Can’t talk during exercise? Slow down

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If you can talk while exercising, you are likely doing it right, new research indicates.

U.S. investigators found that when exercisers on a treadmill or stationary bike say they can speak comfortably, their heart rates and other measures of exertion tend to fall within the range considered safe for exercisers.

This suggests that people who need cues for when exercise is too intense don’t need to workout with a heart rate monitor or other complicated device—they just need to try the “talk test,” the authors say. 

"The talk test is a practical way for people to monitor their intensity during exercise,” study author Dr. Carl Foster said in a statement.

“Because this study has shown this method to be very consistent, people can use this in their everyday lives, in gyms or working out at home, to meet their health and fitness goals while reducing the risk of injuries or other complications that can happen with overexertion,” he added.

Experts have found that people achieve the most benefits from exercise when their heart rates and oxygen consumption are kept below maximum values. Given that many people can’t measure their heart rates and use of oxygen while exercising, members of the exercise community have begun to adopt the “talk test” to monitor the intensity of their workouts.

An informal measurement, the talk test states that if people can “just respond to conversation,” they are likely exercising “just about right,” the authors write in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

To investigate whether the talk test does, in fact, measure whether someone is exercising at appropriate levels, Foster and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse measured heart rates and peak oxygen consumption of 16 healthy volunteers as they exercised on stationary bikes and treadmills.

Participants recited the pledge of allegiance during four progressively harder exercise tests.

The team found that when people began to struggle with speaking, their heart rates and peak oxygen consumption began to exceed the threshold for safe exercise.

SOURCE: Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, September 2004.

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