Figure 2

Continuously increasing ramp exercise tests to exhaustion. Resting oxygen uptake is seen until the start of exercise (vertical line). At low to moderate work rates the oxygen uptake to Watts ratio is similar and linear for both slow (e.g., 15 Watts·min^-1) and fast (e.g., 60 Watts·min^-1) ramping tests. As the exercise intensity becomes "heavy to severe", the oxygen uptake to Watts ratio increases for the slow ramp test (top line). The opposite is true for the fast ramp test to exhaustion where the oxygen uptake to Watt ratio decreases (bottom line). Notice that the peak Watts are significantly different but the VO₂ maximum for the two tests is similar [51, 52]. Contributions of both anaerobic and aerobic energy transfer may explain these apparently disparate phenomena as described in the text.