• Question: Why do Athletes have a slower resting heart rate compared to a average person?

    Asked by HugoBOSS to Amy, Craig, Laura, Partha, Saffron on 23 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Amy Cameron

      Amy Cameron answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Elite athletes do significant amounts of training and their body will adapt to allow their muscles which will need larger amounts of oxygen to get what they need. This is done in a number of ways – their heart gets larger and it pumps harder to that more oxygenated blood can get to where it is needed quicker. This means that their heart has a slower resting heart rate as it does not need to pump as frequently to get the oxygen required during rest. It also means that when an athlete retired they have to train down to reverse this as otherwise this can cause health problems – having an enlarged heart when you don’t need it.

    • Photo: Laura Wales

      Laura Wales answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      An athlete’s heart becomes enlarges because of cardiovascular workouts – the ventricles get bigger and the walls of the ventricles become thicker. The bigger ventricles means more blood can get in to later be pumped around the body. The thicker ventricles mean that the contractions to physically pump the blood out of the heart are a lot stronger than that of a non-athlete. This causes an increase in “stroke volume” which is the volume of blood pumped out the ventricle per heart beat, and during rest the heart rate is lower and more efficient.

      The average resting heart rate is around 70 beats per minute; athletes are closer to 40 beats per minute.

    • Photo: Saffron Whitehead

      Saffron Whitehead answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Nothing to add to the excellent answers!

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