Congratulations, Evan Segimoto '21. At the American College of Sports Medicine Northwest Annual Meeting, Evan was awarded the Outstanding Research Poster Award for his poster presentation.
The project, titled “Effect of Differing Types of Protective Face Masks on VO2max in Trained Athletes: A Pilot Study,” was the result of a research project he completed along with co-authors and fellow exercise and health science students Alia Mahmood ‘22 and Avi Valdez ‘21, Associate Professor Michael Lockard and Chloe Hart ‘23, who added statistical expertise.
Because of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, athletes around the world have needed to train while wearing face masks. The group wanted to know how much these masks actually affected aerobic athletic performance, and whether a special sports mask — Under Armour® Sportsmask — was better than a standard surgical mask. Interestingly, despite subjects reporting more difficulty breathing during vigorous treadmill exercise when using both the surgical mask and the sports mask, there was no significant difference in aerobic capacity — VO2max. This means that subjects were actually able to use the same amount of oxygen with or without the mask.
The group is currently preparing their manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
