ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 1998 September;38(3):221-6

Copyright © 1999 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Bench stepping and running in women. Changes in fitness and injury status

Williford H. N. ¹, Richards L. A. ¹, Scharff-Olson M. ¹, Brown J. ¹, Blessing D. ², Duey W. J. ³

¹ Human Performance Laboratory, Auburn University at Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama; ² Health and Human Performance, Auburn University, Alabama; ³ Physical Education Department, Alabama State University, Alabama

Back­ground. The pur­pose of ­this inves­ti­ga­tion was to eval­uate ­injury ­rates and ­changes in V.O2peak in ­women asso­ciated ­with ­aerobic exer­cise (­bench step­ping and run­ning).
­Methods. A pre­test ­post-­test ­repeated meas­ures ­design was ­used to eval­uate ­changes in V.O2peak ­after ­training for 10 ­weeks, 3 ­days per ­week, for 1 ­hour per ses­sion. ­Injury inci­dence was mon­i­tored by ques­tion­naires ­throughout the ­training pro­gram.
Set­ting. All ­testing and ­training ­took ­place at ­Auburn Uni­ver­sity Mont­gomery, Mont­gomery, AL, USA.
Par­tic­i­pants. The sub­jects ­were ­women ­enrolled in uni­ver­sity phys­ical ­activity ­courses. The exer­cise ­groups con­sisted of 23 ­women who per­formed ­bench exer­cise and 15 who per­formed run­ning-jog­ging. ­Eleven sub­jects ­served as non-exer­cising con­trols.
Inter­ven­tion. The 10-­week exer­cise ­training pro­gram ­served as the inter­ven­tion.
Meas­ures. Sub­jects ­were ­both pre- and ­post-­tested for V.O2peak by ­open cir­cuit cal­o­rim­etry. ­Body com­po­si­tion was esti­mated ­from a 7-­site skin­fold equa­tion. A ­daily ­injury log was main­tained to eval­uate ­injury ­status.
­Results. A ­repeated meas­ures ­ANOVA ­found sim­ilar sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in V.O2peak for ­both the ­bench and run­ning ­groups ­with no ­change for the con­trol ­group. An eval­u­a­tion of the inju­ries ­graded II or ­higher ­found 0.29 inju­ries per 100 hrs for the ­bench ­group and 0.66 inju­ries per 100 hrs for the run­ning ­group. ­When all com­plaints ­were con­sid­ered (grade I to ­grade IV) the ­rates ­increased to 2.44 per 100 hrs for the run­ning ­group and 6.09 per 100 hrs for the ­bench ­group.
Con­clu­sions. ­Aerobic ­bench exer­cise pro­duced sim­ilar ­changes in V.O2peak com­pared to run­ning. The ­results indi­cated ­that the pri­mary ­injury com­plaints ­were ­grade I and ­related to ­delayed ­onset ­muscle sore­ness (­DOMS). The ­bench ­group expe­ri­enced an ­greater inci­dence of ­grade I com­plaints ­while the run­ning ­group expe­ri­enced a ­slightly ­greater inci­dence of ­more ­serious ­grade II or ­higher inju­ries.