What happens to the heart when we start to strain it?
Like any muscle, the heart, adapting to the load, becomes larger and stronger. You just need to take into account that inadequate load on the heart affects the heart muscle much more detrimentally than too much in regular strength training. If you listen carefully to the opinions of experts, the risk increases significantly when your age exceeds 35 years. So this article is primarily for them!
But the coach is stern to me: they say, it’s necessary, Fedya,
The main thing is that the will, he says, is to win.
Will will, if you have too much strength, but I got carried away:
I rushed at ten thousand, as if at five hundred, and got stuck!
(V. Vysotsky, song
I'll repeat it again. I would not dare to say that physical activity does not bring anything good to the heart. Quite the opposite! In this article I want to focus your attention on something completely different. Before you join one of the many columns of runners lining up at the start of the next marathon, it’s worth understanding a very difficult puzzle: how long and how intensely should beginner athletes exercise? Or maybe you shouldn’t play this roulette at all?
The heart has a lot of worries. We will now be interested primarily in the task of ensuring the process of gas exchange between the body and the external environment. External gas exchange and its connection with cellular respiration is an incredibly interesting topic, but I am going to write about it not now, but in the section on breathing training and delays.
Here it will be enough for us to remember that the process of oxygen saturation of the blood occurs in the lungs, where waste venous blood enters the pulmonary circulation from the right ventricle of the heart.
In the lungs, on the pulmonary alveoli, a special blood protein, hemoglobin, releases carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules and attaches to the oxygen (O2) that you just inhaled. Carbon dioxide penetrates from the blood into the alveoli and is then expelled from the body upon exhalation.
Oxygen-rich blood passes from the lungs through the pulmonary veins to the left atrium and on to the left ventricle. Well, then, along the large circle of blood circulation , a long journey of oxygen-enriched blood begins into the aorta, arteries, arterioles and capillaries of all organs and tissues, spinning the wheel of life. The largest vessel in the systemic circulation is the aorta, which emerges from the left ventricle of the heart. This is biology, a textbook for 8th grade.
In the video presented above, you can understand the circles of blood circulation in more detail.
Are you too lazy to figure all this out? I ask you, my dear reader, before you close your computer and put on your sneakers to go for a run, try to read this article to the end. I will try not to burden your brain with anatomy anymore, but in the future I will appeal exclusively to logic and very simple arithmetic. Then I’ll continue...
The heart is a muscle. In this part of its function, it is essentially a regular pump. The main characteristic describing the pumping function of the heart will be its stroke volume (SV) . Simply put, this is how much blood the heart pumps out during one contraction.
The left cup contains 80 ml of liquid - this is how much blood the heart of an untrained person throws into the systemic circulation in one contraction. On the right is the volume of blood that the heart of a trained athlete ejects in one contraction - 140 ml.
In an adult healthy man, the average stroke volume at rest in the supine position is 60-90 ml of blood. I don’t want to be accused of sexism, but I’m ready to say that women have 10-15% less SV than men. For athletes training in endurance sports (skiers, cyclists, stayers, etc.) this figure reaches significantly higher numbers - 140 ml and even more! For elite athletes it can reach up to 200 ml!
Let's sum up the first intermediate result : each person's MR is individual. It depends on your genetic background and your current level of fitness.
What if you don’t have time to go to the gym?
What if you don’t have time to go to the gym? Modern society has advanced quite far in matters related to a healthy lifestyle. Today they talk a lot about health, give advice, study, conduct experiments and research. As a result, we have a lot of nutritional supplements on the shelves of pharmacies and stores, many different diets and recommendations on how to always be healthy and vigorous. However, everyone knows that it is not enough to limit yourself to eating junk food or give up bad habits.
What if you don’t have time to go to the gym?
Of course, you can devote yourself entirely to any sport or engage solely in order to maintain shape and good spirits. Even if you work a lot, are constantly on the move, or simply convince yourself that you don’t have time to go to the gym, you can find a way out.
Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to find a place and time to play sports, for example, buy a machine and special equipment. You can do this without leaving your home, just by following the link to the company’s resource.
Why do many people still prefer to go to the gym instead of working out at home? The answer to this question is obvious. People are afraid that they simply won’t be able to force themselves to exercise at home, and that their workouts won’t be as effective.
In fact, even experts say such fears are unfounded. The main thing is to develop a system, get used to the rhythm of training for a week or two, and then your body will happily be drawn to sports.
To make it easier to get used to training in an informal setting, you should create a favorable environment for physical activity at home. If for some reason you really can’t do it, then you should first be well prepared for the fact that in the near future you will regularly study at home.
First of all, find your strengths. For example,
- There may be people in the gym who are unpleasant to you, but there are none at home.
- You will waste time, effort and money on the way to the gym, but not at home.
If you have a free room in your house, then equip it as a mini-gym; if not, then just allocate a corner for yourself in which you will work out.
Buy equipment that is simple and easy to use. You shouldn’t immediately rush out and buy equipment for professional athletes.
If you want to always be in shape and improve your health, then
- sports mats,
- jump rope,
- cardio training machine,
- horizontal bench
- this is what will be enough to get started.
And, of course, wherever you exercise, don’t forget about the benefits of walking in the fresh air.
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How to train stroke volume (SV) of the heart?
The stroke volume of the heart at rest is minimal and when you begin to exercise, as your heart rate rises, the stroke volume increases. The stroke volume of the heart (SV) reaches its maximum values in both beginners and trained athletes when the intensity of your physical activity reaches the level of 40-60% of the maximum possible. After which the SV levels out and the curve becomes almost horizontal (2 lower curves).
For me, the figure for the optimal working pulse under a load designed to increase the stroke volume of the heart is calculated as follows:
my maximum heart rate: 220-60 (my age) = 160 beats/min
60% of this figure is: 160 x 0.6 = 96 beats/min
When I train at such a pulse, the chamber of the left/right ventricle stretches as much as possible, since the maximum amount of blood enters there. Well, if the ventricular chamber has already stretched, then, according to its design, the heart must contract as much as possible in order to push out the blood.
When my heart rate rises above 100 beats/min, the physiology is such that the heart's ability to ergonomically stretch and contract is impaired. This is pure theory. But in practice, I can’t keep my heart rate up to 100 beats/min when running. Even if I barely move my legs while jogging, even when I'm running at a snail's pace, it quickly rises above the estimated numbers. Maybe these are my individual characteristics? Perhaps the excessive excitability of the vegetative system, characteristic of natural sprinters, is having an effect? May be.
But when I walk for a long time, everything works out just fine for me! The pulse fluctuates steadily around 100 beats/min. It turns out that walking is now more suitable for me to develop MR.
Note! When I do work at a higher heart rate, I train some other resources of my cardiovascular system , which I will talk about in future articles. But I definitely include regular heart training in my training plan. They are absolutely necessary, especially for beginners!
Moreover, on real runs I have repeatedly encountered such a picture. When you jog for the first 20-30 minutes, your heart rate slowly but steadily rises, although you do not make any special effort to maintain the running pace. For me it reaches 150-153 beats/min, and then “suddenly” drops to 130-135 beats/min. at a constant running intensity. I interpret this as an indicator that the heart has reached its normal SV, and the vessels and capillaries of the body are effectively starting to work.
To summarize: the stroke volume of the heart will safely and effectively increase when you train in a load mode at which the heart rate (HR) is 60% of the maximum. Brisk walking is more suitable for this than running.
Another unexpected and “unpleasant” discovery for those who like to “prepare for a marathon in 30 days,” I think, will be the information that in order to achieve visible morphological results, you need to walk or run in this mode for 1.5-2 hours a day at least 3 times a week for at least six months !
So, I will continue to write articles about running primarily for those who are ready to slowly, systematically, day after day work on their health and are not in a hurry.
I would like to receive feedback from you in the form of active reposts of this material among your friends! I’m not sure that my approach is shared by the majority of self-trained runners, amateurs and semi-professionals, but numbers are stubborn things! And they say that most runners should adhere to a simple rule: “The slower you go, the further you will go.”
