How Can One Strengthen Their Heart Like Athletes?

When a person thinks of some kind of professional athletes training, it may leave an image of very difficult and grueling workouts which a normal person cannot do. This is not accurate. One of the biggest differences between a normal individual works out and how these pros follow training is their style.

How Can One Strengthen Their Heart Like Athletes?

Checking how these pro athletes are taking good care of them and also adopting their strategies is quite essential for a much healthier heart. As per a recent study of around 800 professional athletes that are diagnosed with the Covid-19, even only around of them 1% have developed a cardiac injury.

Although this is a great news for the sports world, but that there have been many incidences of heart inflammation cases in the athletes, such as the case of Eduardo Rodriguez, the Boston Red Sox pitcher, in the last summer. This has also sparked a worry that on contracting the Covid-19 disease which has potentially played a major role in the career ending risk due to the cardiac injury. These results, in the latest study, have been published in the JAMA Cardiology. It has fostered optimism that there is less cause of concern when this comes to the professional athletes.

But for the normal population, this research also shows that there is a higher incidence of the heart injury. So, this report is another wake up call stating the importance of the physical fitness, when  it relates to heart health. The current lifestyle of a normal person won’t not afford anyone a proper training schedule like that of a professional athlete, but it has numerous heart healthy measures which are used by the athletes which one can adopt in their own life.

Most of the people reading this might understandably, prioritize their cardio exercises for their weight loss and its respiratory and cardiovascular health boosting abilities. But, it is another fact that only few professional athletes go to the gym for spending longer periods of time on an elliptical or treadmill  machine.

On an average, among the 45 professional sports teams in the past two decades, most of the athletes’ programs are not that heavily stacked with the steady state cardio or moderate intensity continuous training, which is called MICT. For most of the part, the workout conditioning emphasizes on the interval training and athlete strength, as they move from set to another set of exercise. This is performed in a high intensity interval training generally, or the HIIT, style with the alternating bursts of the intense exercise with easier and slower activity.

There is robust and growing and evidence that the high intensity with the interval training or HIIT to be precise shows greater or similar efficacy as compared with the MICT across the entire range of metabolic and cardiovascular measures, in both  populations and healthy populations with another chronic illness as per the 2018 research at the University of New South Wales  by the Australian scientists published in Journal of the American Heart Association.

Another evidence of the HIIT’s heart strengthening ability which was shown in the clinical trial of around 93 patients with the coronary artery disease that was published in JAMA Cardiology in the year 2020. After 4 weeks, their cardiorespiratory fitness has been improved by 10% with HIIT as compared to the 4% with MICT.

There is also an important role of the rest and recovery which cannot be understated for both the general population and professional athletes. The aspect of a person’s healthier physical well-being also relies on its ability to recover fast. The heart muscles are no exception. But one must consult with their physician before starting any such workout and it must be done under an expert’s guidance.