Differences between a trained and a sedentary heart

Melanie Ramos 5 min. of reading Well-being habits Leave a comment

The heart is the pumping machine that supplies blood, oxygen and nutrients to all the cells in our body. This machine is practically perfect, it adapts to our physical effort according to the intensity at which it is forced to work.

Index

1 Heart and sport
2 Heart rate of a trained heart:
3 Heart rate of an untrained heart:
4 Tissue and heart rate
5 A trained heart
6 Related Entries:

Heart and sport

The heart has an adaptive mechanism which, when it is usually brought to dangerous extremes of intensity, reduces the rate of its beating to allow a safety margin to withstand the limiting stress the next time.

The heart rate of a person who does not normally exercise, ranges from 75-80 beats per minute.

When such a person engages in physical activity of a certain intensity, his heart rate can rise to 220, reaching a dangerous level. At this limit, the heart cannot sustain itself for long and exhaustion, even collapse, will occur.

Through regular training, the heart protects itself by reducing its resting rate, for example, by reducing it to 60 beats per minute, so that when it is forced to pump at maximum intensity, its maximum will not rise above 190 beats, and it can maintain this rate for longer without the risk of heart failure or collapse.

What we essentially want to convey is that the heart has the ability to adapt to exertion by slowing down its resting rhythm.

If a sedentary person has a heart rate of 80 beats per minute and a physically active person has a heart rate of 60 beats per minute, then this apparently insignificant difference of 20 beats per minute means that in the total resting phase the sedentary person’s heart will beat 28,800 times more per day.

Heart rate of a trained heart:

60 beats per minute * 60 = 3,600 per hour.
3,600 beats per hour * 24 = 86,400 per day.
86,400 beats per day * 365 = 31,536,000 per year.

Heart rate of an untrained heart:

80 beats per minute * 60 = 4,800 per hour.
4,800 beats per hour * 24 = 115,200 per day.
115,200 beats per day * 365 = 42,048,000 per year.

We have just seen the difference between the work done by a trained heart and a sedentary heart in terms of the number of beats.

There are two additional factors we should add when it comes to heart health.

Tissue and heart rate

Heart tissue is a muscle that is constantly contracting and relaxing, and like any muscle, it hypertrophies with work and depends on blood supply for sustenance and nourishment.

An inactive person’s heart is normally small and weak, like any muscle that is not sufficiently worked and shows some atrophy.

In contrast, an athlete’s heart is strong and relatively large because it is hypertrophied and highly efficient, pumping more blood per beat with less effort.

Physical exercise widens blood vessels and increases the capillary network. A sedentary heart not only has less capillary infrastructure but also smaller blood vessels, sometimes clogged with debris that further reduces blood supply.

The proper functioning of the heart depends to a large extent on the quality of its muscle tissue and this in turn on vascularisation, which is a consequence of physical training.

The heart rate depends to a large extent on the quality of the heart muscle (muscle tissue). The bigger and stronger the heart is, the less often it beats, because with each beat it pumps more blood and therefore works less, as it is more efficient.

A trained heart

A trained heart can reach its maximum effort below 180 beats per minute. The pumping capacity will be up to five times the rate of contractions at rest. It will also be able to maintain this rate for a long time.

However, in the same situation as above, the sedentary person will not be able to triple his heart rate because it will increase to very dangerous levels above 220 beats per minute, and he will not be able to maintain it for a long time because failure or collapse may occur.

In conclusion, it should be noted that physical training leads to an improvement in peak sporting performance, but not only that. What’s more, thanks to exercise, cardiovascular health improves significantly and with it the quality of life and life expectancy.

The heart is the central determinant of health and life. Therefore, keeping it in good condition is of utmost importance.

Related Entries:

Athlete's heart
Cardiovascular health - How to take care of our heart