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Postgraduate students Angela Spence and Marcus Lee from the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health received awards at the 2011 Australian Conference of Science and Medicine in Sport (ACSMS) held in Fremantle in October.

Angela, who is in the final year of her studies majoring in cardiovascular and exercise physiology, was awarded the Asics Best Paper in Exercise and Sports Science. She will use the award to travel overseas for conferences. Angela presented a study on how the heart adapts to different types of exercise training by applying state-of-the-art MRI technology to track changes in heart structure.

“It’s thought that different types of exercise cause different patterns of growth of the heart muscle,” Angela says.

“However, previous studies have used older technology (such as echocardiography) with limited resolution so we have attempted to overcome this limitation by using the best technology available, which is MRI.

“Also, the majority of past research has compared athletes to non-athletes, which often does not take other factors into consideration, such as differences in body size.

“We trained normal, healthy young males for six months using either a running or weightlifting program and found that those in the running group had an increase in the myocardial mass and volume of the left ventricle, which is a
normal physiological adaptation to exercise and makes the heart more efficient at pumping blood around the body.

“This type of adaptation is also seen in highly trained athletes, although to a greater extent as they have undergone years of intense training.

“What was very interesting is that we did not observe an adaptation in the subjects undergoing the weightlifting training. It was once thought that heavy weight training may cause a negative adaptation to the heart but our findings suggest that this negative adaptation doesn’t seem to occur.”

Marcus was awarded the prestigious NSW Sporting Injuries Award for Best New Investigator in Injury Prevention. As part of the award, Marcus is invited to attend and present at the annual American College of Sports Medicine conference in San Francisco in June.

“The aim of my PhD was to investigate sidestepping performed in a more ‘gamerealistic’ visual environment to better
understand the link between the visualperceptual and motor components of sidestepping and how that may influence
anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk,” Marcus says.

Marcus presented his results and those of his co-authors, Asst/Professor Brendan Lay, Assoc/ Professor Jacqueline Alderson, Research Assoc/Professor Paul Bourke and Winthrop Professor David Lloyd detailing the application of 3D integrated stereoscopic system during evasive sidestepping, which has ramifications for potentially reducing the
occurrence of ACL injuries.

His findings suggest that visual-perceptual cueing and stimuli realism affect sidestepping mechanics, and highlight the importance for injury prevention interventions or investigations to consider both the visual-perceptual and motor components of sidestepping.

“It is a great privilege to win this award and I look forward to showcasing the great work we do here at UWA with a wider international audience,” Marcus said.