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Exercise and the young female: maturational differences in the responsiveness to aerobic training

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an aerobic training program on the aerobic fitness and blood lipid profiles of 24 premenarcheal (PREM) and 41 postmenarcheal (POSTM) volunteers. A second intent was to test for differences in the responsiveness of the two maturity groups to the program. Subjects in each maturity level were assigned to a control (C) or training (T) group. Training consisted of 30 min continous cycling at 75% max heart rate, three times per week for 12 weeks. All subjects were tested before the training, at week 6 and at the end of week 12. Anthropometric measurements, ventilatory threshold (VT), VO2 max and anaerobic capacity (AC), measured as total work performed during a 30 s Wingate test, were determined for all subjects at each test period. Serum total triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), low density (LDL-C), very low density (VLDL-C), and high density (HDL-C) lipoprotein cholesterols as well as subfractions HDL2 and HDL3 were measured pre and post training.

Analysis of variance with repeated measures revealed that both PREM groups increased their VO2 max (p $<$.001), however the increase in PREM-T exceeded that of PREM-C (p $<$.01). A training effect for VO$\sb2$ max was also observed in the POSTM-T compared to POSTM-C subjects (p $<$.001) and this increase was similar to that of PREM-T. No changes in serum TG, TC, LDL, VLDL, or HDL were reported for any group. HDL2 values decreased in all groups (p $<$.001), with larger change occurring in the PREM subjects (p $<$.001). Although an increase in HDL3 was observed for all groups (p $<$.001), the increase in PREM was greater than in POSTM (p $<$.01). No training effect was found in either HDL subfraction.

It was concluded that VO2 max was equally sensitive to the endurance training in both PREM and POSTM subjects. It was also suggested that, in young females, VT and AC may not be as responsive to endurance training as VO2 max. The lack of a training effect on the blood lipids and lipoproteins may be attributed to the normal concentrations in the subjects prior to the study. It is also possible that 12 weeks were insufficient to produce changes in the blood lipid profiles of the subjects. / Graduate

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/9474
Date19 June 2018
CreatorsGaul, Catherine Ann
ContributorsDocherty, David
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatapplication/pdf
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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