Modelling maximal oxygen uptake in athletes: allometric scaling versus ratio-scaling in relation to body mass

Maximal oxygen uptake, V&O2 peak, among athletes is an important foundation for all training programmes to enhance competition performance. In Singapore, the V& O2 peak of athletes is apparently not widely known. There is also controversy in the modelling or scaling of maximal oxygen uptake for differences in body size - the use of ratio-scaling remains common but allometric scaling is gaining acceptance as the method of choice.

One hundred fifty-eight male (age, 21.7 +/- 4.9 years; body mass, 64.8 +/- 8.6 kg) and 28 female (age, 21.9 +/- 7.0 years; body mass, 53.0 +/- 7.0 kg) athletes completed a maximal treadmill run to volitional exhaustion, to determine VO2 peak.

V& O2 peak in L/min of female athletes was 67.8% that of male athletes (2.53 +/- 0.29 vs. 3.73 +/- 0.53 L/min), and V& O2 peak in mL/kg BM1.0/min of female athletes was 83.4% of male athletes (48.4 +/- 7.2 vs. 58.0 +/- 6.9 mL/kg BM1.0/min). Ratio-scaling of V& O2 peak did not create a size-free variable and was unsuitable as a scaling method. Instead, V& O2 peak, that was independent of the effect of body mass in male and female athletes, was best described using 2 separate and allometrically-derived sex-specific regression equations; these were V& O2 peak = 2.23 BM0.67 for male athletes and V& O2 peak = 2.23 BM0.24 for female athletes.