Why is this interesting? - Friday, April 5
On exercise, balance, and physiology
Colin here. For awhile now I’ve been fascinated by the demands different types of fitness put on the body. In my sporting life I’ve done everything from rugby to skiing to tennis to rock climbing and found that each shapes and strains me in different ways. The body and musculature adapts accordingly.
Sometimes this creates interesting imbalances. You could be a powerlifter that back squats 500 pounds but can’t run a mile. You could be a crossfitter competing at a high level and find yourself winded after a few laps in the pool. Finding the ideal balance, so called “functional fitness”, is the holy grail, made more difficult by the fact that each of us is wired to respond in our own unique ways.
Why is this interesting?
Because it turns out that the balance and adaptation goes well beyond just the things you see on the outside. While the connection between exercise and heart health is well-established, a recent study comparing the hearts of high level swimmers and high level runners found actual physiological differences in the way the heart functioned based on the sport practiced.
“It turned out, to no one’s surprise, that the athletes, whether runners or swimmers, enjoyed enviable heart health. Their heart rates hovered around 50 beats per minute, with the runners’ rates slightly lower than the swimmers’. But all of the athletes’ heart rates were much lower than is typical for sedentary people, signifying that their hearts were robust.
The athletes also had relatively large, efficient left ventricles, their echocardiograms showed.
But there were interesting if small differences between the swimmers and runners, the researchers found. While all of the athletes’ left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners. Their ventricles filled even earlier and untwisted more emphatically than the swimmers’ hearts did.
In theory, those differences should allow blood to move from and back to the runners’ hearts more rapidly than would happen inside the swimmers’.”
The takeaway here is workouts can remake the way our hearts work and the next frontier of fitness will be to find individualized exercise routines that can truly effect whole body health. (CJN)
Chart of the Day:
Who owns what in big media? (NRB)
Quick Links:
Nirmal Purja, a former British special forces soldier, is attempting to climb the 14 highest mountains on earth in just seven months. The current record is seven years, 11 months and 14 days. (NRB)
Congestion pricing just passed for New York City. The state stayed light on details to make it easier to get through and a commission will be arranged to work out the details. Not surprisingly, the lobbying has started with buses, trucks, motorcycles, and everyone else asking exemptions. “Drivers will likely pay $12 to $14 for cars and around $25 for trucks entering the city during peak business hours, and less at night and on weekends, said Samuel I. Schwartz, a traffic expert known as Gridlock Sam who was one of the architects of the congestion pricing plan. But if the authority starts handing out exemptions, that would likely push up tolls for everyone else to $15 or more.” (NRB)
Thanks for reading,
Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)