Health, Fitness & Human Performance
Cardiovascular capacity and how to build it.
10 topics · 13 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services · 2018
Sets government evidence-based minimums for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity by age group and states that meeting them measurably lowers the…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Biomechanics of Competitive Front Crawl Swimming
Huub M. Toussaint & Peter J. Beek · 1992
Argues that swimming's high energy cost comes mainly from the drag a body generates while stroking rather than from the propulsive force the arms…
+7 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Effects of Moderate-Intensity Endurance and High-Intensity Intermittent Training on Anaerobic Capacity and VO2max
Izumi Tabata et al. · 1996
Tests an exact twenty-seconds-on, ten-seconds-off protocol on trained cyclists and finds it raises both aerobic and anaerobic capacity, a result now…
+3 more at this level
12 of 13 works
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Sets government evidence-based minimums for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity by age group and states that meeting them measurably lowers the risk of a dozen chronic diseases.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Huub M. Toussaint & Peter J. Beek
Argues that swimming's high energy cost comes mainly from the drag a body generates while stroking rather than from the propulsive force the arms produce, so efficient technique matters more to speed than raw power.
Niels H. Secher
Sets out why rowing performance depends on an unusually large aerobic power output sustained through a technically demanding, whole-body stroke, and what that implies for how rowers should train.
Andrew M. Jones & Harry Carter
Reviews how VO2 max, lactate threshold and running economy each respond to sustained aerobic training, and shows the threshold and economy keep improving well after VO2 max plateaus.
Philo U. Saunders, David B. Pyne, Rob D. Telford & John A. Hawley
Surveys what actually predicts how much oxygen a trained runner needs at a given pace, finding biomechanics, muscle-tendon stiffness and training history matter more than the aerobic fitness measures runners usually track.
Erik W. Faria, Daniel L. Parker & Irvin E. Faria
Reviews the physiological determinants of cycling performance and shows that hilly stages, sprints and prologues draw on different combinations of aerobic and anaerobic capacity than laboratory power tests measure.
Martin J. Gibala & Sean L. McGee
Argues that a few minutes of very hard intervals trigger many of the same mitochondrial and oxidative adaptations as hours of traditional endurance training.
Daniel E. Lieberman et al.
Shows habitually barefoot runners land on the forefoot and generate far smaller impact collision forces than shod heel-strikers, a finding later stretched by the minimalist-shoe industry well past what the study itself claims.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Stephen Seiler
Compares how elite endurance athletes actually distribute training across intensity zones and argues a polarised split — mostly easy, a little very hard, not much in between — outperforms training clustered near threshold.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Izumi Tabata et al.
Tests an exact twenty-seconds-on, ten-seconds-off protocol on trained cyclists and finds it raises both aerobic and anaerobic capacity, a result now widely mis-marketed as a general four-minute workout for any population.
David R. Bassett & Edward T. Howley
Argues that VO2 max, the lactate threshold and exercise economy together set the ceiling on endurance performance, and works through what physiologically limits each one.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Carol Ewing Garber et al.
Sets evidence-based targets for how much cardiorespiratory, resistance, flexibility and neuromotor exercise a healthy adult needs, and how to progress each safely.