Anatomy and Physiology, Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Exercise Physiology Project Instructions
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Exercise Physiology Lab Project Instructions
Objective
Measure basic body metabolic parameters—pulse, respiration rate, blood pressure—at rest and after doing various activities. You do not need to be an athlete, or even do regular exercise, to do this lab.
This lab will involve learning to measure three simple body metabolic measures: pulse, respiration rate, and blood pressure. You’ll take those measurements various times at rest and calculate a mean average. Then, you’ll propose a hypothesis of what might happen to those mean measurements after doing three different activities. Then, you’ll do those activities various times and take the measurements, again calculating a mean. Finally, you’ll graph those mean values and compare them, analyzing the comparison in reference to your original hypothesis to see if was correct or not. This process is called the “scientific method.”
Materials and Methods
You need very little more than your own body and a notebook to do this lab. To measure respiratory rate, you just count the number of respirations in half a minute and multiply by two. To get a blood pressure, you’ll use an electronic blood pressure cuff. We’ll be doing these measurements at the college gym.
Procedure
1. Measuring baseline or “at-rest” metabolic rates
Choose a time when you can be seated and relaxed for at least ten minutes. Repeat your measurements at five different times. You can use the accompanying table or make your own. Then calculate a mean for each measurement.
Take a picture of your technique for getting these measurements to include in your lab project write-up.
2. Propose a hypothesis about change in metabolic rates after activity.
Now choose three activities that you would like to analyze for how they affect metabolic rate. These activities could be hard exercise of some sort, or they could be eating, meditating, standing on your head, or anything else you would like to try that seems safe and that you could do at the gym. For each activity, propose what you think will happen to your metabolic measurements. Will they go up, go down, or stay the same. These are your hypotheses, or ideas about what might happen—it doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong. Fill in the table accordingly.
HOW DO I THINK MY METABOLIC RATES WILL COMPARE TO BASELINE AFTER:
ACTIVITY ONE:
ACTIVITY TWO:
ACTIVITY THREE:
3. Measure metabolic rate after each activity.
Now do each activity three times and measure metabolic rate after each repetition. It would be best to do this five times, as with baseline rate, but that might become very time-consuming—at least three times for each activity. Calculate a mean for each metabolic measurement for each activity.
4. Graph your results
Make a bar graph where you show how the mean changes (or doesn’t) between baseline and after doing each activity. You can use the online graphing utility found on the course website. Or you could use Microsoft Excel or any other software that can make a graph. Or you could draw your graph by hand.
Be sure your graph includes an x-axis where you label each bar with the activity it represents, a y-axis with a scale that shows the range of measurements, and bars correctly reflecting your data. Be sure each bar is correctly labeled according to the activity represented. You will have four bar graphs—one for each metabolic measurement (pulse, respiration rate, systolic bp and diastolic bp). Each graph will have four bars: one for the baseline measurement and one for the measurement after each activity.
5. Analyze your graphs relative to your original hypothesis.
Look at your graphs and decide if what you originally proposed in your hypothesis is correct. If you said that pulse would go up after running for ten minutes, is this what, in fact, your data show. This is the heart of the scientific method. It doesn’t matter whether your original hypothesis was correct or not. You are “testing it” or deciding, on the basis of your actual data, whether you think the idea has merit or not. This is how scientists work towards assembling a truthful representation of what the natural world, and the data we can gather, tell us.
A Final Note: Is it valuable? Is it fun?
Experience tells me that some students love doing this kind of experimental lab, whereas others might be less inclined towards the analytical “scientific method” approach to understanding the natural world. Although the first group usually reports finding the activity more useful, I sometimes wonder whether it isn’t the second group that benefits more. Those who tend to appreciate this approach could probably already imagine the experimental results without doing the actual experiment! In the end, however you might “feel” about the activities involved in doing the experiment doesn’t matter. The point is to show to yourself, to me, and to your colleagues, that you do understand how the circulatory system works, what the body’s needs for oxygen delivery are, and how you can test that by doing an experiment on your own body’s metabolic rates. It’s not easy, but experience tells me it’s a very valuable way to learn. It can be fun as well, if you let it be!
METABOLIC RATE DATA TABLE
Repetition 1 / Rep 2 / Rep 3 / Rep 4 / Rep 5 / MeanBaseline
Pulse
Resp
Systolic
Diastolic
Activity 1
Pulse
Resp
Systolic
Diastolic
Activity 2
Pulse
Resp
Systolic
Diastolic
Activity 3
Pulse
Resp
Systolic
Diastolic
Wish List—concepts to understand
Heart Rate
Breathing Rate
Blood pressure—systolic and diastolic
How to take a blood pressure and what the blood pressure sounds represent
Effect of exercise on heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure
Experimental Method—hypothesis, methods, results, anlalysis
Bar graph comparing data—how to make and interpret one