a runner.

In my instance, two UC Davis student interns were also present. As the four-hour session progressed another exercise physiologist joined the group. I felt pampered, but I was also immediately humbled as the two interns took my skinfold body fat test with calipers.

In short, they had plenty of plenty to measure. My result was 19.4 percent, slightly higher than the average male and six percent higher than the upper range for an athlete. Body fat of 25 percent or higher is considered obesity.

My result wasn't great, but my tests had just begun.

To read Part 2, visit: Fitness Testing, Part 2

© Copyright 2003, James Raia

Posted with the permission of James Raia.

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