Written By: Maya Transoloski
Expert Contributor: Jay. D
Did you know that the muscle in your heart is similar to the muscle in your biceps? It’s well known that exercise strengthens the heart just as weight training strengthens the biceps. However, the difference in the function of the heart and skeletal muscles makes it necessary to observe a special set of rules when exercising your heart.
The Heart’s “All or None” Law
There are actually three kinds of muscle in your body. You have smooth muscle, which functions involuntarily in your intestinal tract and other organs. You also have skeletal and cardiac muscles, which resemble each other in appearance: both have striated fibers.
The fibres in skeletal muscle are separated from each other by insulating membranes. Each fibre receives a separate nerve supple from the brain. This means that the numberof fibres taking part in a contraction depends on how hard you concentrate during a voluntary effort.
This is why a weight lifter who concentrates very hard can lift more weight than a weight lifter who has not developed this power of concentraion.
The heart muscle fibers, however, are all connected, forming one solid muscle mass. When one fiber of the heart contracts, the whole heart contracts. Important nerve centers control the contraction of the heart muscle, so the upper chambers begin contracting just ahead of the lower chambers.
Heart: The Involuntary Muscle
Since the heart works involuntarily, its function does not depend upon your ability to concentrate. Mental or emotional disturbances, however, can disturb the rhythm of your heart.
How fast and hard a normal heart beats depends primarily upon the amount of oxygen the muscles need. When you exercise, for example, certain chemical changes in your blood alert your nervous system, which in turn stimulates your heart. So, when you exercise your skeletal muscles, you exercise your heart.
If the exercise you do doesn’t create an oxygen debt that increases both heart rate and respiration for several minutes at a time, however, your heart muscle wont get the exercise it needs to build important reserve strength.
Over 600 Skeletal Muscles
You have over 600 skeletal muscles that move your body, but you only have one cardiac muscle.
Your heart must possess tremendous endurance to meet your body’s needs. I’ll explain how you can ensure that your heart muscle doesn’t lag behind your skeletal muscles, but first, let me tell you how your heart pumps blood.
How Your Heart Works
The heart has two sides, each with two chambers. The left side pumps blood through the arteries to all parts of the body. The veins then return the blood to the right side of the heart, where it is pumped through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs for a fresh supply of oxygen.
Pulmonary veins then return the blood to the left side of the heart, pumped out as bright red arterial blood.
Special valves in your heart keep blood flowing in a one-way direction from the upper chambers to the lower chambers. In a wave of muscular contractions that moves from top to bottom, the heart fills and empties its chambers in a remarkably synchronized action that takes a little less than one second.
With each heartbeat pumping out about three ounces of blood, it takes only about 21 seconds for the blood to complete its circuit through the body.
The Toughest and Most Durable Organ in The Body
The heart is the toughest and most durable organ in the body. With about half a second of rest between beats, the heart contracts over 72 times a minute, 24 hours a day. No machine ever made by man can equal the performance of the heart.
In a nonstop marathon that’s unequaled by another muscle or organ in the body, the heart pumps life, giving blood to every cell of every tissue.
As an endurance muscle, the heart doesn’t need much rest. But it does need exercise.
In fact, if you don’t exercise your heart, your heart muscle tends to become weak and thin. When you foirce your heart to pump extra blood in exercise, however, the heart muscle becomes thick and strong. This gives the reserve strength it needs to protect itself from strain during emergencies. And the more work your heart must do, the stronger it becomes.
How To Strengthen Your Heart Muscles
Many Physiology books tell us that exercise that enlarges the skeletal muscles has little effect on the heart, while exercise that thickens the heart muscles does little to increase the skeletal muscles.
For example, you perform high-intensity endurance exercises when you run or swim. This type of exercise creates the need for oxygen and increases heart and lung action, but there is not enough resistance to significantly enlarge the skeletal muscles.
However, when lifting weights, low repetitions and heavy resistance increase muscle size without creating enough oxygen debt to stimulate the heart.
Work The Thighs
This is one reason why so many bodybuilders now include running or jogging in their training programs. The older a bodybuilder is, the more important it is to include some endurance-type exercise involving the legs.
Only the leg muscles of the thighs can create enough of an oxygen debt to give the heart a really good workout.
Actually, a bodybuilder who does squats or high-reputation cleans or snatches gets a considerable amount of heart exercise.
If you squat regularly, you probably get enough heart exercise. However, if you’re over 35 or no longer interested in performing enough barbell squats to maintain exceptionally muscular thighs, in that case, you should include some endurance exercises in your training routine.
Jogging
Jogging is an excellent heart exercise, but few people will continue a jogging program for a long time. For this reason, I recommend exercises such as swimming, biking, tennis, or basketball. To really exercise the heart muscles, an endurance-type exercise involving the thigh muscles must be performed until the legs “ache.”
If you don’t enjoy the exercise, it will be pure drudgery, and you will likely soon quit.
If you find it difficult to push yourself in a jogging or calisthenics program, you can do more for your heart by playing tennis or handball until you’re nearly exhausted.
Cross-country jogging can be relaxing and entertaining once you become accustomed to it. So, if you do want to jog, begin lightly and gradually and stick with it until you’re physically fit. It takes about six weeks to condition the heart and lungs for endurance exercise.
Don’t give up just because the exercise causes agonizing breathlessness during the first weeks. Once you can jog a couple of miles non-stop, that’s all you’ll need to keep your heart strong.
Other Heart Benefits
If you exercise your heart often enough, it will have more than enough reserve strength to cope with physical emergencies. The physiological conditioning your body gets from aerobic exercise will actually enable you to do more work with less strain on your heart, lungs, and other organs.
Your entire body will function more efficiently. The arteries supplying the blood to your heart muscle will be bigger and more flexible, so there’ll be fewer chances of a clot clogging a coronary artery.
Endurance exercise also lowers the amount of fat and cholesterol in the blood, helping to prevent a build-up of fatty sludge in your arteries.
Warning: Go Easy
Since endurance-type exercise must be performed in high repetitions (until you’re breathing heavily) to benefit your heart, you must be careful not to do too much too soon. No matter how much muscle you have, any new exercise will make your muscles sore.
If you should have an undetected heart defect, a sudden maximum effort might stress your heart.
You can strain a normal heart, but it’s not always possible to know for sure if your heart is normal. For this reason, if you’re beginning endurance-type exercise for the first time, you should begin lightly and progressively. If you want to start a jogging program, for example, begin by walking a little and jogging a little.
Then, as you become more accustomed to the exercise, you can increase the speed or distance.
The same general rule holds true for weight training. If you’re used to doing eight to ten repetitions in your barbell exercises, a sudden switch to high repetitions, 20 or more, can result in extreme muscle soreness. So, if you want to perform high-repetition squats or cleans in order to exercise your heart, increase the number of repetitions slowly over three weeks.
Don’t ever test your endurance with a new exercise. The unaccustomed exertion might harm your skeletal and heart muscles.
To Sum Up
Remember that for any exercise to benefit the heart, it must create enough oxygen debt to increase both heart rate and respiration. Exercises involving the use of the big muscles of the thigh are best, and they should be performed in high repetitions for several minutes at a time.
References & Excerpts
Author: Dr. Samuel Hormola. Article: Don’t Forget Your Heart Muscle! .Muscular Development Magazine
