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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: bjsm.2008.046821v1 42/7/551    most recent Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this link to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Add article to my folders Download to citation manager Request Permissions Google Scholar Articles by Noakes, T D PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Noakes, T D

Testing for maximum oxygen consumption has produced a brainless model of human exercise performance

Correspondence to:
Professor T D Noakes, Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine, Deaprtment of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, PO Box 115, Newlands 7725, Cape Town, South Africa; timothy.noakes@uct.ac.za

Accepted 26 March 2008

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Perhaps the hallmark study in human exercise physiology was performed by Nobel Laureate Professor AV Hill on himself in Manchester, England in the early 1920s. Hill circled an 88 metre grass running track at three different speeds each for 4 minutes while he measured his average oxygen consumption every 30 seconds (Hill and Lupton;¹ fig 2 of that paper). He concluded that his oxygen consumption reached a maximum at 16 km/hour "beyond which no bodily effort can drive it".² (page 166¹) This experiment established the single most popular test in the exercise sciences – the progressive exercise test for the measurement of the maximum oxygen consumption (VO_2max). The experimental protocol in this test forces the subject progressively to increase the work rate until voluntary exhaustion.

According to the modern interpretation,^3–14 the outcome of this test defines the limits of the human cardiorespiratory system, because it apparently terminates when . . . [Full text of this article]