If your doctor has any questions about how your heart will react to exercise, he might order an exercise or stress test. While you ride a stationary bicycle or jog on a treadmill, an electrocardiogram records your heart's electrical activity, and additional equipment monitors pulse rate, blood pressure, and other vital signs. As the test progresses, heart rate approaches maximum capacity and unrecognized cardiac defects now usually (but not always) become obvious.
Although the stress test is useful, it is not infallible. In more than half of the cases in which it indicates heart disease, further tests show there is no defect. More significantly, the test might show no abnormality when coronary heart disease does exist.
No matter what the stress test says, if during a subsequent exercise period you become extremely breathless, trembling, dizzy, nauseous, or suffer chest pain, stop exercising immediately. If the symptoms persist, seek medical help.
Strength, Flexibility and Balance
To determine your muscles strength and flexibility - two other components of dynamic fitness - take the kraus-Weber tests.
No doubt you already have a reasonably accurate idea of how well coordinated you are. If you can ride a bicycle, play baseball or tennis, or skip a rope 10 times in succession, then you probably have adequate coordination, balance, and agility. On the other hand, if you cannot maintain your balance on one foot for 30 seconds, cannot jump a rope even twice in a row, and dance with "two feet", this will reveal the areas of dynamic fitness to which you must pay attention in choosing exercise.
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JANUARY 5
