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The Benefits of Exercising Essay

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The Benefits of Exercising

What can exercise do for me?

Exercise does more then reduce weight, it can improve both our health and fitness, and should involve using as much of the body as possible.

Exercise has two main benefits:

v Short term these are the effects that happen during the activity itself and also contribute to the long term benefits e.g. the heart rate will increase, which will increase the flow and pressure of the blood.

v Long term these are the lasting effects which occur and include the following:

o Heart becomes bigger, stronger and capable of pumping more blood.

o Lungs get more oxygen to the muscles.

o Blood volume increases, therefore more oxygen can …show more content…

So if I exercise properly does this mean I will win a marathon?

No, however much we exercise, some people are born better marathon runners then others. No matter what your build is or how much stamina you have got, if you don’t have the right type of muscle fibres then the chances of you become a world class runner are extremely slim. Muscle tissue is composed of muscle fibres that contain two main fibre types, which contract at different speeds, fast twitch fibres which contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue quickly and slow twitch fibres which contract slowly and can keep going for a long time without getting fatigued. Most people will tend to have a balance of about 50% of these two types of fibres in their muscle. Experiments have shown that long distance runners tend to have a higher percentage of slow twitch fibres (74%) in their calf muscles.

One of the main limiting factors to how fast you can run is the amount of oxygen you can get to your muscles. Oxygen is needed for your muscle cells to release energy. The maximum amount of oxygen you can take in and process is known as your VO2 max. The VO2 max of marathoners is 45% higher than an untrained person. But this advantage is largely genetic and research has shown that training only increases VO2 max by 10-20%.

What makes so many Kalenjin runners win

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