Abstract
The objective of the study was to compare the selected recovery heart rate variables between high fitness group (HFG) and low fitness group (LFG) of high altitude male youth. The high fitness group (n1=35) and low fitness groups (n2=35) were determined by VO2max ranks of 242 healthy male youth samples of Kashmir (attitude: 6070 feet/1850 meters). The selected 70 samples out of 242 among which top 35 ranks were considered in HFG and bottom 35 ranks were considered in
LFG. The age of the subjects ranged from 18 to 23 years. A heart rate monitor with chest strap was fixed on the subject and the wrist watch was tied after calibration to check the heart rate of the subjects. The youth were administered with sub maximal bench step test (American College of Sports Medicine Protocol) to determine the VO2max by plotting HR-workload combinations calculated by Karvonen heart rate reserve method. Data was collected using Cardio-Sport heart rate monitor
and step test protocol. The selected variables were age in years, body weight in kilograms (B.Wt.), height in centimeters (Ht.), resting heart rate (HR rest), Heart Rate at Two minutes of step testing with cadence 20 steps/min (ExHR2), Heart Rate at Four minutes of step testing with cadence 25 steps/min (ExHR4), Heart Rate at Six minutes of step testing with cadence 30 steps/min (ExHR6), recovery heart rate at one minutes of rest (RcvHR1), recovery heart rate at two minutes of rest (RcvHR2) and recovery heart rate at third minute of rest (RcvHR3), heart rate change one (HRC1), heart rate change two (HRC2), heart rate change three (HRC3), heart rate change four (HRC4), heart rate change five (HRC5), heart rate change six (HRC6), percentage change one (PC1), percentage change two (PC2), percentage change three (PC3), percentage change four (PC4), percentage change five (PC5) and percentage change six (PC6). For statistical analysis the collected data was computed with mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variance, percentage change and independent sample “t” test. The major findings reflect significant difference between HFG and LFG in regard toVO2max (t =47.66),(r=0.99); HR rest(t =-4.28), (r=0.46); RcvHR2 (t =-3.00), (r=0.34); RcvHR3 (t =-6.19), (r=0.60); HRC3 (t=4.13), (r=0.45); HRC4 (t=2.84), (r=0.33); HRC5 (t=5.41) ,(r=0.55);
HRC6 (t=4.52), (r=0.48) and PC2 (t=2.27), (r=0.27). Moreover, although the two groups didn’t showed a significant difference regarding the variables PC3, PC4, PC5 and PC6 but three of them (PC3, PC5, PC6) show a high effect size of groups with values of r = 0.52, 0.61, 0.56 respectively and PC4 show a medium group effect size with r = 0.36.The study concluded that HFG having better recovery heart rate pattern than that of LFG and all the recovery heart rates were faster in HFG than that of LFG.
Key words: Maximal Oxygen Uptake, Recovery Heart Rate, Exercise Heart Rate, High Altitude, Kashmir.
Author’s- Sajjad Ahmad Bhat, Bharat Kumar, Dhananjoy Shaw