A Note from the Institute Director
Dr. Stephen F. Crouse
Director: Sidney & J.L. Huffines Institute for Sports Medicine & Juman Performance
Director: Applied Exercise Science Laboratory
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
Although a number of important research projects are currently underway at the Huffines Institute, two of the more interesting ones will be going on throughout the summer and fall of 2007. Both involve clinical exercise testing as well as physical training of adult men and women. Numerous physiological assessments on research volunteers will involve hundreds of hours or data collection and analysis. Many graduate students and undergraduate student volunteers studying at the Institute will be working on these projects. As a side note, students from Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey located in Monterrey, Mexico will be involved in this research as part of an intern partnership project between the two universities. These students will be introduced to phlebotomy, pulmonary function testing, respiratory gas analysis and metabolism, and ECG interpretation as well as dietary analysis and the construction of nutritional recommendations for study subjects. Descriptions of the two studies appear below.
1.Weight Loss and Training Responses in Overweight Adults: Comparisons of HydroWorx Water Treadmill and Land-Based Treadmill Exercise Protocols. Personnel at Texas A&M will recruit and screen 40 new subjects to control for a 25% drop-out rate generally experienced in long-duration exercise training studies, thereby ensuring that at lest 30 subjects complete the training study in one calendar year.
This research project will include the following work. (A) Recruit 40 healthy adult men andwomen subjects, with no fewer than 30 being overweight or obese. (B) Complete baseline, pretraining data collection for height, weight, body composition to include body fat and lean body mass using Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA), cardiovascular and respiratory physiologic measures during treadmill exercise testing using metabolic gas analyzers to assess physical fitness status, resting and exercise blood pressures, and venous phlebotomy to obtain blood samples to analyze for blood lipids, lipoproteins, and inflammatory markers known to be associated with cardiovascular disease, diet assessments, and physical activity assessments. (C) Complete 12 weeks of supervised physical training of the subjects in either the HydroWorx fitness pool or on a land-based treadmill (gender, weight matched, then randomly assigned to either modality of training). All exercise sessions will be supervised by trained exercise technicians. (D) Repeat all pre-training, baseline data collection after the prescribed 12-weeks of training have been completed. (E) Manage all data reduction and statistical analyses to summarize the data and to compare the results of physical training in the HydroWorx fitness pool with the results of training on a land-based treadmill. (F) Develop a final report in which all the data collected in this experiment will be presented in an appropriate format and summarized in a written document. (G) Write and submit for publication in scientific journals research abstracts and papers developed out of these data. It is anticipated that HydroWorx exercise training will improve physical fitness and blood risk factors thereby reducing the risk of heart disease. If this is found to be the case, this will show HydroWorx therapy to be an effective modality for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, and show that it has an application in cardiac rehabilitation programs and in other clinical programs directed toward reducing the risk of heart disease in the adult men and women.
2. Firefighter and Police Officer Cardiovascular Fitness Testing. In this project personnel at Texas A&M University will conduct physical and health fitness testing on firefighters and police officers. The battery of tests will consist of exercise stress testing with 12-lead electrocardiography, body composition testing with duel energy X-ray absorptometry (DEXA), pulmonary function testing, measurement of blood lipids and lipoproteins, and muscle strength and flexibility testing.The results will be statistically 
analyzed and individual and group reports will be produced. Appropriate dietary and fitness recommendations will be made to ensure optimal health of the firefighters and police officers.