Everyone knows normal daily exercise is beneficial to the heart. It helps reduce the risk of heart disease, reduces weight, lowers blood pressure, and improves cholesterol. A difference in the appearance of the heart can be seen between normal exercise and those of highly trained athletes. Athletic hearts undergo cardiac remodeling of chambers and physiological changes because the heart is working harder to pump blood to the rest of the body during extreme physical activity over time. A term commonly used to describe this is Athletic Heart Syndrome. In athletes, common findings are increase chamber size, wall thickness, increase in stroke volume and cardiac output. Athletic Heart Syndrome is not harmful if you 're athlete and is usually considered a benign condition. However, some risks are associated with it. …show more content…
Examples of endurance training are long-distance running, biking, and swimming and examples of strength training are weightlifting, wrestling, and sports like football. Different characteristics can be seen between endurance athletes and strength-trained athletes. Endurance training is associated with volume overload of the heart, whereas strength training is pressure overload. Endurance athletes need a large volume of oxygenated blood pumped to the rest of the body while they perform. Endurance athletes increase cardiac output with reduced peripheral vascular resistance, resulting in continuous volume changes for all cardiac chambers. Chamber dilated due to the volume overload so the heart can take in more blood. Strength training normal or slightly increase cardiac output, increased vascular resistance which results in increased blood pressure and LV afterload. The pressure overload causes the heart walls to increase in size to make the heart a stronger, more efficient heart during