Friday, Feb. 16th, CSB 003 3pm refreshments prior
Dr. Goran Markovic
Assistant Professor
School of Kinesiology
University of Zagreb, Croatia
Title: Testing human physical performance: what is the role of body size?
Abstract:
Physical performance tests are routinely used in various human movement-related
disciplines for purposes such as assessing muscle function, evaluation of the success of
various training and rehabilitation procedures, evaluation of the performance capabilities
in sport- and work-related activities etc. Numerous factors may confound the results of
physical performance tests, one of them being body size. Review of literature clearly
shows that there are inconsistencies in normalizing physical performance for differences
in body size. As a consequence, a number of previously reported data on exercise
performance have been body size depended, while relationships among different exercise
performance tests have been confounded by the effect of body size. Another consequence
is that the comparisons of the data obtained in different studies have been often invalid
which prevented researchers from establishing normative values for various physical
performance tests applied on particular populations.
In this talk, I will discuss how different physical performance depend on body size and
what could be the optimal methods for normalizing physical performance, with particular
emphasis on the theory of geometric, as well as on allometric scaling. I will also provide
experimental evidence based on allometric scaling that support predictions of the theory
of geometric similarity regarding the effect of body size on human physical performance.
Thereafter, I will present the results of our two recent experiments related to human
muscle power and, based on them, I will propose two hypotheses: (i) human rapid
movements (jumps, sprints, kicks, throws) represent a body size independent measures of
muscle power, and (ii) muscular system is generally designed to provide the maximum
mechanical output (e.g., power, impulse) when acting against the gravitational and
inertial load of its own body.