It has always been my practice to try to educate athletes, irrespective of the sport, so they know how and why certain training causes the body to have specific responses. I’m a firm believer that with that knowledge, you can get more out of your training. So every time an article appears here, I’ll do my best to let you know why and how it benefits your performance.

So, how exactly does running effect my cardiovascular system, you ask?

Your heart is a muscle.

It is unlike any other muscle you have, but, nonetheless, it is a muscle, and characteristically, it becomes stronger when exposed to work.

It is also a pump.

Increasing the strength of this pump allows it to work much more efficiently.

When you run, the working muscles, in this case the legs, require oxygen. The way the body transports oxygen is in the blood, and the heart pumps the blood to the working muscle. The harder the working muscle works, the more oxygen it requires, the harder the heart has to work to supply the oxygen carrying blood.

Over a period of time, the heart muscle gains strength, and now you have a stronger pump.

How does this effect you? . . . well . . . what used to take, say 70 beats per minute to carry X liters of blood around your body, now only takes 62. This is an increase in stroke volume.

How will you know this is happening? Your resting pulse rate will be reduced, your recovery rate will improve (remember recovery from anaerobic activity is dictated largely by your level of cardiovascular conditioning).

Your body, in this case the heart, has a great ability to adapt, but it can only adapt to what it is exposed to. The purpose of the running routine I included in the previous article is to gradually get you to sustain an elevated heart rate for longer periods of time. Sustaining it at the higher levels will result in an adaptation that accommodates recovery from the more intense anaerobic demands of an actual game.

ARTYFACT

Tests conducted by cardiologists, on elite level athletes, have revealed left ventricular hypertrophy (the muscular wall of the ventricle actually grows and thickens) due to years of repeated sustained cardiovascular sessions. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as the "elite athletes syndrome". Yours truly has this condition. Enough said!