The Ballroom Aerobic Test for estimating cardiorespiratory fitness in standard style dancesport athletes: diagnostic accuracy against laboratory measures

Abstract

Purpose: The main purpose of the study was to investigate the sensitivity properties of a newly developed Ballroom Aerobic
Test (BAT) protocol for cardiorespiratory fitness against objective methods.
Methods: Twenty-four young dancesport couple athletes who competed at international level were recruited (age 20.40±3.90
years; stature 172.10±8.70 cm; body mass 60.10±9.40 kg; 50.00% women). Physiological parameters from the field-based
BAT protocol were evaluated using the MetaMax® 3B portable gas analyzer, while objective data were generated on the
running ergometer following the KF1 and Bruce protocols. The area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity, false
positive (FP), false negative (FN), positive likelihood ratio (PLR) and negative likelihood ratio (NLR) were calculated.
Results: The AUC for the BAT against the KF1 and Bruce protocols yielded satisfactory values of > .75, with the largest
agreements for absolute (AUC = .92; 95% CI .82 – 1.00 and .94; 95% CI .90 – 1.00) and relative maximal oxygen uptake
(V̇O2max; AUC = .94; 95% CI .90 – 1.00 and .95; 95% CI .86 – 1.00). Other ventilatory and metabolic parameters yielded
somewhat lower AUC values (.65 ≤ AUC ≤ .93). Sensitivity and specificity analyses exhibited acceptable agreement
percentages between the BAT and KF1/Bruce protocols, ranging from 66.70% to 95.10% for sensitivity and 60.00% to
100.00% for specificity. The largest PLRs were shown for relative V̇O2max in both KF1 (10.31) and Bruce (11.05) protocols.
Conclusions: This study shows that the BAT protocol may be considered as a good diagnostic tool for evaluating ventilatory
and metabolic parameters of standard style dancesport athletes.