Program
TLTE
College
Education
Student Level
Doctoral
Start Date
7-11-2018 3:00 PM
End Date
7-11-2018 4:00 PM
Abstract
Physiologically self-protective mechanisms borne from hominin evolutionary history that increase survivability are not unknown to science. In reviewing exercise science literature regarding testing and assessment measures of subjects talking while exercising, a logical question has materialized: To what degree has evolution facilitated synchronization of comfortable oral communication with sustainable exercise intensity? An individual able to engage a voice, represses fatigue. The Talk Test, is a practical strategy whereby a subject deliberately speaks during an exercise protocol. It is a common tool in both kinesiology and clinical fields because it inherently identifies a pivotal metabolic threshold. The coincidence of comfortable ability to talk and perform sustainable sub-threshold exercise intensity, also affords complete physiological recovery within one solar day. A sustained, increased vigor above this stage, though possible, requires more than 24 hours of metabolic recovery, and muscular and range of motion restoration due to overuse may require at least 96 hours.
ENGAGE A VOICE, REPRESS FATIGUE; THE COINCIDENT EVOLUTION OF HOMININ VOCALIZATION AND A METABOLIC THRESHOLD
Physiologically self-protective mechanisms borne from hominin evolutionary history that increase survivability are not unknown to science. In reviewing exercise science literature regarding testing and assessment measures of subjects talking while exercising, a logical question has materialized: To what degree has evolution facilitated synchronization of comfortable oral communication with sustainable exercise intensity? An individual able to engage a voice, represses fatigue. The Talk Test, is a practical strategy whereby a subject deliberately speaks during an exercise protocol. It is a common tool in both kinesiology and clinical fields because it inherently identifies a pivotal metabolic threshold. The coincidence of comfortable ability to talk and perform sustainable sub-threshold exercise intensity, also affords complete physiological recovery within one solar day. A sustained, increased vigor above this stage, though possible, requires more than 24 hours of metabolic recovery, and muscular and range of motion restoration due to overuse may require at least 96 hours.
Comments
Our manuscript crosses sub-disciplines and we have sought to characterize our main ideas to be comprehensible to non-specialists.
We are career biologists who have led active lives in organized sports, outdoor sports, and especially for the lead author Galen, in coaching athletics. With this type of background, we have been fortunate enough to recognize through our personal experiences common threads from different disciplines, and have taken special note of the metabolic recovery process and the outstanding ability of athletes to excel as endurance performers. We have also read extensively in the field of hominin evolution and exercise. However, we have yet to encounter research science addressing the role of oral communication during hominin endurance exercise, and as such we do so herein and present a novel idea.
An individual able to speak comfortably while exercising—even if it is intermittent communication—is a person who can maintain that specific level of exercise for prolonged periods of time, recover within 24 hours, and therefore perform the identical exercise activity for many consecutive days. To us, this scenario fits neatly within hominin evolution and persistence hunting. We are unable to claim that oral communication is causal, however we feel confident that vocalization during persistence hunting applies advantageous selective pressure. Moreover, vocalization need not be a true language, but an individual who engages a voice, represses fatigue.
In the field of kinesiology, the strategy of deliberately speaking while exercising, identifies one’s ventilatory threshold and is known as the Talk Test. It is also used in clinical situations and serves patients well, including those who are recovering from cardiac revascularization.
We would be surprised if there was an absence of selective pressures between the synchronization of comfortable vocalization with sustainable exercise intensity. Our opinion is that repressing fatigue by oral communication has survival value and in that context, it is no different from other self-protective phenomenon such as the dive reflex and broken heart syndrome.