Is the heart being trained? Healthy heart training

A strong healthy heart gives a person cheerfulness and longevity. In order for the heart to be healthy, it needs to be loaded and trained.

Why train your heart? So that it can withstand heavy loads, in order to improve blood circulation, and hence the nutrition of organs and tissues. The life of a modern person is so comfortable that hypodynamia haunts him at every turn. Meanwhile, the body needs movement and physical activity. If they are regular, then the heart will be in order.

What is cardio training?

So, to restore and maintain the heart in good shape, special training will help - cardio training. Do not be afraid of such a serious word. As cardio workouts, you can choose special exercises, but you can train your heart with such simple ways like walking, running or cycling.

It is important that physical activity is regular, do not try to strain to the point of exhaustion. Charging can be done right at work, it will also be very useful to walk a couple of stops instead of going to public transport. A great workout is walking up the stairs. Walk rhythmically, at the same pace, and the heart will receive a load. As for special training, they need to be done three times a week.

How to train the heart?

What should be cardio training?

• efficient,
• Comfortable
• Safe.

In order to provide the heart with a load and at the same time not harm the body, you need to correctly calculate this very load. The calculation is based on the pulse:

• First, we calculate the MHR (maximum heart rate) taking into account age,
• Next, we calculate the load
• Then we control the pulse after doing the exercises and compare it with the calculations.

Calculating MHR is very simple: subtract your age from 220. The optimal load will be, forcing the heart to beat at a frequency that is 75-85% of the MHR. If the heart beats more often as a result of training, then the load is too great, if less often, it is too small.

Let's take an example. Let's say you are 45 years old, then the maximum heart rate for you will be 175. We calculate the minimum and maximum percentage, we find that from 131 to 148 beats per minute is the load on your heart that will ensure its training.

However, do not forget about the pulse rate at rest. It must be measured before class. If it is from 60 to 80 beats per minute, then everything is in order. If the heart beats more often, then it is worth being more careful, more often control the pulse during training, in case of exceeding the permissible norm, reduce the load or stop exercising.

To control the pulse, it is convenient to use special devices - heart rate monitors that are worn on the arm. It is enough to glance at the scoreboard, and you will see the mode of operation of your heart and understand whether you need to increase or decrease the load.

Let's start training

We choose the kind of sport or exercise that we like. Be sure to consider whether you want to study in a group or individually. If you want to be among people, then it is better to go to sport Club to fitness or enroll in a dance studio. If you do not need company, then you can train in the gym or install exercise equipment at home. As we have already said, running, walking, cycling, skiing in winter are perfect.

Duration of cardio training

For beginners, a few minutes may be enough, especially if the heart is not accustomed to stress at all. Gradually, the duration of the workout should be increased and brought to an hour.

Important Points

• Start any workout with a warm-up
• The load should be such that the pulse speeds up to the desired indicators,
• The heart rate should be within the calculations throughout the session,
• It is impossible to change the load abruptly, it should decrease and increase smoothly,
• At the end of the workout, the warm-up should be repeated.

What does cardio provide?

• Strengthen the heart muscle
• Increase the capacity of the heart, that is, improve the blood supply to the whole body,
• Increase lung capacity
• increase endurance,
• Helps to cope with stress and lose extra pounds.

Most people who work out in the gym often neglect the workout itself. main muscle our body is the heart. This muscle, which pumps blood throughout the body, is the main indicator of the level physical training person. If you take the time to train your heart, you can achieve amazing results and improve your health. Your heart can even serve as a "compass" to help you regulate your workouts and improve your workout performance. When you understand how your heart works and how it can be used to regulate and improve your workouts, you will be able to appreciate the importance of this muscle.

A LITTLE THEORY ABOUT THE HEART

The size of the heart in adults is approximately 11-15 centimeters, and the transverse size is 8-11 centimeters. The mass of the fibromuscular hollow organ ranges from approximately 250 to 350 grams. It all depends on the gender of the person. Typically, in men, the mass of the heart is about 300 to 350 grams, and in women, from 250 to 300 grams.

Contrary to popular belief, this human organ is not located on one side of the body, it is located almost exactly in the center of your chest. Due to a slight displacement, the heart is located in the so-called pericardium or pericardial sac. Your heart is responsible for pumping about six liters of blood throughout the human body. On average, about 72 contractions occur per minute. For most people, the normal heart rate is around 60 to 90 beats per minute. If a person exercises regularly, then this frequency can decrease by 10-20 beats per minute. Studies show that every decade there is a decline in heart rate, that is, the older, the lower the heart rate.

There are many ways to determine whether you have a healthy heart or not. A healthy heart should beat in approximately the same rhythm, which will change depending on the level of stress that a person receives in training and the level of oxygen starvation. A healthy heart has a large volume, which refers to the amount of blood pumped. A healthy heart does not have to constantly work at full capacity to pump blood, as the heart rate will always be below average. Blood pressure is another indicator of heart health and should be in the 120/80 range.

Different types of training can affect the work and further development of the heart in different ways. For example, aerobic exercise have a very positive effect on the body, increasing it in volume. Not even long, but regular cardio training can have a good effect on the work of the heart and reduce heart rate by increasing volumes. Regular training of the heart can increase the speed at which the body will recover from intense physical exertion. It has been proven that intensive training has a positive effect on lowering blood pressure. In addition, regular cardio exercise can increase the concentration of hemoglobin in the blood, which can improve the efficiency of transporting oxygen to cells to avoid oxygen starvation during exercise.

MEAN AND MAXIMUM HEART RATE

The average heart rate for an adult is about 72, or 75 for a woman and 70 for a man. The lowest recorded heart rate is 28 beats per minute. This record figure is attributed to a Spanish cyclist named Miguel Indurain. Many athletes have a heart rate between 30-40 without exercise. In medicine, such a low heart rate is called bradycardia (brady - slow; cardia - heart). Bradycardia characterizes heart rate and has nothing to do with any diseases, and so on. Also, there is such a thing as tachycardia, which means an increase in heart rate to high level, more than 100 beats per minute. This is a very dangerous disease for human health. There are pathological tachycardia that occurs at rest and tachycardia as a normal physiological phenomenon as a result of intense physical exertion during training. However, even if the heart rate increases due to exercise, it is still a very dangerous and undesirable condition for the body and health. of cardio-vascular system.

Here is another useful table that can be used to determine the risk of cardiovascular complications in patients with IHD (Coronary Heart Disease) and AH (Arterial Hypertension).

The concept of maximum heart rate was developed to help people exercise safely and effectively. The traditional formula for calculating the maximum heart rate for a person is 220 minus the person's age. For example, if your age is 30, then your maximum heart rate would be 190 beats per minute. As you can see, the frequency heart contraction decreases with age. However, this formula is not entirely accurate, since there are many factors that affect a person's heart rate, such as: heart volume and size, blood pressure, the ability of the heart to recover after exercise, so a new formula was later proposed, with which you can more accurately calculate the heart rate of the athlete. Based on the Tanaka method.

So why should you worry about your heart rate? Heart rate is a measure of your workout. In order to monitor and understand heart rate, you must understand the situation in which certain energy sources are used during training. There are three main sources, namely ATP and CrF, glycolysis and aerobic sources.

The ATP and CrF system is the most familiar among bodybuilders. This is a system in which your body is forced to perform work without oxygen support, that is, during strength training. The stock of these molecules is very small. When you raise big weight, it is in these first 1-3 seconds of the approach that these energy connections are consumed. After the consumption of ATP, the molecules of CRF (creatine phosphate) are included in the work. The supply of these substances prevails over ATP, it provides you with energy for 5-10 seconds and is designed for work of a power nature, for example, when squatting with a barbell or deadlift. This system is the basis of powerlifting, shot put, and short-distance sprints, that is, those sports in which the load is very large, but short-term. After Adenosine Triphosphate and CRF are used up, the body moves to the stage of splitting muscle glycogen, which provides a longer workout (up to 3 minutes). by the most efficient system heart training is an aerobic process that uses oxygen for energy.

All these sources are used by the body gradually, depending on the type of physical activity. As you understand, if you take a strength training designed for lifting large weights, they mainly use ATP And KrF, and oxygen, which is so important for training the heart, comes into play only with prolonged exercise. It is for this reason that it is recommended to regularly perform aerobic exercise and do some cardio from time to time.

The rate at which your heart beats can help you determine which energy system is dominant at any given point in your workout. When you have determined your maximum heart rate for yourself, you can determine the zones in which you can burn fat, build muscle, and so on. Here is an example of common training zones: 50-60% - low intensity loads, which are suitable for those people who want to burn a few calories with minimal impact on muscles; 60-70% - the most effective fat burning zone; 70-80% - aerobic zone; 80-90% - the anaerobic zone is also very effective for burning excess fat; 90-100% is the maximum zone.

CONCLUSIONS

It is very important to monitor your heart rate, as this will help you determine your training goal and adjust it to achieve your goals. Also, it is very important to perform aerobic exercise, because due to the high-intensity work of the heart, it increases in volume, which allows you to pump more and more blood. Imagine that a person performs constantly strength exercises and generally does not pay attention to aerobic exercise. That is, the body increases, and the heart remains approximately the same as it was before. With an increase in body weight, the volume of blood in the human body increases. Imagine an athlete increased from 70 kg to 100 kg muscle mass, and the heart remained the same as it was when starting weight athlete. That is, there will be a very large load on the heart due to the large blood flow.

Strength training is not very effective for training the heart, as it was mentioned earlier, the training itself with big weights designed to use up ATP and Krf to perform the minimum number of repetitions, while the aerobic process is not connected. At the same time, performing long-term intense exercise with a heart rate of 70-80% of the maximum number can not only help improve the condition of the heart and increase its volume, they are very effective in burning excess fat. This does not mean that if you are on a set of muscle mass, aerobic exercise is prohibited. They can be combined with strength training, building muscle mass and at the same time, paying attention to training the heart. You can read more about how to burn fat without losing muscle mass here.

That's all. In the next article, we will look at the most popular cardio exercises.

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Take care of the heart, what to do for this until it makes itself felt. Problems usually imperceptibly accumulate, not manifesting themselves until a certain point. Mortality due to heart disease is at the top of the list, heart attacks and strokes are younger. That is why it is important to pay attention to the heart and blood vessels in a timely manner, to strengthen them, primarily through physical activity. Training the heart and developing endurance, stress on blood vessels - all this important elements life of a healthy person.

Why is it necessary to give the heart and blood vessels a load?

1. A decrease in the amount of C-reactive protein, which favors the appearance of inflammatory processes in the body.
2. Lower blood pressure and triglycerides.
3. Raising the level of good cholesterol.
4. Regulation of sugar and insulin in the blood.
5. Weight loss.

Inactivity provokes problems with the heart and blood vessels. Training of the heart occurs when the strength of contractions increases, the heart rate increases at times of load. At the same time, the vessels also train.

Exercises to train the heart

In fact, the range of such exercises is quite wide. Heart training is carried out through cardio and aerobic exercise. You can go jogging, ride a bike for at least half an hour a day, jump rope, swim in the pool, do aerobics and step, dance, or just walk for 20 minutes in the evening, give up the elevator. In this case, it is recommended to adhere to the rules:

1. The optimal heart rate is one hundred twenty to one hundred and thirty beats (not higher than 130 and lower than 110).
2. You can not arrange training sessions lasting more than an hour (with weak vessels - 30 minutes).
3. Do these exercises two or three times a week.

Running heart training is also useful. Don't make it a routine. Do jogging three to four times a week for 20 minutes, monitor your condition. At unpleasant sensations switch to walking.

Other factors

Stress, ecology and nutrition gradually lead blood vessels to increased tone, which affects blood pressure. In such a situation, do not rely only on the help of pharmaceutical preparations, you need to restore full blood circulation, and above all in the capillaries. This will help you train the heart and blood vessels. Vibration exercises will be effective: in the morning in bed, raise your arms and legs up, shake them for about two minutes. This is how vibromassage of capillaries is carried out and lymph is redistributed, through which the body is cleansed of toxins and toxins. It is advisable to repeat the exercise in the evening before going to bed.

1. Quit smoking.
2. Lose weight when overweight.
3. Follow the doctor's recommendations for taking medications.
4. Eat less salt.
5. Sleep 8-9 hours.
6. Eat varied, wholesome, healthy foods.

Well nourishes and strengthens "Panangin", which affects the metabolic processes in the heart, improves its work, prevents early aging of the myocardium, prevents the appearance of atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, arrhythmia. It is recommended to healthy people as a means of strengthening the heart muscle and for the prevention of vascular diseases. The composition of "Panangin" includes potassium and magnesium, which can also be obtained daily with food. Eat spinach, seaweed, lentils, oatmeal, sunflower seeds, wheat bran, linseed oil, fish fat to cleanse blood vessels.

Heart training: pulse and its indicators

How to determine the intensity of training to achieve the result? We determine the maximum heart rate, it is individual. Subtract your age from 220. The result is your maximum heart rate. The heart recovers in an indicator of 50-60% of the maximum pulse. This improves the state of the cardiovascular and respiratory system. Raising the pulse to 80% of the maximum covers more blood vessels, pulmonary ventilation increases, the size and strength of the heart increase. Training in the red line zone (80-90% of the maximum) is carried out with good physical form, under medical supervision.

We develop further

Don't forget that training the heart and developing endurance should attract equal amounts of attention. All stages of increasing the intensity of exercises should be completed gradually, slowly, so as not to harm the heart and blood vessels and develop their endurance. The key to success is regularity. If you go to the pool, ride a bike several times a week, then morning exercises must be done daily. In addition to the previously recommended shaking, turning, we recommend a number of exercises for the heart and blood vessels:

1. Walking on toes, raising your knees high.
2. Hands above the head in the castle, legs apart. deep
3. Hands to the sides, bring together, slap on the shoulders.
4. Rotation of the arms forward - up - back and vice versa.
5. Imitation of cycling in a prone position.
6. Cruciform movements of the legs at a height of 30-40 centimeters from the floor in the prone position.

Remember: it is not the number of exercises and the intensity of the load that matters, but the regularity. The load should increase gradually. After it, relaxation is necessary, so that muscle fibers increased, and the heart muscle, blood vessels strengthened, their endurance increased.

Strengthening the heart and folk recipes

It is very important that the heart muscle receives the necessary vitamins, here training alone is not enough. Here are some tips from healers:

1. Mix chopped dried apricots, Walnut, figs, lemon with peel, raisins, honey. All take 250 grams. Keep refrigerated. Take a tablespoon three times a day.
2. For one and a half glasses of water, take a tablespoon of hawthorn, boil for thirty minutes. Drink a quarter cup three times before meals.
3. Take 10 grams of lemon balm, St. John's wort, birch leaves, 30 grams of fireweed. Steam a tablespoon in 300 ml of water. Take three times a day for a glass.
4. Put a tablespoon of buckwheat in 500 ml of water, leave for 2 hours. Drink one glass three times.
5. Five tablespoons of rosemary herb pour 100 ml of vodka, leave for 7 days. Take twenty-five drops three times half an hour before meals.

Heart training (cardio training) strengthens the heart, improves the adaptation of the heart to stress. Train your heart in the office, on a walk, in the pool. Cardio training cheat sheet: monitoring the loads of cardio training by heart rate, how to train when you are sick or missed a workout

Trained heart- the key to good health and longevity. In order for the heart muscle to be fully adapted to the loads, it is important to correctly plan the sequence of exercises. Before embarking on cardio training, it is important to determine how trained the heart is. Self-determine functional state and fitness of the heart by pulse can be done using the heart fitness test by pulse.

Train your heart daily!
Only regular training will give a tangible effect.
Reduce training loads when you are sick. With sore throat, runny nose, acute respiratory diseases, suspend cardio training until recovery. Physical activity during illness damages the heart.

If you missed a workout
If you missed 1 workout, you need to go back to the previous workout. 7 missed cardio workouts ─ the load on the heart is like 14 workouts ago, etc.

Control your pulse!
The load should gradually increase from training to training and always correspond to the possibilities of the heart, which can be easily determined by measuring the pulse during training.
The change in heart rate during training - the main indicator of the effectiveness of cardio training - the change in heart rate. The best way to monitor your heart rate during exercise is with a heart rate monitor. It is important to do this before the test load and after 30 seconds. (within 30 sec). The test load is performed for about 3 minutes.
The maximum allowable heart rate = 220 - age (years).
Optimal heart rate for heart training = maximum allowable heart rate x 70%
The load, in the first 15 minutes of cardio training, should gradually increase to the optimal level. For the next 20 minutes, you should train at your optimal heart rate. After that, you need to gradually reduce the load until the pulse becomes the same as at rest + 10%. Only then can you relax and unwind.
The less the pulse changes during training, the easier the heart adapts to physical activity.
If the pulse does not reach the optimal level, it means that the training is ineffective and it is necessary to increase the load. If the heart rate borders on the maximum allowable pulse, it is necessary to reduce the load.

1. Train your heart in the office! First step

Spend 2-3 gymnastic "five minutes" during the working day. Let execution simple exercises. In an office setting physical exercise can be done sitting or standing. For this suitable complex warm-up exercises in the office.
Once you get used to exercising indoors, move on to doing cardio on fresh air.

2. Walk in the park or in the forest! Second step

Daily half-hour walks in the fresh air (preferably in a park area) will help to adapt the heart to constant training. Start with leisurely walks: 1.5 km (about 2500 steps) in 40 minutes.
Every time your heart rate stops reaching the optimal level for heart training in the middle of a workout, increase the walking route by about 100 m (about 170 steps). Accordingly, you will have to increase the walking speed in order to have time to cover the entire route in 40 minutes. The heart will "take new frontiers" loads. When you walk 4 km in half an hour, keeping optimal heart rate sign up for the pool.

3. Swim! Third step

Swimming in the pool for 15-30 minutes, 3 times a week allows you to train skeletal muscles and heart, without putting undue stress on the spine and knees.
Swimming has no contraindications. The main advantages of swimming: the work of all muscle groups, the absence of axial load on the spine and knee joints.

4. Fitness or running!

3 months after starting heart training in the pool, start running or sign up for a fitness or ... dance! Dancing, aerobics, and running help to train the heart muscle, improve mood and allow you to achieve inner harmony.

Therefore, the good boy Denis Borisov, in my person, today will tell you many interesting and vital things about the correct and incorrect training of the heart.

ATTENTION!!!

Before you do anything, think about why you need it and carefully study the instructions. Do not take medicines without your doctor's instructions, do not try to cure yourself. Many medicines have contraindications and can harm your health! Some things without skill and knowledge are better not to do. Your life depends on it! All examples (above/below) are for reference only.

human heart

Distilling blood regularly through the whole body, it creates such a monstrous pressure that it can push a stream of blood to a length of 9 meters. The human heart is incredibly resilient. It is constantly, without rest, decreasing, reaching a monstrous figure - more than 40,000,000. cuts per year. Such a fantastically large load is not in vain and is the reason for the very gloomy statistics of cardiovascular diseases in the modern world. “Motors” very often either misuse or destroy the “motor resource” by working in the wrong mode. Meanwhile, it is very easy to set up the work of the heart and train it. And a little later I will tell you about the correct and effective methods cardiovascular training.

By the way, those who think that they don’t particularly need it: they say, I don’t see the applied value of training the heart! YOU guys and girls are very much mistaken, because a trained heart increases functionality and endurance. It happens that a person is very strong physically, and after work for 30-60 seconds he is all sweaty and starts to choke, although there seems to be strength in the muscles. This is especially common among those guys who are engaged in martial arts. You look, it seems like a healthy person, and in a minute all red and with an open mouth - take it and do whatever you want with it. Why is that?

Cardiovascular system and endurance

The heart is, in a broad sense, an electrical "pump" that constantly drives blood through the pipes (vessels) of our body. This system, in general, is called the cardiovascular system! Its task is to supply all the cells and organs of our body with the necessary amount of oxygen and other nutrients necessary for life. Having understood this, you can see several relationships important for understanding the effective work of the heart.

The larger the body, the more blood is needed for it.

The larger the heart, the more blood it pumps at a time (more oxygen at a time).

The smaller the heart, the more often it must contract to pump the required volume of blood.

The larger the heart, the less frequently it must contract to pump the required amount of blood.

The less often the heart contracts, the less it wears out over a lifetime.

For bodybuilders or other amateurs power types sports, this is especially important, because in our case the situation becomes more complicated big amount muscle mass. Every extra 10 kg of muscle requires about 3 liters of extra oxygen per minute.

In an ordinary person, 1 liter of blood carries an average of 160 ml of oxygen. If we multiply this amount of oxygen by the amount of blood pumped per minute (which depends on heart rate), we get the amount of oxygen delivered by the blood per minute. If the load is very intense (180-190 heartbeats per minute), then most average people will get about 4 liters of oxygen per minute.

Now imagine two twin brothers on a treadmill. One weighs 70 kg, and the second is a jock and weighs 80 kg. Here they run. For the first, 4 liters of oxygen is enough for a comfortable run, but for the second one, for comfort, it is necessary to pump not 4, but 6-7 liters of blood (to nourish the muscles). And the heart, if it is the same size as a brother's, and is contracting at the same speed, will not have time to satisfy all the organs with enough oxygen. The jock will quickly begin to choke and will be forced to slow down. Sadness…

How to fix it? Either reduce oxygen intake (lose weight, which is not acceptable), or increase the volume of the heart and blood pumped at a time. This, in fact, is the meaning of training the heart - to increase its internal volume.

The larger the volume of the heart, the more nutrients the heart receives at a time.

L and D - cardiac hypertrophy.

Note that I said an increase in the volume of the heart, not an increase in the size of the heart. These are very important things. Because the first is very useful, and the second, on the contrary, is very harmful! The fact is that cardiac hypertrophy can be good and bad. When the increase in volume occurs due to the stretching of the walls of the heart muscle (L-hypertrophy) - this is very good! This allows us to pump more blood at a time - which is what we need. But when the heart grows due to the thickening of the walls of the heart muscle (D - hypertrophy) - this is very bad. This is the so-called myocardial hypertrophy due to a diastolic defect. In general, such an unpleasant thing as a heart attack is the consequences of just such changes in the heart.

How to train the heart well?

How to achieve good hypertrophy and avoid bad? Everything is very simple. No need to work at a pulse close to the maximum (180-190 beats)! You need to work for a long time and often at an average heart rate (110-140) beats per minute. For the majority, a pulse of 120-130 beats per minute is most often ideal. An ordinary healthy person at rest has a pulse of 70 beats per minute. When such a person begins to do some kind of cyclic long-term work (training with iron, running or walking fast), his pulse begins to increase in order to supply all the organs of the body with an increased amount of oxygen due to the load. Here his pulse reached 130 beats per minute. A person in this situation can stabilize the load and continue to work without increasing the intensity. If he continues this training for an hour, then the "flexibility" of his heart will begin to improve. Muscles will distill a huge amount of blood through the heart, and it will begin to gradually stretch. If you train like this often (from 3 times a week for 60 minutes), then over time the heart will stretch and its volume will increase significantly. Accordingly, the volume of blood pumped per pulse will increase, endurance will increase, and the number of pulses at rest will decrease.

How much can you "stretch" the heart? Twice is very likely. 50% guaranteed. In an ordinary person, most often the volume of the heart is about 600 ml. For a trained athlete, 1.200 ml is a fairly common result. Unique athletes (MSMK skiers, runners) have 1.500-1.800 ml. But this is already the level of the champion of the Olympic Games.

How fast can you "stretch" the heart? For a pronounced result, 6 months are enough. With three workouts a week for 60 minutes for six months, the heart is stretched by 30-40%. If you can do these workouts every day, you can count on a heart increase of 50% or more. In general, there is a very simple rule: the more time during the week the heart works at the desired pulse rate (120-130), the more and faster it stretches. With such a “light” training regimen, there are no harmful changes in the heart, which will be discussed a little later. In this mode, the heart, due to constant pumping a large number blood is forced to "stretch" in volume. Over time, you will have to increase the intensity of your exercises in order to stay in the desired zone (120-130) heart rate, because. your heart will learn to pump more oxygen at a time. And that load, which at the beginning was sufficient to increase the heart rate to 130 beats per minute, will eventually drop to 120, then - 110 ... 100 ... etc. Fine. How to train in practice?

Your aim:

Achieve a rise in heart rate to 120-130 beats per minute;

To achieve this, it is not necessary to run at all. Most often, doctors and trainers advise running to train the heart. Why? Probably a stereotype and simplicity. No need to explain to the client why. He said to run and dumped to drink tea in the coaching room. Very convenient, right.

In fact, the heart doesn't care at all. For the heart, the volume of blood that it must pump to ensure physical activity is important. And what kind of physical activity will be, it does not matter at all. The main thing is to maintain the desired pulse without “holes” and strong “peaks”. This can be achieved by training with iron very easily. You will only need to reduce weight and do sets often enough that your heart rate does not have time to drop below 110-120 beats per minute. For example, you do 10-15 reps of the bench press, rest for 30 seconds (or immediately), do a set of bent over rows, rest 30 seconds, and repeat the procedure again. 5 cycles (sets) will take about 10 minutes. We did 6 such “double sets” per workout - and we get the right 60 minutes in the right heart rate range.

The cardiovascular system

Anything can be an alternative: boxing, swimming, running, jumping rope. Any fairly intense work. You can just get in the habit of walking very brisk pace three times a week in my area. The main thing here is to control the heart rate.

There are two main ways to control heart rate: simple and fashionable. The essence of the first is that you put your middle finger right hand in the area of ​​the left wrist with inside(at the base thumb, it is there that the nurse measures your pulse) or in the area carotid artery(on the left side of the neck) and feeling the pulsation, count the beats in 6 seconds (let's say you got 10 beats), then multiply the result by 10 to find out the number of beats per minute (10X10 = 100). You need to put the middle finger (thumb and forefinger have their own strong pulsation and can confuse). The longer the period of time you consider, the more accurate the result. You can count the pulse in 15 seconds and multiply by the number 4.

A more fashionable way is to buy a heart rate monitor that shows you real-time heart rate with ECG accuracy. This stray costs about $ 50-100 and is a collar with a sensor that is hung under the chest with an elastic belt and a display in the form of an ordinary watch on the arm. This is a very accurate method that will help you a lot if you decide to train your heart or burn fat. After all, low-intensity exercise is not only good for training your heart. They, moreover, lead to the best fat burning, as we talked about earlier.

Myocardial dystrophy - sports heart disease

Okay, now let's consider the situation if we increase the intensity above 130 beats per minute. What happens to our heart in conditions maximum number abbreviations? With an average load, the heart, in order to pump blood, contracts and stretches completely, relaxing. This “relaxation” between contractions is called diastole. When the intensity of exercise is critical (heart rate 180-200 per minute), the heart is forced to contract very often and does not have time to stretch (relax) completely - diastole disappears. Before I could relax, I needed to contract again! There is an internal tension of the heart, and the blood passes through it poorly, which leads to hypoxia and the formation of lactic acid. The process is absolutely identical to muscle pumping. Acidification occurs, which leads to the growth of the walls of the heart (hypertrophy). And if acidification continues too long or too often, it leads to death (necrosis) of heart cells. These are microinfarctions that the athlete usually does not notice. Everything would be fine, but the "dead" heart cells turn into connective tissue, which is a "dead" ballast (does not contract and conducts poorly electrical impulses- only interferes!). In other words, the heart can be large because of such a “dead” tissue, and the useful part of the heart (living heart cells) can be small. This is myocardial dystrophy or the so-called. sports heart.

Myocardial dystrophy develops due to a defect in diastole (HR 180-200 per minute) and is the cause of death of many athletes due to cardiac arrest. Most deaths occur in sleep. But the cause is still microinfarcts received during very intense training.

Often I see teenagers or adult beginners coaches begin to drive on the principle of "The harder - the faster you get used to it." This is pure lack of knowledge. Be sure to take into account the preparedness of a person and the state of his cardiovascular system. I will give two examples.

Section. Two people: an experienced and a beginner. The trainer gives them intense work (CrossFit, running, sparring, iron, etc. no matter what). But the experienced heart is trained and has a stretched volume of 1.000 - 1.200 ml. And the beginner has a heart with a volume of 600 ml. Challenge: What will happen? Answer: An experienced heart rate will rise to 130, and he will train without any problems for the benefit of the heart. But for a beginner, the heart rate will jump up to 180-200 ... He will be red and suffocate. “Come on,” the coach shouts. - More!". And the beginner's heart at this time is gradually dying, earning microinfarcts due to the effect of diastole. A beginner does not train the heart, but ruins it, earning myocardial dystrophy. And I see this regularly in many sections.

Two guys came to practice. One weighs 60 kg and the other weighs 90 kg. They have the same level of fitness. The trainer therefore gives them the same level of intensity. Question: What will happen? Answer: The size of the hearts of the guys is the same (600 ml.), But the size of the "consumers" is different. The first heart size is enough to be in the heart rate range of 130, but the second one needs to “feed” one and a half times more cells! The second with the same load has a heart rate of 180-200! Microinfarctions and myocardial dystrophy!

heart and Gym

The problem is that cell death (myocardial dystrophy) is for life. You can stretch the "living" part of the heart with proper training in the future, but your "dead" part of the heart is with you forever, and it will always limit the work of the healthy part.

It is often said that barbell exercises harm the heart. It's better to run. This is not so, because it does not matter at all which physical activity you are doing. Only the level matters. You need to stay in the right (useful) range of loads for training. By the way, the gym in this regard is quite a useful thing. The pulse usually does not rise above 130-140 beats (which is good). But the heart of bodybuilders is usually quite weak for two other reasons:

The large size of oxygen "consumers" with an average heart size;

Long rest between sets when heart rate falls below 100 beats.

If bodybuilders trained with shorter rests between sets, they would be smaller, but with a much more trained cardio. vascular system. On the other hand, a bodybuilder's heart will often be better trained than a weightlifter's or powerlifter's heart (because of the long rest between sets).

Well, I hope you were interested in understanding this issue. Try to improve with reasonableness, friends. And the balance between the heart and muscles is an important part of such intelligence. Remember Arnold or Turchinsky with their heart problems and don't repeat their mistakes.