Heart rate readings while skydiving

[Jeff.Donohue 0]

Interesting -- I did the same thing on behalf of a friend who is doing a small scale study on heart beat intervals in response to stress.

My sitting beat rate is high (which is weird, because I run a lot), but it definitely peaked right around deployment (I think I sort of figured out it was right after canopy check/looking around for other traffic/stowing my slider).

No idea at the fat burning associated with it.

Apparently, my Qt (the interval variance, if I understand correctly, but I'm not a doc) was fairly typical (within a standard deviation of what she'd found so far and what the literature said it would be).

[kallend 1,621]

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[pedantic]I think you can lose weight very easily while skydiving. During the ride up in the plane, just have the pilot put the plane into a steep dive - you can lose as much weight as you want that way. Going to the gym and working out is good for losing mass, though.[/pedantic]

Eule

To be truly pedantic, losing fat is what is really wanted.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[bloody_trauma 2]

so jumping burns calories? good stuff, im going to start a wieght loss through skydiving campaign

Fly it like you stole it

[brettski74 0]

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[pedantic]I think you can lose weight very easily while skydiving. During the ride up in the plane, just have the pilot put the plane into a steep dive - you can lose as much weight as you want that way. Going to the gym and working out is good for losing mass, though.[/pedantic]

Eule

To be truly pedantic, losing fat is what is really wanted.

Actually, to be truly pedantic, weight is defined as the force applied to an object due to gravity. So when the plane goes into a steep dive, you're apparent weight may drop while the plane accelerates downward, but the force applied by the Earth's gravity, and therefore, your actual weight remains pretty much constant.

Remember that astronauts in space aren't really weightless, they're in freefall.

[bloody_trauma 2]

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Actually, to be truly pedantic, weight is defined as the force applied to an object due to gravity. So when the plane goes into a steep dive, you're apparent weight may drop while the plane accelerates downward, but the force applied by the Earth's gravity, and therefore, your actual weight remains pretty much constant.

Remember that astronauts in space aren't really weightless, they're in freefall.

brian germain says about weight and gravity in the parachute and its pilot

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in short, "G's" are a way to quantify our apparent or relative weight. by "apparent weight" i mean the weight an object has at the moment. weight does not vary in a static state of affairs, such as standing on the ground. this is described as "one G". if you stand on a scale, your weight will be constant. if you were to jump up a little, you would see the scale dropits reading in proportion to the amount of energy in your jump. if you were to reduce your weight to zero you would achieve "zero Gs". the converse would be when you land back on the scale. you would see that your "weight" increases momentarily beyond your static "one G" weight. A "two G" situation would increase your "apparent weight".

angle of attack, pitch axis, and inertia. all affect your apparent weight under canopy and with aircraft as well

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so an increased pitch angle will cause an increase in apparent weight, this increase in weight changes the way in which the wing flies , most notably the critical speed at which the wing will stall

so what happens when you stall your canopy and then release the brakes or rear risers quickly, your canopy will dive forward and change your pitch axis allowing your angle of attack to change suddenly resulting a "G Loading" of zero or near zero. makes for an unstable canopy in many ways , can cause the leading edge to fold under, line twists, delayed control input from line slack, very bad thing if you are low.

not all of this has to do with loss of weight, yes your physical weight remains the same but your apparent weight is increased or decreased depending on the G's that are being exerted on your body.

by no means am i an expert, but good stuff to learn and what a great book, i've yet to fly a canopy, but already from reading this book i have confidence in my abilty to fly one.

Fly it like you stole it

[kallend 1,621]

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so jumping burns calories? good stuff, im going to start a wieght loss through skydiving campaign

You replied to my post, but I didn't say that.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 1,621]

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[pedantic]I think you can lose weight very easily while skydiving. During the ride up in the plane, just have the pilot put the plane into a steep dive - you can lose as much weight as you want that way. Going to the gym and working out is good for losing mass, though.[/pedantic]

Eule

To be truly pedantic, losing fat is what is really wanted.

Actually, to be truly pedantic, weight is defined as the force applied to an object due to gravity. So when the plane goes into a steep dive, you're apparent weight may drop while the plane accelerates downward, but the force applied by the Earth's gravity, and therefore, your actual weight remains pretty much constant.

Remember that astronauts in space aren't really weightless, they're in freefall.

What does that have to do with my comment about FAT?

When people say they want to lose weight, they REALLY mean they want to lose FAT. I don't know of anyone that dieted or exercised because they wanted to lose muscle, bone or brain, all of which have mass.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 1,621]

All of which is why physicists try to avoid using "weight" if they want to avoid ambiguity... "Weight" means too many different things to different people.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[toolbox 0]

I do not think the adrenaline rush stops with more experience,rather our brains adapt to the increased adrenaline with repeated exposure. Even though I'm usualy thinking about what I'm gonna have for lunch when I leave the plane with a tandem,I still feel pretty relaxed and happy after the skydive. And as we all know tandems can get pretty busy. But our brains become acustomed to repetative exposure to situations. I think the rush is still there,its the way we react to it that is different as we experience more of it.

[tdog 0]

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This is something that was mentioned at the canopy course I took from Brian Germain.

He mentioned that for newer jumpers, stress levels spiked during exit. For experienced jumpers, stress levels spiked during deployment.

I wonder if the type of canopy makes a difference.... Something that opens well even with twists versus something that is prone to spin up and dive? Experienced skydivers often jump more challenging canopies and know that there is a lot of luck of the draw on how it is going to open, whereas exit is predictable and if it goes bad, can be recovered from with ease... The fear of the unknown will raise heart rate, and the smaller and more elliptical you get, perhaps the more "unknown" it will become even if you have 1,000 jumps on the same canopy...

[mbomb 0]

A lot of the old-timers will nod their heads knowingly here: Stop jumping (or even slow down) and you put on weight , or to put it more precisecly (for all the physics-minded thread hyjackers out there) get fat.

I put this down to a number of factors, firstly skydiving is a lot more excercise than most people realise. Dirt diving, walking around, packing, lifting, it all adds up. Plus there's the adrenalin which must be burned off. The other thing is that you tend to eat less while at the DZ all weekend (mostly because eating takes up valuable skydive/drinking/BS time).

best solution for those wishing to control their weight is to do a bit of extra walking. If you own a heart-rate monitor use it to keep your heart at about 60% of max and the weight just falls off (I lost 26kg that way).

Glenn......

[ltdiver 3]

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The other thing is that you tend to eat less while at the DZ all weekend (mostly because eating takes up valuable skydive/drinking/BS time).

Just to put a fly in this ointment....

It is very true that we don't eat as much when we skydive during that day(s)....however (and I'm pointing my finger at myself here as well) I started putting on weight when I started drinking beer!

I've always been thin and never ever drank alcohol...until a few years ago. Yes, it was a skydiver who bought my first one (Halloween party). I've put on about 20 lbs since then and I owe it all to .

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[mr_woosh 0]

ok, back to the original topic of the thread.. I was wondering what's the cheapest setup for recording heart rate + altitude with logs downloadable to the computer? The threads that I've found so far have some recommendations on the models but don't mention whether the log feature is well implemented. I am at the beginning of my skydiving career and it would be fun to see how my HR dynamics changes over time :) Thanks!

[Merkur 1]

I don't know if it is the cheapest setup but I personally use a Suunto X6HRM.
You can log and download the heartrate and display it on a graph with altitude at the X-axis.
Kind of interesting. I don't know if I still havesome graphs - if so, I post them.

My personal experience had the max rate (180) at deployment level. That was, when I had around 100 jumps. I'll probably repeat it, to see if anything has changed.

M.

vSCR No.94
Don't dream your life - live your dream!

[gravitysucks 0]

There had actually been a fair amount of scientific research done using skydivers as examples. If anybody is interested I can forward you the bibliography from my master's project which dealt with the psychophysiology of risky behaviors.

[mr_woosh 0]

merkur, thanks for the info! seems a bit pricey at the moment and I didn't realize you need a chest strap in addition to wrist device for HR measurement.

gravitysucks, sounds like a great read. willing to share?

[LordRatner 0]

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[pedantic]I think you can lose weight very easily while skydiving. During the ride up in the plane, just have the pilot put the plane into a steep dive - you can lose as much weight as you want that way. Going to the gym and working out is good for losing mass, though.[/pedantic]

Eule

Technically this is wrong too. Weight is determined by the pull of one body on another. In a dive, there is no normal force on your body, but gravity still pulls on you, giving a weight. Now, when we start skydiving from 100 miles AGL, then we will lose weight noticeably... and get all that weight back quickly...

Gives a new meaning to "straight to my hips"

[BrianSGermain 1]

Actually, there is more to "stress" than blood pressure and heart rate. It is true that there are effects on both of these parameters, but to assume that the circulatory system is the only area effected by adrenaline is incorrect.

Epinephrine, Nor Epinephrine and Cortisol levels all increase in correlation with perceived danger as do blood glucose levels. These levels can be correlated with several other "tell-tale" sets of data. One method used to measure the physical component of stress is Galvanic Skin Response, or GSR. When we have an adrenal response, we sweat more in anticipation of the increased work load on the body. This increases the degree to which we can conduct electricity accross the skin. This, among many other measures of acute stress shows significant effects as correlated with the skydiving experience. Further, it is this and many other measures that showed the trends toward somatic escalation at pull time versus exit.

So, although there are compensatory responses to the the "G's" experienced during opening, this is not the only effect. Moreover, if the increases in blood pressure were solely caused by changes in relative gravity during opening shock, it would not suggest the changes in this parameter noted during exit for inexperienced parachutists.

Clearly there is more going on than just "G's". We are in perceived danger during opening. When we have initiated deployment, the situation is momentarily out of our control. Due to previous experiences, we create a set of expectations that are preparing us to act with physical effort. Our Amygdala triggers the hypothalamus to secrete the excitement chemicals, and consequently our heart rate, BP and many other bodily systems are significantly effected.

Although there may be benefits in terms of our capacity to handle "G" forces due to our increased blood pressure. This is not the reason for the increase. Nature does not know the difference between stressors, and creates stereotypical changes in the body to handle all stress. So it turns out, increasing the BP is a good idea to prevent unconsciousness during opening.

We must be cautious not to extrapolate too much from the data we collect about heart rate or blood pressure alone. There are many data points from various parameters that ultimately lead to a reasonable conclusion about an individual's emotional response to a situation. We must root out confounding variables, and hone in on what is really happening. The effect is a global change to the body, and we must treat it as such.

Bri

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