Aerobic fitness and response to psychological stress

Abstract This experiment was conducted to determine whether aerobic fitness was related to subjects' cardiovascular and subjective responses to psychological stress. Sixteen High Fit and 16 Low Fit female subjects had their levels of cardiovascular and subjective arousal assessed during a baseline period and during a stressful cognitive test. Cardiovascular arousal was also assessed after a brief recovery period. Initial analyses indicated that, when compared to Low Fit subjects, High Fit subjects performed better on a 12-min walk/run test of aerobic fitness and had lower baseline levels of cardiovascular arousal (systolic blood pressure and heart rate). More importantly, when confronted with the stressful cognitive test the High Fit subjects evinced reliably smaller cardiovascular responses (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate) and reported reliably smaller increases in cognitive and somatic arousal than the Low Fit subjects. There were no differences in cardiovascular arousal after the recovery period.