Midgley Adrian W, Marchant David C, Levy Andrew R
Department of Sport and Physical Activity, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk.
Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK.
Clin Physiol Funct Imaging. 2018 Jul;38(4):547-553. doi: 10.1111/cpf.12454. Epub 2017 Jul 24.
By definition, maximal exercise testing inherently requires participants to give a maximal effort. This is an important practical issue as submaximal efforts can produce invalid test results. Verbal encouragement is commonly used to motivate participants to maintain or increase effort investment during maximal exercise testing. Accordingly, studies have reported significant increases in time to exhaustion of between 8% and 18% during VO and multistage shuttle run tests, and a significant 30·5 m mean increase in 6-min walk test distance. Significant improvements during shorter tests, such as the Wingate and 2-min walk tests, have not been observed however. Although participants typically perceive verbal encouragement positively during maximal exercise testing, around one-third have neutral or negative perceptions. Despite the ubiquity and importance of verbal encouragement during maximal exercise testing, surprisingly little research has investigated the characteristics of effective encouragement with respect to its content, timing and frequency. The only randomized controlled trial to investigate one of these issues observed that verbal encouragement delivered every 20 s increased time to exhaustion during VO testing, but not every 60 or 180 s. Of particular concern is that several exercise testing guidelines have incorporated specific guidelines for the use of verbal encouragement, but not provided any theoretical or empirical justification, presumably because of the limited research to inform practice. Recent empirical research does provide some important insight into participant preference for the content and timing of verbal encouragement during maximal exercise testing; however, much more research is clearly required to establish comprehensive evidence-based guidelines.
根据定义，最大运动测试本质上要求参与者全力以赴。这是一个重要的实际问题，因为次最大努力可能会产生无效的测试结果。在最大运动测试期间，通常使用言语鼓励来激励参与者维持或增加努力投入。因此，研究报告称，在VO₂和多级穿梭跑测试中，疲劳时间显著增加了8%至18%，在6分钟步行测试距离上平均显著增加了30.5米。然而，在较短的测试中，如温盖特测试和2分钟步行测试，并未观察到显著改善。尽管在最大运动测试期间，参与者通常对言语鼓励有积极的感受，但约三分之一的人有中立或消极的感受。尽管言语鼓励在最大运动测试中普遍存在且很重要，但令人惊讶的是，很少有研究调查有效鼓励在内容、时机和频率方面的特征。唯一一项调查其中一个问题的随机对照试验发现，在VO₂测试期间，每20秒给予一次言语鼓励会增加疲劳时间，但每60秒或180秒给予一次则不会。特别令人担忧的是，一些运动测试指南纳入了使用言语鼓励的具体指南，但没有提供任何理论或实证依据，大概是因为为实践提供信息的研究有限。最近的实证研究确实为参与者在最大运动测试期间对言语鼓励的内容和时机的偏好提供了一些重要见解；然而，显然还需要更多的研究来建立全面的循证指南。
