Effects of Posture, Load, and Rate of Carry on Task Heart Rates
Five well trained male subjects carried loads on a level surface with five levels of task weight, five levels of distance carried, five levels of rate of carriage, and in five task postures set between normal erect and stoopwalking under ceilings set at 80 percent of each subject's normal erect stature. The tasks were performed for 15 minutes, and heart rate measured during the last 5 minutes of task performance and averaged for the condition-subject value. Analysis of the resulting task heart rates found there to be little change due to the experimental conditions tested. Only in the most stooped postures and with the heaviest loads, did large (but not significant) differences in task heart rate appear. It was concluded that for the range of conditions examined, well trained male subjects were able to recover adequately in the period between the actual load carries.