The Margaria-Kalamen power test, or Margaria-Kalamen stair climb is a short exercise intended to measure an athlete's lower body peak power by having the athlete run up stairs.

Purpose

The Margaria-Kalamen test is an assessment that monitors athlete’s strength and power of lower extremities and helps coaches to see if the athlete’s training program is effective. This test was introduced by J Kalamen (1968) and is a variation of the original Margaria step test developed by Rudolfo Margaria (1966). The test is of very short duration, lasting less than five seconds, so is both

anaerobic Anaerobic means "living, active, occurring, or existing in the absence of free oxygen", as opposed to aerobic which means "living, active, or occurring only in the presence of oxygen." Anaerobic may also refer to: * Anaerobic adhesive, a bonding a ...

and alactic. The Margaria-Kalamen test has been a standard test for determining peak power for some time, and at one time was thought to be a measure of the power of the pure alactic anaerobic system. However, it is now thought that even on such a short test, there is still a significant contribution from the lactic anaerobic system.

Procedure

The test is conducted by having the athlete run up a flight of at least nine steps. Each step is around 17.8 cm (7 inches) tall, but it does not have to be exact, the height is taken into account in the calculation of power. The athlete starts six metres from the bottom of the steps and then runs up them three at a time, stepping on the third, sixth and ninth steps. The interval between the athlete placing a foot on the third and ninth step is timed. This time interval is very small (of the order of one second), and it is difficult to get accurate results with a

stopwatch A stopwatch is a timepiece designed to measure the amount of time that elapses between its activation and deactivation. A large digital version of a stopwatch designed for viewing at a distance, as in a sports stadium, is called a stop clock. ...

. Because of this, in a professional setting, it is usual to place pressure mats on the third and ninth steps and use these to respectively start and stop an electronic timer.Sharon A. Plowman, Denise L. Smith, ''Exercise Physiology for Health Fitness and Performance'', p. 68, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2013 . The power, ''P'', exerted by the athlete is calculated by, :

P =

:where, :''m'' is the mass of the athlete :''h'' is the vertical height between the third and ninth steps :''t'' is the time between stepping on the third and ninth steps :''g'' is acceleration due to gravity, approximately 9.81 m/s² To obtain power in units of

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

s, that is,

SI units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes Pleonasm#Acronyms and initialisms, pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most wid ...

, the mass must be expressed in

kilogram The kilogram (also kilogramme) is the unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. It is a widely used measure in science, engineering and commerce worldwide, and is often simply called a kilo colloquially ...

s and the time in

second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

coaches use a slight variation of this test. In the football stair climb test the athlete runs up twenty steps four at a time.Nick Draper, Helen Marshall, ''Exercise Physiology: For Health and Sports Performance'', p. 276, Routledge, 2014 .

References

{{reflist Fitness tests