The present study was intended to determine max. Vo₂ and its relation to body weight of Japanese athletes. The subjects in this study were 151 male and female athletes who were Japanese excellent or good runners and swimmers.
Max. Vo₂2 was determined during the maximum running on the treadmill. Treadmill test was made with a constant slope of 8.6%. During the first 2 minutes, the treadmill was set in motion at a certain speed (180 or 200 m/min for male and 160 m/ min for female), and then the speed was increased by 10 m/min every succeeding minute until exhaustion. Expired air during running was collected in Douglas bag every 1 minute upto exhaustion. The sampling gas was analyzed by means of a Beckman oxygen and carbon dioxide analyzer.
The results obtained in this study were as follows ;
1) The regression equations were calculated between max. Vo₂ and body weight in relation to sex and sports (Table 1) .
2) Max. Vo₂ per body weight of the male swimmers ranges from 50 to 70 and that of the male runners is 70 ml/kg/min. For the female swimmers max. Vo₂ is between 40 and 60 and the female runners approximately 60 ml/kg/min.
3) The regression equation was calculated between the mean speed of 5000 m running as performance (Y) and max. Vo₂ per body weight as physical resources (X) for the runners.
Y=0. 0431X+2.50±0.232