so a common question that you find in gccp papers is something to do with the benefits of exercise
now with exercise we've got three different categories really we've got the immediate effects
such as the responses of the body such as the rising heart rate the rising
breathing rate we then have the sort of short-term effects which happen the day or two
after such as delayed onset of muscle soreness there might be an element of sickness or fatigue
there might be a little bit of foggy thinking or slower decision making because we're still
actually recovering from the exercise that we just completed in the previous 24 or 48 hours
and then the third category are the longer term effects or the adaptions that our body goes
through after sustained and persistent perhaps progressively overloading our body in exercise
so this question here is asking us about the long-term benefits of exercise but this could
be short-term this could be medium term but this one is long term so what we're looking for is
the actual benefits so they're going to put in you know one or two or three grey or sorry red
herrings i should say and then there's going to be one answer and a good way to approach this is by
just thinking about what the answer that they give you what would that mean for the body does it help
it does it hinder it if it helps the body chances are it's probably a benefit which might have been
brought out by exercise so we look at a here a higher resting heart rate well is that a good
thing would we want a higher resting heart rate no because it means that our heart is constantly
under more strain it's having to beat more times every single minute than it would if we were
you know a bit or in better condition of better cardiovascular health so a heart that has to be
more often that's not in a good state it's got less less capabilities of rising to the challenge
when put into cardiovascularly demanding situations so let's say we're resting at 90
beats per minute and our maximum is 200 we've only got a threshold or window of 110 beats
increase whereas if our resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute and our maximum is still that
200 we've now got 150 beats to increase into to satisfy energy demands around our body with
so we know it's not going to be that one reduced blood pressure well what would this mean for our
body well first of all what is blood pressure it's the outward pressure the blood exerts on
the surrounding tissue as it flows through it and what that can cause is arthrosclerosis it can
cause ruptures in blood vessels particularly the coronary blood vessels which supply our cardiac
muscle with oxygenated blood and nutrients so if we have too high blood pressure or hypertension
there's lots of associated risks with that increased risk of stroke increased risk of heart
attack increased risk of blockages in different vessels around our body or especially in our heart
so if we were to reduce that blood pressure not so as to go as low as hypotension whereas too low
but reducing this blood pressure is good for the body it doesn't put as much strain on the vascular
system that's carrying the blood around so if we could achieve that that's a good thing so if we
exercise frequently and we are getting better it makes sense that our blood pressure would reduce
we know that capillarization can occur through persistent exercise and if we've got a
bigger vascular network for the same volume of blood well there's more space for the blood to
flow into therefore more space lower fluid we get a reduce or reduction in the pressure
c reduced stroke from reduced stroke volume so this is the amount of blood that we eject per
contraction of the heart mainly from the left ventricle but what would a lower stroke volume
mean for our body well it means less blood is leaving the heart per beat if we do that then
we're gonna have to beat more times per minute in order to satisfy the cardiac output demands
and we've already spoken about having a higher resting heart rate and how that's not a good
thing so if we were to reduce our stroke volume as well that's not going to be good for performance
it's going to put again an additional strain on the heart because it's going to have to
maintain a higher heart rate if it's going to maintain a high enough cardiac output
with stroke volume going lower so we know that that's not going to be a benefit
therefore it's probably not going to be something that the body adapts over time
with training and lastly reduced tidal volume similarly with stroke volume this is the the
equivalent you could say in the respiratory system so how much we breathe in or out per breath
during rest during exercise whatever it might be if we were to reduce that tidal volume
what that actually means is that we're taking less air in now this one's a little bit of a tricky one
because if our body is improving over time then our body might not actually need to breathe in as
much air per minute because it's able to extract more oxygen from the air that it does breathe in
so it's able to actually become a little bit more efficient it doesn't require as much air
per breath because it can still extract the same amount of oxygen that it can do but now with less
air so there's going to be less demand placed onto the respiratory muscles but tidal volume we don't
see we don't see this change too often or to too big a deal in a performer when we are exercising
what we actually want is to have a bigger tidal volume because if we can get more air in than we
could previously then that means even if we have improved our ability to extract oxygen we've now
got more air to extract even more oxygen out of which are going to satisfy energy demands way
better than if we didn't get better at extracting oxygen and we didn't have a higher tidal volume
during exercise so what's the answer a b c or d it would be b a reduced blood pressure because
we've got that expanding capillary capillarization expanding vascular network and our body and our
body gets better at moving that body that blood around the body hope that helped i'll see you guys