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Will Cardio Get You Through The Crux? 29-May-2015 At 7:40:19 PM Sabu

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An interesting piece Ben, well done. I note you previously mentioned this was for a year 12 report, in which case well done on trying your hand at a number of different research methods!

Here are some thoughts and feedback to consider and to take away with you if haven't written you final report yet or if you decide to enter a scientific field of study in future (which I certainly hope you do).

As noted by Cliff, nothing is ever definite in research and you've used some very absolute statements that I would be weary of using in a formal/final report. In scientific writing one must always qualify their statements and give room for your own interpretations to be wrong. Use of words such as "may improve" instead of "will improve" is a good example of how to go about this.

>Climbing has been proven to be a very effective cardio work out by multiple
>studies, suggesting that it increases the heart rate to that of running
>a seven minute kilometre. Since climbing is considered a cardio workout,
>it is implied that cardio plays a very important role in rock climbing.

I am also weary of this statement. Just because climbing is a cardio workout, doesn't necessarily mean cardio is important for climbing. Also don't overstate your opinion. For instance you could word the above statement as "The finding that climbing is considered a cardio workout (include your citations here), suggests that the cardio system has a role to play in climbing performance and therefore specific cardio training may yield improvements in climbing ability". A statement like this allows you to put forward your opinion in such a way that you haven't overstated your findings or boxed yourself into a corner if someone presents data to the contrary.

With regard to your experiment there are a few things to consider here. Firstly for such studies always try to include a control group as without one you cannot really conclude whether an intervention you've designed has actually had any effect. This helps to control for some of the annoying factors like practice effects and so on. Also you do have a small sample size so it is important to acknowledge this as part of a "limitations" section within your report. Typically this is followed by "it is recommended that larger scale studies be conducted in future!".

Overall though, an interesting topic and all the best with the report and your future studies!