How strong is your heart? In the human body, the heart is dubbed “the engine”. But unlike most engines, this heart as the engine has begun working round the clock since the day we were conceived in our mothers’ wombs.
Our hearts will beat for as long as there is life in us for the rest of our days. The heart never gets tired, it has no switch-off button. The heart is the toughest muscle in the human body. (It only gets “broken” when people fall in love — and yet it still keeps on beating.) Seriously, it is so mighty that even if we were brain-dead, our heart would continue to pump blood all throughout our system. That’s how amazing the heart is.
In fitness, it is vital to condition the heart first before anything else, as it is the medium of transporting nutrients all over the body. The heart works together with the lungs for our cardio-pulmonary function. Movement is limited when the heart is ill. Even walking up a flight of stairs could be too much for a person’s heart that is not properly functioning.
A common body-weight cardio exercise is running — the easiest form of movement to activate the heart to levels higher than its resting heart rate. Running stimulates the heart faster as compared to merely walking. Therefore, when you incorporate functional training exercises into your routine, your heart is sure to be work at its peak. The heart is made so strong that it can work harder even than we think our body can endure.
In most occasions, even when we think the body has reached its limits, the heart will keep on going. That is why we see athletes seemingly going beyond the capacity of their body. Their heart allows them to overcome whatever demands in their specific sports.
The condition of our hearts plays a huge role in improving work capacity. Athletes train more than the average in terms of work capacity fitness levels. It is because in sports, the level of competition pushes an athlete beyond his limit. The heart is able adapt to any amount of force in varied work or movement. No matter how complex the movement, the heart will never cease to function.
In order to achieve optimum performance, one must train harder in a given period of time to prepare the heart and the body from unforeseen circumstances in the field, inside the court, or in any arena of sports. That is when we see athletes training hard every day, sometimes even two times a day.
Thus, their heart is pushed to more than it can handle, better than the average individual can. More often than not, normal people don’t push themselves in exercise because they have no record nor medals to aim for. When they exercise, they do it in attempts to be fit or on doctor’s orders.
The LFITT Training method is a proven science of training periodization. LFITT stands for Load-Frequency-Intensity-Type-Time. In gist, the strength and conditioning of an individual is relative to the training principles applied, and the discipline to work hard and train harder.
The body needs constant stimulation to function well — this is simply for fitness levels. Athletic ability and capacity needs more than that amount of work to be able to surpass the ordinary.
People exert a lot of effort to win the hearts of those they fall in love with. It should not be such a difficulty for us to exercise our heart for our health, right? The heart is the driving force to be fit to function and to achieve unparalleled strength and condition to be victorious in any feat.
__________________________________
Author’s email: archie.nellas@gmail.com
