I. Introduction It is known that exercise effects how quickly a heart beats and thus how much pressure is needed to pump a person’s blood through their veins. There have been several studies over the years that have tested this. An experiment recoded by Nicolas Tordi, Laurent Mourot, Eglantine Colin, and Jaques Regnard, compared several factors between interval exercise and constant exercise. Two of the factors they monitored were heart rate and blood pressure. The exercise they chose to have the participants of the experiment do was cycling and in both the case of interval and constant exercise they found that the participants’ heart rates and blood pressures increased due to …show more content…
It was expected that the heart rates and blood pressure of the students would rise due to the exercise. This result was expected not only because it has been observed before, but also because exercise is a form of stress on the body. When human bodies are put under stress, their automatic nervous system and endocrine system become more activated. This heightened activation of these two systems prepares us for a fight or flight type situation. Some of the physical signs of this state include a higher heart rate and increased muscular tension (Insel and Roth 2013). Another factor that lead to the conception of this hypothesis, is the fact that oxygen is carried to the muscles via the blood stream and the muscles need more oxygen when they are being used for exercise, this is what causes faster breathing during aerobic exercise. Before this experiment was conducted, there was a chance that the initial hypothesis was incorrect and there would be no effect on the heart rate and the blood pressure of the students. However, this option seemed very unlikely. An experiment like this might seem redundant, however it was important because, it was used as a teaching tool for a second level general biology …show more content…
The variable that this was dependent on was the jumping jacks. The things that remained constant, the standardized variables, were the number of jumping jacks done, the temperature of the room, the time of day, early morning, and the fact that the students were sitting each time their heart rate and blood pressure were measured.
III. Literature Cited
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Autonomic Responses at Onset of Exercise: Effects of Aerobic Fitness. International Journal of Sports Medicine 35(10):879-885.
Insel P, Roth W. 2013. Core Concepts in Health 13th ed. McGraw-Hill Companies. P 32-57.
Tordi N, Mourot L, Colin E, Regnard J. 2009. Intermittent versus constant aerobic exercise: effects on arterial stiffness. European Journal of Applied Physiology 108:801-809.
Vascular Response to Exercise [Internet]. PT Direct; c2010-2015 [cited 2015 Sept 7]. Available
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