University presents findings on physical performance testing at international conference
AN ACADEMIC from the University of Chichester has recently returned from successfully presenting a paper on physical performance testing for demanding occupations at the Second International Conference on Physical Employment Standards in Alberta, Canada.
Dr Sam Blacker from the University of Chichester’s Institute of Sport presented ‘Comparison of Performance on Incremental Shuttle Running Tests With and Without Carrying a 15 kg Load and their Relationships with Load Carriage Performance’ to 200 delegates, which included scientists and practitioners from around the world.
He undertook the research with colleagues Dr Stephen Myers, Andrew West, and Dr David Wilkinson. Their work involved a series of exercise tests where individuals ran to exhaustion either with or without a weighted vest.
They then looked at the oxygen cost and energy expenditure of that activity to discover whether it would be a better predictive test to assess people entering physically demanding occupations, such as the police or military.
The academics now plan to extend this research using greater loads to increase performance impairment to provide more practical data.
This research links to other work by the department where the team are working directly with those who work in physically demanding occupations to improve performance and reduce musculo-skeletal injury.
As well as undertaking this work for people entering work, the University also works with organisations’ health and safety departments to evaluate and monitor staff’s health and wellbeing and to improve their job performance.
The conference looked to address critical questions in the domain of physical employment standards and took place on August 23-26, 2015 at the Coast Canmore Hotel and Conference Centre Canmore, Alberta, Canada.
Find out more about the conference and Dr Blacker’s research or, alternatively, find out more about the University of Chichester’s Institute of Sport.
