HSC PDHPE (legacy 2012) 2025

Question 1 (6 marks): Jordan is a 16-year-old rower. Their coach uses the estimate maximum heart rate $= 220 - \text{age}$, an aerobic training zone of 70% to 85% of maximum heart rate, and a strength-training load of 80% to 90% of one repetition maximum (1 RM). Jordan's 1 RM for the leg press is 90 kg. (a) Calculate Jordan's aerobic training zone. (2 marks) (b) Calculate Jordan's strength-training load range. (1 mark) (c) Jordan's program has 40-minute ergometer sessions and heavy leg-press sets. Using your answers to (a) and (b), explain why sessions below these values would give little improvement, naming the adaptation each type of session targets. (3 marks)

Step 1: Maximum heart rate

Step 2: Aerobic training zone

The lower value is the aerobic training threshold. That is the minimum intensity needed to produce an aerobic training effect.

Step 3: Strength load range

Step 4: Linking thresholds to adaptations

• Aerobic: Suppose Jordan does 40-minute continuous ergometer sessions three times a week, keeping the heart rate between about 143 and 173 bpm. The heart then gets a repeated overload, and the left ventricle adapts so that stroke volume increases. More blood is pumped per beat, so more oxygen reaches the working muscles and resting heart rate falls. Below about 143 bpm the load is too light to trigger this change. Well above the upper limit, the work becomes mostly anaerobic.
• Resistance: Suppose Jordan does 3 sets of 4 to 6 leg-press repetitions at 72 to 81 kg. The muscle is loaded beyond what it normally handles, which causes muscle hypertrophy (larger fibres) and better recruitment of fast-twitch fibres, so strength increases. At a much lighter load, such as 60% (54 kg) for many repetitions, the adaptation shifts towards muscular endurance.

The relationship is cause and effect. An adaptation only happens once the threshold is reached, and it only keeps going if the load is progressively raised as fitness improves.

Final answer: MHR is 204 bpm, so the aerobic zone is about 143 to 173 bpm and the strength load is 72 to 81 kg. Training at or above these thresholds overloads the heart, which increases stroke volume and lowers resting heart rate, and overloads the leg muscles, which causes hypertrophy and greater strength.

Question 2 (6 marks): The table shows hypothetical infant mortality rates (deaths in the first year of life per 1000 live births) for two regions of a fictional state. (a) Calculate the percentage fall in each region's rate and the ratio of Region Q's rate to Region P's in each year. (2 marks) (b) Explain what the data suggests about health status and health inequity in the two regions. (4 marks)

Step 1: Percentage fall

Step 2: Rate ratio (Q to P)

The absolute gap narrowed from 7.0 to 5.5 deaths per 1000 live births. The relative gap widened, because Region P improved faster.

Step 3: Interpreting the data

• Why infant mortality is a useful measure: Infants are very sensitive to their environment. Their survival depends on maternal health, antenatal care, safe birthing services, sanitation, nutrition and vaccination. The rate therefore sums up how well a population's living conditions and health services are working.
• Health status: Both regions improved, which points to better services or conditions overall.
• Inequity: Region Q's infants are still about 2.4 to 2.6 times as likely to die in the first year. This is consistent with remote-area determinants such as distance to birthing and neonatal intensive care services, fewer health workers, and higher costs of travel and fresh food.
• Judgement: The narrowing absolute gap is progress. The widening ratio suggests that the gains have gone more to the already advantaged region, so services should be targeted at Region Q, in line with social justice principles.

Final answer: P fell 30% and Q fell 25%. The Q to P ratio rose from 2.4 to about 2.57. Both regions' health status improved, but remote infants still face a large and relatively widening disadvantage, which points to inequity in access to services.

Question 3 (8 marks): Coalbrook is a fictional mining town about 400 km from the nearest capital city. Most of its mine workforce are men aged 35 to 60 who live in the mining camp on fly-in fly-out rosters. The local clinic reports high rates of cardiovascular disease risk factors. Analyse how the sociocultural, socioeconomic and environmental determinants interact to influence cardiovascular disease in this group, and propose ONE health promotion strategy linked to an Ottawa Charter action area.

Plan: determinants and how they interact

1. Sociocultural: A workplace culture of long shifts, "toughing it out" and alcohol as the main way to socialise. Men may put off seeing a doctor about symptoms such as chest pain because asking for help is seen as weakness.
2. Socioeconomic: Incomes are high, but education levels vary. More money does not automatically bring health literacy, and some workers spend on high-fat takeaway food and alcohol.
3. Environmental: Remote location, few fresh-food outlets, a GP who visits only now and then, and 12-hour shifts that leave little time or daylight for exercise.

Analysis: the interrelationship

The determinants reinforce each other. Remoteness limits access to preventive screening such as blood pressure and cholesterol checks. The masculine work culture lowers willingness to use even the services that do exist. Shift work adds to physical inactivity and poor diet. Income cannot buy services that are not there. Together, these factors increase exposure to the modifiable risk factors (high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoking, inactivity, overweight) that cause atherosclerosis. That is why the burden is concentrated in this group.

Strategy

Create supportive environments (with reorient health services): the mining company and the local health district jointly fund an on-site health check van at shift change. It offers free blood pressure and cholesterol screening, healthier meals in the camp canteen and a staffed gym open around the clock. Because it is at work and free, it removes the barriers of access and time, and it makes health checks normal practice in the peer group.

Final answer: Cardiovascular risk in Coalbrook comes from determinants that compound one another: remoteness limits services, work culture discourages using them, and shift conditions promote risk behaviours. A workplace-based supportive environment strategy works best because it tackles access, time and culture together.

Question 4 (5 marks): A basketball player shoots poorly from the free-throw line late in close games. Explain how mental rehearsal and concentration skills could help this player manage anxiety and reach an optimum level of arousal.

Step 1: Diagnose the problem

A free throw is a closed, self-paced, fine-motor skill. Performance on this kind of skill suffers when arousal goes past the optimum (the inverted-U idea). Late in a close game, state anxiety rises and brings muscle tension, a faster heart rate and a narrowing of attention towards worry ("What if I miss?").

Step 2: Mental rehearsal

The player practises the shot vividly in their mind at training, with the crowd noise and the score included. They picture the routine (three bounces, a breath, eyes on the rim) and a successful make. When the real situation comes, it feels familiar and not threatening, which lowers anxiety. Rehearsing the movement pattern also primes the correct technique.

Step 3: Concentration skills

The player uses a pre-shot routine and a cue word such as "smooth". This narrows attention to the right cues, the rim and the release, and screens out distractions such as the crowd or the score. Attention stays on the task, not on thoughts about what might happen.

Step 4: Link to arousal

Together, these techniques bring arousal down from over-aroused towards the optimum level for a fine skill. Muscle tension falls and accuracy is restored.

Final answer: Mental rehearsal makes the pressure situation familiar, and a pre-shot routine keeps attention on the relevant cues. Both lower the player's anxiety and arousal to the moderate optimum that a fine, closed skill like the free throw needs.

Question 5 (12 marks, Sports Medicine option): Priya, a 70.0 kg hockey player from Hobart, will play a week-long tournament in Darwin in hot, humid conditions. In a trial session she weighs 70.0 kg before and 68.6 kg after, and drinks 0.8 L during play. (a) Calculate her percentage body-mass loss and the fluid she should drink to recover, using the guide of 1.5 L for every 1 kg lost. (2 marks) (b) To what extent can acclimatisation and fluid management protect an athlete like Priya from heat illness? (10 marks)

Step 1: Body-mass loss

A loss of about 2% of body mass is the level at which dehydration usually starts to impair endurance performance.

Step 2: Recovery fluid

Her total sweat loss was about $1.4 + 0.8 = 2.2$ L, because she also lost the 0.8 L she drank.

Overall judgement

To a large but not complete extent. Acclimatisation and planned drinking greatly reduce the risk, but high humidity limits how well sweat can cool the body, so event scheduling and heat policies are still needed.

Paragraph plan

1. Acclimatisation (large effect). Training in the heat for about 10 to 14 days before the event (for example, arriving early or training in a heat chamber) makes the athlete start sweating earlier, sweat more, expand plasma volume and hold a lower heart rate at the same workload. Judgement: this is the single most effective preparation, but it needs planning time and is lost again after a few weeks away from the heat.
2. Fluid before, during and after (large effect). Sweat only cools the body when it evaporates, and sweating can only continue if blood volume is maintained. Drinking before the match, then small regular amounts at breaks, keeps plasma volume up so blood can carry heat to the skin. Using Priya's figures, she should aim to limit losses below 2% and replace about 2.1 L afterwards, with sodium or a sports drink for long sessions. Judgement: essential, and cheap, but only as effective as the athlete's adherence.
3. Limits: humidity and individual factors (reduces the extent). In humid air, sweat drips off instead of evaporating, so even a well-hydrated, acclimatised athlete still gains heat. Illness, poor fitness or a recent fever raise the risk further. Judgement: this is why preparation alone cannot guarantee safety.
4. Other controls that close the gap. Light, loose clothing, shade and cooling (ice towels) at breaks, and sporting bodies' extreme heat policies that reschedule or shorten play. Judgement: these are needed alongside acclimatisation and fluids, not instead of them.

A top-band response gives a judgement in every paragraph and supports each one with a specific example.

Final answer: Priya lost 1.4 kg, which is 2.0% of body mass, so she should drink about 2.1 L to recover. Acclimatisation and planned fluid intake protect athletes to a large extent, but humidity and individual factors mean heat illness can still occur, so they must be combined with clothing, cooling and modified scheduling.