Why Do Athletes Have A Lower Heart Rate?

Why Do Athletes Have A Lower Heart Rate?
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Why do athletes have a lower heart rate?
A high level of cardiovascular fitness results in real physical changes in a person’s structure of the heart. As the muscles of the heart thicken, more blood is pumped in with every single beat. An athlete’s heart draws in and pumps more blood enlarging its walls to accommodate the body’s needs (Chaudhary & Shankar, 2012) . This makes an athletes’ heart rate to fall to a level that could mean an unhealthy condition for a non-athlete. It is common for most doctors to mistake symptoms associated with such high level conditioning to serious heart problems. Basically, resting heart rate is the number of contractions of a person’s heart in one minute. This paper describes what a normal heart rate is and why an athlete has a uniquely low resting heart rate.
Hearts of all non-athletic people contract 60 to 90 times every minute when resting. For one to accurately take the resting heart rate, it is advisable to settle down for about 10 minutes before taking it. The actual amount pumped out ranges between 4.8 to 6.4 liters per 60-90 beats. When a person with an untrained heart does some exercise, the heart beats faster than an athletes’ heart. This makes it inefficient as the maximum exertion per minute increases to about 20 liters which is way far below when compared to the 40 liters per minute recorded by an elite athlete (Maclaren & Hollington, 2012).
Most athletes have heart rates ranging from 40 to 60 beats per minute. This is because athletes develop cardiovascular efficiency. The athlete’s heart can pump out lots blood as compared to a normal person’s heart meaning that per heart beat the athlete delivers a greater a...