Heart size and weight training
THE fact that athletes have larger hearts than the average populace is well documented.
More often than not athletes are both taller and heavier than the average person since the heart is a muscle that is proportionate to body size and also responds to exercise by changing dimensions, it makes sense that athletes have larger hearts. This however, is not the end of the story.
Traditionally many doctors have been less than wholehearted when recommending weight training as an ideal form of physical conditioning especially for the heart. Why?
Many past scientific studies have not shown that weight training increases maximum oxygen uptake significantly nor do these studies typically show significant increases in coronary blood flow.
Since 99% of all exercise physiologists and cardiologists believe that the capacity for maximum oxygen uptake is the most important conditioning factor for health medical considerations such as normal blood cholesterol and coronary flow are of course far more important, they do not recommend so called anaerobic forms of exercise since they supposedly do not augment this capacity.
As they say in the world of treadmills you don’t drop dead from small biceps but a weak heart can kill you. All this notwithstanding some studies have found weight lifting exercise raise blood pressure during the actual exercise, not permanently.
Other studies have reported that weight training does not necessarily give the same favourable cholesterol lowering results that conventional aerobics may.
Thus many doctors conclude erroneously that for a true conditioning effect you must do aerobics and while weight training probably won’t hurt you it won’t condition your heart, your most important muscle.
Still this is not the end of the story, not only do many physicians not recommend weight training as a conditioner they also declare that weight training or power activities with an element of isometric contraction or isotonic contraction of a high intensity may make your heart less efficient than it was before you started your conditioning programme.
Many doctors make this conclusion based on cross sectional rather than longitudinal or cross over studies.
Indeed some doctors proscribe weight training without even looking closely at anatomical data or they simply subscribe to those studies that report that long term heavy weight lifting actually lowers maximum oxygen uptake in some subjects without anyone really knowing the details of the research.
CARDIC HYPERTROPHY
Yes, athletes have larger hearts than other people. Many have a slower heart rate than normal called a resting bradycardia and many have strange heart sounds like a third and even fourth sounds instead of lub dub cardiologists often hear faint systolic murmurs in athlete’s hearts which usually represent some mitral valve regurgitation.
Researchers clearly don’t agree on the meaning of athlete’s heart hypertrophy and the different forms of hypertrophy caused by different exercise routines.
It’s somewhat disconcerting that more than a few cardiologists worry that an anatomical risk factor may be associated with an enlarged heart due to exercise at least to the extent that exercise hypertrophy may mimic the risks associated with other heart hypertrophic conditions caused by high blood pressure cardiomyopathy and aorticstnosis narrowing.
Theoretically your heart responds differently to different exercise programmes. Also theoretically aerobic.-