Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to today's lesson.

My name's Mr. Swaithes, and I'm really looking forward to teaching you today.

So this lesson is called Long-Term Effects of Exercise, and it comes from the Anatomy and Physiology: The Short and Long-Term Effects of Exercise unit.

Have you ever wondered what will happen to your body if you follow a period of training, a number of weeks perhaps in the gym, or out running, or training for your sport? What changes will happen to your body? So by the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to describe the long-term effects of exercise on your body.

I'll be exploring a number of keywords to include: what does long-term effects of exercise mean, what is hypertrophy, what's bradycardia, what's suppleness, and a few others.

You may want to pause the video now whilst you make a note of them, but we'll definitely be revisiting all of these as we go through today's lesson.

So the lesson's been broken up into three sections.

First off, we'll be looking at long-term adaptations or changes that take place in the musculoskeletal system, so your muscles and your skeleton.

The middle part of the lesson, we'll be looking at long-term training adaptations that happen in your cardiovascular system, so your heart and blood vessels and blood.

And then the final part of this lesson, we'll be looking at what those long-term changes are within your respiratory system, so in connection with your lungs.

So I hope you're ready.

Let's get going.

Okay, so the human body is amazing, isn't it? We can do so many things that are, I guess, a marvel really.

But when we commit to training for months or years, our body adapts and changes to cope with the extra demands that are placed on it.

So our body is ever-evolving, ever-adapting to better cope with the demands we put it under.

And actually, from an evolutionary perspective, that continues to go on as well.

So we can run faster marathon times now than we could 10 years ago, and certainly than we could 50 years ago, and that's due to a better understanding of how our body can adapt and train, and how to use sports science to improve our body further.

But also because as we go down the generations, we hand the best genes forward, which continues to evolve us as a species.

So Sofia is wondering what adaptations or long-term changes, so adaptations is just a fancy way of saying long-term changes, do you think happen following a period of training? Have a little think.

Meanwhile, Aisha is wondering, does different training have a different effect? So for example, if you did long distance training, or training in the swimming pool, or sprint training, how might your body adapt differently? Well, let's have a look then at how training affects our musculoskeletal system.

So your body shape may change.

So you'll notice people that train hard and train often, they perhaps have that more athletic body shape that we recognise, and that's in part because we build extra muscles, and muscle tone improves, and a fancy way of saying muscles get bigger and stronger is the word hypertrophy.

So your muscles hypertrophy.

They become bigger and stronger.

You'll also get improved muscular endurance, so your muscles will be able to contract for longer before exhaustion, or before fatigue sets in.

Also, you'll be improving your suppleness or flexibility, particularly if you incorporate some stretching exercises into your programmes.

I'm sure you've seen lots of people now are quite committed to those foam rollers, and lots of effort on improving their flexibility to supplement some of that strength training perhaps that they're doing.

You also may see an improvement in your speed, particularly if you're doing some sorts of training, you know, sprint and power training.

Okay, so let's dig into those in a little bit more depth then.

Andeep is wondering why your body shape might change.

Well, of course, regular exercise increases energy expenditure, so you'll be burning more calories, and therefore, unless you also eat lots more, you may end up in an energy deficit or a calorie deficit, where you're burning more calories than you're taking in.

Now, we need to be really careful with that 'cause we don't want that deficit to take us into an unhealthy weight.

But as long as you've got a carefully considered diet, it can be a good way to lose weight if you are to commit to a regular exercise programme.

So regular exercise also increases muscle mass, and it helps us to become more toned.

And it's important to remember that muscle weighs more than fat.

So if you're training really hard, you may find that you actually increase in weight, rather than decreasing it, and that's why we shouldn't rely solely on weight as a measure of fitness or health.

Okay, let's dig a little bit deeper into what muscular hypertrophy is then.

You can see this athlete here flexing their guns, flexing their muscles, and when we exercise our muscles regularly, they increase in size, they increase in strength, and this happens because of small muscle tears that help the muscle grow back bigger and stronger.

So if you've ever had that achy muscle feeling the next day after you've done some perhaps explosive muscular contractions, a clap press-up is a great example.

So if you try to do some clap press-ups, the next day, you're almost certainly gonna feel some delayed onset of muscle soreness, where those triceps have been put through some quite excessive force and tension, which will then lead to them breaking up a little bit, these small micro tears, and then growing back bigger and stronger.

We've gotta be careful with that sort of plyometric eccentric muscular contraction stuff like the clap press-ups.

But any training that you do will lead to a certain amount of muscle tears that enables 'em to grow back bigger and stronger.

But let's remember that rest is essential, and you've got to give time for recovery, so that those adaptations can take place before your next training session.

So that's why a lot of people, perhaps if they go to the gym regularly, they might work their arms one day and their legs the next day, or have a rest day in between training sessions, or maybe a low load day, so more of a cardio day before then strength training either side of that.

Okay, let's do a quick check.

So which of the following is not a long-term effect of training on the musculoskeletal system? Is it A, increased muscle hypertrophy? Is it B, increased bone density? Is it C, increased length of bones? Or is it D, change to body shape? That's right.

It's C, isn't it? If you train regularly, that's not gonna change the length of your bones, but training does lead to muscle hypertrophy, which we've talked about, and it also increases bone density, so your bones get thicker and stronger.

They can cope better with weight-bearing exercise.

And then we also talked about how exercising regularly can change your body shape.

Okay, so Sofia is wondering, and she's suggesting that she likes the sound of all of those benefits, but how long will she need to train for to see an effect? What do you think? And Aisha is saying, "Well, surely it depends on how hard you train." Well, absolutely, Aisha.

So it depends on a lot of factors.

For example, your age, your current fitness level, but you typically need to train for a few times a week for six or more weeks before you'll start to see some of these long-term effects or long-term adaptations taking place.

So it requires quite a commitment over a period of time.

Let's do another quick check then.

True or false? Microscopic tears in your muscles are bad and should always be avoided.

What do you think? That's right.

That's false.

And can you tell me why? Yeah, so microscopic tears are necessary for your muscles to grow back bigger and stronger.

We obviously need to avoid major tears, or training too hard or too fast, but a certain amount of aching the next day is perfectly normal.

Okay, so training can be tailored to suit the needs and motivations of different individuals.

We're not all gonna follow the same training programme, are we? Heavier weights or resistance and lower repetitions helps build muscle strength.

Meanwhile, lighter weights and lighter resistance and more repetitions helps train muscular endurance.

So you need to figure out do you want more muscular strength or do you want more muscular endurance? 'Cause it's actually quite hard to train for both.

Your muscles like to adapt to suit one or the other.

What sort of strength training would you prioritise? Which do you think is more important to you as a performer and as a person? Okay, and another reminder, flexibility training is not just for gymnasts.

We all need to improve our flexibility at joints, and another word for flexibility is suppleness.

And by having improved suppleness, it reduces the risk of injury, and it improves that range of movement at joints.

How much time do you put into developing or maintaining your flexibility? Next up, we've got sprint training.

Well, obviously, some sprint training will improve your speed, but remember speed doesn't just relate to leg speed.

You can also need arm speed, perhaps, in some sports.

So this tennis player needs really quick arm speed in order to serve an ace.

Do you need faster leg or arm speed to perform better in your chosen sports? Or maybe you need a combination of both? Okay, that brings us into our first practise task for today.

I'd like you to complete the following table to summarise the musculoskeletal adaptations to training.

So you can see there in the first column, we've got what the adaptation is.

I've given one example, a change in body shape.

What's your explanation of that, and can you describe the benefit to a performer? Then, the next one, what's the fancy word for increased muscle size? And then I want you to give a benefit to the performer, and then carry on down the list.

So you will have five adaptations that you have summarised in that table.

Pause the video now whilst you have a go at it, and come back to me when you're ready.

Okay, so here's what I made earlier.

We've got a change in body shape, and the explanation there is it's a reduced fat and an increased muscle mass is what will lead to a changed body shape, and that happens if you train regularly for at least six weeks, and a benefit to the performer would be there's less excess weight for you to carry around.

Did you manage to get something along those lines? And then into the next line, we've got hypertrophy of the muscles, and that's the adaptation that can be explained through increased muscle size, and obviously a benefit of that is your muscles can contract more forcefully.

Next up, I told you about increased muscular strength.

Well, an explanation of that is it means that you will be able to perform a bigger one repetition max.

So you'll be able to lift heavier weights or push a heavier load.

And consequently, the benefit of that is you can contract with bigger force.

The next one was an increased muscular endurance, which means you can contract for longer before fatiguing.

So the benefit of that is you could contract repeatedly for longer.

Little bit of repetition here, isn't there, between the explanation and the benefit.

And then, finally, we had improved suppleness or flexibility, an explanation of that being the increased flexibility and range of movement at a joint, and this means that you'll be able to reach further and less likely to get injured.

And when I say reach further, I mean that range of movement's better, so maybe, as a squash player, you'd be able to lunge in and reach a ball, or maybe as a goalkeeper, you'd be able to dive and reach further to save a goal.

How did you get on with that table? Okay then, so let's move into the second part of this lesson where we look at the effects or the long-term adaptations to the cardiovascular system.

Here's Andeep, wondering what are those cardiovascular system elements, and what long-term effects does training have on them? And Sam is asking for clarification.

Does that include the heart, the blood, and the blood vessels? Well, yes, Sam.

Yes, it does.

So let's have a little look at the training effects on the cardiovascular system then, and what they include.

So in terms of things that increase, the size of your heart will increase.

So the heart is a specialist type of muscle, cardiac muscle, and it hypertrophies in the same way that your skeletal muscles, like your biceps and triceps, hypertrophy if you put them under extra stress.

That means your cardiovascular endurance or your stamina will also increase.

Your capillary networks at the alveoli and the muscles also increase, so you're able to exchange more gases, so more oxygen and more carbon dioxide, and you also get an increased count of red blood cells.

So you get an increased haemoglobin, which means you'll be better at carrying oxygen, so you get more of it into the body, and you can carry more of it around.

You'll also, after a period of training, will be able to recover faster from exercise, which means then you'll be able to train again soon.

But perhaps the most familiar benefit of training or the one that we track sometimes is a decrease in your resting heart rate.

So if you've trained regularly, I think you'll find that if you take your pulse whilst at rest, you may well be having a resting pulse below 60 beats per minute, and the terminology for that is bradycardia.

So if you have a resting heart rate below 60 beats per minute, it is often called bradycardia, and it's something that lots of us seek to try to achieve as an illustration of better cardiac health and fitness.

So let's do a quick check.

Which of these individuals is right in the way they describe bradycardia? Aisha says her resting heart rate is 68 beats per minute, Sam says his resting heart rate is 62 beats per minute, and Andeep says his resting heart rate is 58 beats per minute.

Which of these individuals has bradycardia? That's right.

It's Andeep, isn't it? Because it's got to be under 60 beats per minute to be considered bradycardia.

And interestingly, you'll sometimes hear the term bradycardia referred to in a hospital situation, and it's not seen in such a positive light there.

If someone goes into bradycardia actually, their heart rate might be dangerously low, and perhaps an irregular beat.

So bradycardia is not just reserved for that positive idea of a big, strong, healthy heart.

Okay, so training puts strain on our heart, and that causes it to get bigger, to get stronger, and to get more efficient.

And as I've said, that is called cardiac, or heart, hypertrophy.

As a consequence of that, the heart can contract with more force, and hence eject more blood per beat.

So that means your stroke volume will increase, won't it? So one of the benefits of regular training is an increased stroke volume.

And because cardiac hypertrophy and an increased stroke volume occur, that means that our resting heart rate can decrease.

So actually it's a secondary effect.

Your heart's got bigger, it's got stronger, it pumps out more blood per beat, and as a consequence, your heart rate can decrease while still maintaining the same cardiac output, the same amount of blood pumped out of the heart per minute.

Meanwhile though, your maximal cardiac output, so during endurance, really hard effort work, your maximal cardiac output will increase.

So again, you're able to pump more blood around the body faster if you are endurance trained, and you've had some cardiac hypertrophy, and that's what contributes to improved cardiovascular endurance, otherwise known as stamina.

So endurance exercise is best for cardiac hypertrophy.

So long distance running, swimming, cycling, rowing is what puts the heart under the most strain, and therefore, leads to it increasing in size and strength the most.

However, weight training also stimulates that cardiac hypertrophy.

So you can still get a bigger, stronger heart by doing weight training, or other similar, you know, for example, HIIT training.

High-intensity interval training will still stimulate that cardiac hypertrophy.

In fact, any training that gets you out of breath will do it.

So you've gotta pick training that you enjoy.

What's your favourite way to train? Okay, what effect does endurance training then have on the blood? And here we've got a red blood cell.

Well, we grow more of these if we train regularly.

So the body's always adapting, trying to better cope with the demands it's put under.

So if you train regularly, you'll grow more red blood cells, so you can cope more with that exercise that you're doing, and that means you'll have more haemoglobin, and hence an improved oxygen carrying capacity of the blood because we know haemoglobin is that protein in your blood that grabs hold of the oxygen and carries it.

So as a result, endurance athletes like marathon runners are able to run faster and for longer following a training programme.

It's why we build up to running a marathon, for example, because we've got to let the body adapt before we.

We can't just turn up on day one and run 26 miles.

Okay, this next image is showing us the capillaries that surround the alveoli.

And as I touched on earlier, training causes more capillaries to grow, which means that those alveoli sacs, the air sacs in the lungs have got this dense capillary network surrounding them, which means there's more surface area for gaseous exchange to happen.

So more oxygen will diffuse into the blood, and more carbon dioxide will diffuse out of the blood.

Alright, so that increased capillary network means we're able to deliver more oxygen to the working muscles and remove more carbon dioxide, which will further improve stamina.

Let's do another quick check.

True or false? Unfit individuals have a lower heart rate.

That's right.

It's false, isn't it? And that's because unfit individuals have a higher resting heart rate, but also if they're exercising, their heart rate for any given intensity compared with an endurance trained athlete will also be higher.

So if you had a couple of running machines, someone that was endurance trained and someone that wasn't, and they're both running at the same speed on those treadmills, the one that is endurance trained will have a lower heart rate, and that's because training results in cardiac hypertrophy, which enables more blood to be ejected per beat.

Hence, resting heart rate can reduce without affecting cardiac output, and this is known as bradycardia.

Okay, that brings us to our second task of this lesson.

So Emma Raducanu here, as we know, is a very keen tennis player.

Can you explain at least three long-term adaptations that occur in her cardiovascular system as a consequence of a rigorous training programme, one that includes endurance and strength training elements? So I want you to go into detail on three of those long-term adaptations that we've just talked about.

Pause the video now whilst you do that, and come back to me when you're ready.

Okay then, so what have you come up with? Here's a few examples of what you might have said.

So the heart will become bigger and stronger, and this is called cardiac hypertrophy.

I really hope you've got that word hypertrophy in.

And it means that more blood can be ejected from the heart in each beat.

So the stroke volume will have increased.

I wonder if you also put that as a consequence of that cardiac hypertrophy and a more efficient heart, your resting heart rate decreases, and if your resting heart rate decreases below 60 beats per minute, we call that bradycardia.

Thirdly, more red blood cells are produced, so you grow more red blood cells, which means you'll have more of that protein haemoglobin, and hence you'll have an improved oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, and that leads to improved aerobic respiration.

You only needed three, but here's a fourth one.

A denser capillary network speeds up gaseous exchange at the alveoli, and that means that at the lungs and at the muscle site, we can diffuse more oxygen towards the muscles and diffuse more carbon dioxide out.

Did you manage to get three of those? Well done if you did.

Okay, into the third and final part of today's lesson, where we'll look at the respiratory system.

We've almost touched on it there already when we mentioned the alveoli.

So Izzy is wondering, what about the respiratory system then? What long-term effects do you think training will have on it? And obviously, the respiratory system is all about the lungs, isn't it? So Jacob is reminding us that respiratory system is the system that helps us breathe in and breathe out.

Okay then.

So the effects on the respiratory system include increased strength of your respiratory muscles.

So there we go, hypertrophy of the diaphragm and of the intercostal muscles.

Increased gaseous exchange, so you'll swap more oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Improved stamina and faster recovery time from exercise due to that reduced oxygen, or EPOC, which means excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

So let's look at those in a bit more detail.

So any exercise that gets you out of breath will put strain on the respiratory system in the same way that it puts strain on the cardiovascular system.

Long distance endurance events have the biggest effect.

We've said that already, haven't we? So whether that be running, rowing, swimming, cycling, those long distance events are the ones that will have the biggest effect.

And if you do them regularly, you will get long-term effects to help you cope better with that increased demand on oxygen.

So like any muscle, the diaphragm is a muscle, and the intercostal muscles are muscles, so they hypertrophy too.

Let's do a quick check.

Which of the following is a respiratory system benefit of endurance training? Is it A, increased stroke volume? Is it B, decreased resting heart rate? Is it C, increased strength of diaphragm and intercostals? Or is it D, increased bone strength? That's right.

It's C, isn't it? Increased strength of the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles 'cause they're connected with the respiratory system, whereas stroke volume and resting heart rate are the cardiovascular system, and bone strength is the musculoskeletal system.

So they are benefits, but not of the respiratory system.

Let's summarise some of those factors combined then.

So they will result in an improved aerobic capacity.

Delayed crossing of the anaerobic threshold, so the point at which you start to build up lactic acid will happen at a higher intensity.

You'll have an improved ability to cope with lactic acid, so your body can cope with some lactic acid before it really fatigues.

And that means you've got improved resistance to fatigue, doesn't it? You can cope with that for longer, the pain for longer.

And as a consequence of that, it's likely to improve your performance, isn't it? And you also get a faster rate of recovery after exercise, and we term this reduced EPOC, or excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption.

So you'll be breathing less heavily after exercise.

Let's do another quick check then.

Gaseous exchange decreases following endurance training.

Is that true or false? That's right.

It's false, isn't it? Because training results in an increased lung capacity, stronger respiratory muscles, and a better capillary network around the alveoli.

As a consequence of that, our gaseous exchange increases following training.

That brings us nicely to our last task of today's lesson.

I'd like you to explain the respiratory system response to endurance training.

Can you fill this table for the second part of this, where we then link back in, and for each body system, you identify two long-term effects of regular training, and how it could benefit the performance in sport.

So first up, you're just gonna focus on the respiratory system, so this last section of this lesson, and then we're gonna pull together everything from the whole lesson to think of some of those musculoskeletal benefits, and then the cardiorespiratory, i.

e.

the cardiovascular and the respiratory system adaptations.

Pause the video now whilst you do that, and come back to me when you are ready.

Well done then.

So for the first part, what are these respiratory system responses? Well, you might have said the diaphragm and intercostal muscles hypertrophy.

They get bigger and stronger, so they can contract more forcefully.

As a result of that, you have an increased ability to exchange volumes of air with each breath that you take, and that improves your gaseous exchange, and that means that your cardiovascular endurance or your stamina will improve.

You can also recover faster from exercise.

So there's five different factors there that I want you to remember.

And then as we move into the second task that pulled together all of the learning from today's lesson, here, I've broken it out into four lines within the table.

So probably the easiest and most important to remember, musculoskeletal system adaptation, is that your body shape may change, and that hypertrophy of the skeletal muscles occurs.

Benefits of those two are a reduced body weight and increased muscle mass, which makes moving more efficient and faster, so also lead to improved speed, won't it? And secondly, increased muscular strength or muscular endurance, depending on whether you are training high rep and low resistance, or high resistance, high load, and low reps.

And then if we move on to the cardiorespiratory, first up, we've got the cardiovascular, so cardiac hypertrophy occurs, or maybe you wrote about that increased red blood cell count, so one or other of those.

And as a consequence of that, that increases the ability to exercise harder for longer.

And then the last cardiorespiratory system response I've thought of is that one around the respiratory system and hypertrophy of the respiratory muscles, of the diaphragm and the intercostals.

You may have come up with some other alternatives of these adaptations, but these are the most popular ones to remember.

And that increase in your respiratory muscles will have a benefit to the performer of increased gaseous exchange.

So more oxygen is made available, so they can exercise harder, and all of these things combined add up to being quite a miraculous improvement in performance.

So that leaves me just enough time to summarise today's lesson, and let's remember that long-term effects of exercise refers to the benefits or changes or adaptations in health and fitness after a period of months or even years training or exercising.

Regular exercise leads to a number of benefits: a change in body shape, improved muscular strength or endurance, improved suppleness or flexibility.

So they're all musculoskeletal system benefits, aren't they? But it also leads to an increased heart size and strength, known as hypertrophy, cardiac hypertrophy, a lower resting heart rate, which we know now is called bradycardia, stronger respiratory muscles, and an increased lung volume, so this is now a respiratory system response, improved ability to recover faster from exercise, so you can train again sooner, or maybe compete again sooner, and overall, it means you'll probably have an improved sporting performance and general health.

Although, let's remember that just because you're fitter and stronger doesn't always mean that you achieve more within competitive sport.

I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson.

I've really enjoyed teaching you, and well done for working so hard.

I hope to see you next time.