Resting Metabolic Rate

The Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is a measure of the number of calories your body expends to maintain life and vital functions. The measurement is expressed in units of kcals (kilocalories, or simply, "calories"). Your RMR comprises about 60-70% of total caloric expenditure and is closely related to the amount of muscle mass (or lean body mass) you have. In other words, your RMR tells you how many calories your body would need if you were to lie in bed all day and not expend any energy.

How Can I Benefit From Knowing My Resting Metabolic Rate?

Directly measuring your RMR serves as the foundation for prescribing your daily nutritional requirements and proper amount of exercise needed to reach your goals. As you progress through a weight loss or fitness training program, it's important to reassess your RMR every 8-12 weeks to adjust your energy balance for the changes and adaptations that occur in your body. Proper fitness training can increase your RMR (allowing you to eat more calories without gaining weight) while dieting can DECREASE your RMR (which is why many people end up gaining back the weight they lost plus a few more pounds).

How Can I Obtain My Resting Metabolic Rate?

Testing for your RMR is quite simple. All you have to do is relax for 10-20 minutes, either sitting or lying in a comfortable position. By wearing your very own, soft, form-fitting face mask your oxygen and carbon dioxide is collected and analyzed to provide the valuable RMR results.

For more information, contact the Fitness Department at 343-5950x204 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

VO2 Max

VO2 (pronounced Vee-Oh-Two) stands for the volume of oxygen consumed per minute and represents the ability of your heart, lungs, and circulatory system to deliver oxygen to your exercising muscles. It is a gauge of the maximum amount of energy (or work) your body can produce at peak performance. It is determined by factors that include your current level of fitness, age, sex, body size, and heredity.

How Can I Benefit From Knowing My VO2 Max?

By learning your VO2 max, you also learn about your fatigue threshold or anaerobic threshold (AT). This measurement represents how effiiciently your muscles use oxygen to produce energy or work. When your body is called upon to perform above your AT lactic acid builds in the muscles creating fatigue (the burning sensation) and your ability to continue working at this intensity will be very limited. You can improve your threshold by training at the proper intensity. The closer your AT is to your VO2 max, the better your level of fitness. This will allow you to exercise longer and harder, therefore burning more calories.

How Can I Obtain My V02 Max?

At the Wilmington Athletic Club, we offer V02 Submax testing. A V02 max test would require you to work out at the highest intensity you can - you basically go all out until you fall down. The submax test is a safer and easier way to get the same results. All you have to do is take an exercise test on your favorite piece of equipment. While wearing your very own, soft, form-fitting face mask, your oxygen and carbon dioxide is collected in our analyzer. The intensity of the exercise is gradually increased over 8-12 minutes until you reach your Anaerobic Threshold (AT). For example, if you like to bike, we'll put you on a stationary bike and start you off by pedaling lightly. Every couple minutes we'll tell you to pedal a little faster. After about 10 minutes, we'll have you pedaling hard enough to get that burning sensation in your legs (and you'll be out of breath). Then you slow down and recover and let us do the rest. 

What Will I Learn and How Do I Use This Information?

You will learn to train smarter, not harder. You will learn how many calories you burn during exercise, the heart rate at which you should exercise to burn more fat or to improve cardiovascular fitness, and the heart rates which you should sustain to effectively reach your fitness goals.