John '73 and Liz Wuertz have offered to generously match the final $5,000 made to this project. That means your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar!
From a research perspective we are interested in the temporary decline in performance that a student-athlete experiences as they transition from primarily carbohydrate utilization to primarily fat utilization. This occurs in sports like soccer and lacrosse (and possibly basketball) that feature long games that tax an athlete’s endurance. It is also pertinent to wrestling in the very regular instance in which an athlete depletes their carbohydrate stores during their preparation for weigh-in.
We can measure when this transition of fuel sources occurs in the laboratory. An individual student-athlete’s heart rate response to a given workload is likely to be the same day after day. With this in mind, we hope to measure the cumulative number of heart beats that it takes for each athlete to deplete their carbohydrate stores in the laboratory and then use heart rate monitors on the field to predict when this transition will occur.
We will then be able to address additional questions, like:
There are a lot of questions that can be addressed when you can first measure fairly sophisticated parameters in the laboratory and then use heart rate as a proxy for those parameters on the field or the court. But it is with these specific questions that we will begin. The coaches that I have spoken to are very supportive of this line of research. Their only concern is that we have enough monitors to perform the research broadly.
We've identified the heart rate monitors as a valuable research tool and learning opportunity for our program, faculty, and students. Technology that can be worn on the field is becoming more important to research done in Exercise Science. To ensure we have the proper amount of heart rate monitors to impact our program, we have launched this Fund the Fortress project.
The goal for this project is $30,000 to purchase 55 Catapult Vector heart rate monitors (pictured below), the software to monitor our results, and additional funds will be used to maintain needed lab supplies. With this number of monitors, we can test an entire roster of some of our larger teams. With your support we can give our students a unique opportunity to succeed in their research now and prepare them better for graduate school.
The new Health and Human Performance Center, which will be used by students majoring in exercise science, will include a 1,000-square-foot Human Performance Lab featuring a built-in force plate for testing with movement analysis software and several metabolic carts for cardiac, pulmonary, and stress-testing activities. The Anatomy & Physiology Lab will occupy 1,000 square feet and accommodate up to 32 students. Furniture will be easily movable, allowing for maximum flexibility.