Cardiorespiratory Response and Muscle Activity During Nordic Walking on Treadmill

Luck of exercise is well known as one of the factors for develops lifestyle disease. In recent years, nordic walking is attracting attention as aerobic exercise. However, many reports were chosen self-selected pace of walking. Therefore, the speed of walking and Nordic walking were different, the effect nordic walking may have been incorrectly reported. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cardiorespiratory response and muscle activity during nordic walking under the same conditions. Healthy seven men and women participated in this study after informed consent. Participants were walked with pole and without on treadmill at 0%and 10% inclination each 5 minutes. Walking speed was 6 km per hours in all trials. All trial were chosen at random and performed. While there walking experiments, surface electromyographic (EMG) data were recorded follows eight muscles; biceps brachii, triceps brachii, trapezius, deltoideus, tibialis anterior, medial gastrocnemius, rectus femoris and biceps femoris muscles by sampling 1kHz digital conversion. The raw EMG signal was removed direct current component and integrated the EMG after full-wave rectification. In addition, heart rate response and oxygen up take were recorded every 10 seconds during each walking, and data was analyzed last 1 minute for trial. Statistical proceeding used one way repeated measures of ANOVA, and the level of significance set at p < 0.05. The result of this study, heart rate response during nordic walking was higher than walking. Oxygen uptake during nordic walking was higher than walking at 10% incline, and Nordic walking showed the tendency higher than walking at 0% incline. Muscle activity of biceps brachii during nordic walking was higher than walking. The cause of these results, a possibility that heart rate and oxygen uptake will increase for muscle activity of upper lime can be considered. Consequently, it was suggested that the nordic walking was benefit as health exercise for upper moderate intensity.