The Effects of Exercise on Heart Rate and Blood Pressure

Introduction Our experiment tested how different exercises will affect cardiovascular output. We hypothesized that if we increase the intensity of physical demand then the work the heart would have to do would increase according to the exercise. The cardiovascular system includes the heart, veins, arteries, and blood. This is how oxygen and nutrients are transported to the cells of the body. Heart rate corresponds directly to the work the heart must do to pump blood to supply the body with oxygen as it works and blood pressure is also directly affected by work load. Blood Pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of your arteries. The harder the heart works, the higher the blood pressure is, compared to having a lower blood pressure, in which your heart isn’t working as hard.
Why We Chose this Experiment and How We Planned to Test it We chose this experiment because we thought it would be interesting to see how different exercises would affect cardiovascular performance. We also figured this would be a good experiment to test because no one else in the class was doing anything close to this. Overall we found this experiment to be a most engaging and fun experiment and our group wanted to end the year with a good time. We performed this experiment by having three of us do different exercises of varying difficulty each for four minutes. We then took our blood pressure and heart rate after each test. To prove our hypothesis, the heart rate and blood pressure had to increase for each increasingly difficult exercise with resting being a one, jumping jacks being a two, running be a three, and running the stadium being a four.
Materials
For our project we used a B-Rad, a James, and an Alex to determine the effects of different exercises on blood pressure and heart rate. To measure these things, we used a stethoscope and a Sphygmomanometer operated by the lovely Savannah. We also used a stopwatch to measure the time for each exercise and heart rate measurements. To test our exercises we used a desk and the floor in the classroom, the Fútbol Field, and the stadium stairs.
Procedure
To test our hypothesis, we had each subject complete four minutes of exercise. First we laid on a table for four minutes to find our control; we could not move or talk during this period or we would skew our results. The next day we tested jumping jacks for four minutes; this one was torture on the calves. On the following day we went to the track to have a nice run for four minutes. The last day of Trial One testing was stadiums; this one was insane. Then we repeated each test for James and Alex. After each run we measured heart rate and blood pressure. To measure heart rate Savannah took the stethoscope and placed it on the left side of the subject’s chest and set a timer for thirty seconds and counted the beats. Once the thirty seconds goes by she multiplied the number by two to get the beats per minute (Bpm). Next is the blood pressure; to measure this Savannah had to find the artery and then wrap the Sphygmomanometer around the subject’s arm. After that, she put the stethoscope against their arm and pumped the cuff up to around 160 and slowly released pressure until she heard the heart beat which is the systolic pressure and continued releasing until she could no longer hear the heartbeat, which is the diastolic pressure. After all the testing was over it was time for chi squared and report writing.
Observations
For each exercise we observed that increasing difficulty led to changes in blood pressure and heart rate for the different subject. For the resting heart rate both B-Rad and Alex started out with the same 72 Bpm but, James started out nearly twenty Bpm higher at 94 Bpm. As for blood pressure we all started out with a close range of numbers consisting of B-Rad at 1.49, Alex at 1.5, and James at 1.8. Next is Jumping Jacks, B-Rad had a heart