Aerobics for the Heart?

“General cardiopulmonary fitness ” versus “Sports-specific endurance”

Clearly, running will give you greater endurance for running. Similarly, a rower would have better endurance at rowing if he trains for rowing. You become good at what you do.

On average, at least one death occurs at every marathon. Most of the time, the cause of death is heart attack. This goes back to the history of the Greek Olympic Games. The modern Athens Marathon commemorates the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens in 490 B.C., bringing news of a Greek victory over the Persians. Legend has it that Pheidippides delivered the momentous message "Niki!" ("victory"), then collapsed and died, thereby setting a precedent for dramatic conclusions to the marathon.

He died! Because of an over-strenuous activity of his heart.

Dr Kurt J Harris MD wrote an article concluding that the chances of clacification plaque forming was a lot higher in those who perform aerobic activity.

This was what he said:

“A given runner, in the German study, could be predicted (by MRI) to be more likely to have had a heart attack than a person with the same age, height, weight, smoking history, etc., who was sedentary. Take two subjects who otherwise look the same from a risk standpoint (which we know is kind of worthless anyway) and the sedentary one is more likely to have healthy coronary arteries.

And if compared to a person of the same age and sex, the runners in the German study had about the same chance of having had a heart attack, but this was despite being less likely to be obese, hypertensive, smoker etc., all those things that cardiologists tell us "cause" heart attacks.”

Like runner Jim Fixx, a fitness buff, who clearly died way earlier than he was supposed to, as compared to inactive Winston Churchchill. We can’t train our hearts and lungs and compare cardiopulmonary fitness to improvement of cardiovascular of our heart. Same goes with a marathon runner who has very good cardiovascular fitness but dies of a heart attack. On average there is a death at every marathon competition. Does this particularly mean that the people who died were unhealthy? Mind you, some were even world-class athletes.

We can train our muscles but not train our heart and lungs and then compare it to better health.

Here’s another article that further supports this statement (http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ACC/19091):

ATLANTA -- A group of elite long-distance runners had less body fat, better lipid profiles, and better heart rates than people being tested for cardiac disease, but, paradoxically, the runners had more calcified plaque in their heart arteries, according to a study reported here. Investigators performed computed tomography angiography on 25 people who had run at least one marathon a year since 1985, according to senior author Robert Schwartz, MD, of the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Foundation. They compared the athletes with 23 control patients who were undergoing the same scan for symptomatic or suspected heart abnormalities

By Ed Susman, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today Published: March 18, 2010 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Cli nical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

The Over-rated Vo2Max

Vo2Max is defined as the maximum oxygen consumption, or the aerobic capacity.

It is the bench press of endurance athletes, the trophy of gauging how endurance athletes compare lung capacity and being personally better in terms of so-called “fitness”.

It is true that certain evidence was found that Vo2Max studies have a relation to cardiovascular improvement. Nonetheless, Vo2Max is still an outright over-rated way of gauging one’s fitness.

Again, it has a lot to do with genetics. If u get an amateur athlete who trains really hard and does a Vo2Max analysis, he wouldn’t be anywhere close to an elite athlete who has not trained in years.

When u train, you better your Vo2Max but does that mean you’re healthier. No doubt, a better Vo2Max translates to better efficiency in transportation of oxygen supply, there is, however, no correlation of efficiency of transport of oxygen in the blood supply to muscle and benefit towards the heart.

You have as good a heart and lungs as whatever Nature has given you. Nature has designed them to last a good long while. Each of your organs has a limited capacity. When you exceed the capacity, there is a perception that your heart and lungs are out of shape.

As we age, we lose muscle mass and activities that you used to do become harder to achieve. You feel like your heart is pounding every time you get up to try to do something, but that is not because your heart and lungs have become weaker. It is because your muscles have become weaker and need strengthening. As we age, we lose muscle mass. If you strengthen your muscles again, you will be able to walk that flight of stairs, you maybe even able to run again. All you need to do is to strengthen those muscles.

“Strength is not everything, but without strength, you are nothing.” - Werner Kieser. Let strength training be the foundation, for whatever exercise or sports you decide to do.