Observation and Interactions Between Cardio-respiratory and Motor Transitions During Maximal Incremental Exercise Test on Elliptical Bike and Running Treadmill. - NCT07928713

For safety considerations and to ensure the effectiveness of physical activity within a rehabilitation programme, it is important to establish an appropriate exercise intensity to achieve the programme's objectives. This requires identifying individualised exercise intensity zones that are specifically tailored to each patient, in order to design an effective and progressive exercise training programme. Exercise prescription is based on four principles: frequency, duration, volume, and intensity. The first three factors are relatively easy to adjust when planning a training programme, whereas exercise intensity is based on a concept that is more difficult to assess and control. On the one hand, exercise intensity is more complex to measure; on the other, establishing individualised reference points and guidelines tailored to each patient is not straightforward. It is now well established that ventilatory transitions are individualised physiological markers that delineate exercise intensity zones. These transition markers provide valuable reference points for exercise training, helping to ensure that physical activity is both safe and sufficiently intense to induce beneficial physiological adaptations in patients. Within this rehabilitation context, the aim of the present study is to identify markers of these two physiological transitions during a maximal exercise test conducted under laboratory conditions. The study seeks to identify non-invasive markers related to cardiovascular, respiratory, and motor responses, with a view to conducting similar assessments under real-world conditions in the future. A database has already been established using cycle ergometry (the CAREMO protocol). The next step is to build a new database based on maximal exercise testing, this time using two different exercise modalities: the elliptical trainer and the treadmill. In addition to the new challenge of investigating the second ventilatory transition, the less constrained movement patterns associated with these exercise modalities require adaptations to the analysis methods in order to continue identifying changes in motor behaviour.