Almost every sport is a victim. A sacrifice to your own health. Boxers suffer from the consequences of punches, powerlifters suffer from a torn back, torn muscle ligaments and tendons. Bodybuilders get a big imbalance in hormones and very often lie on the operating table in the fight against gynecomastia. But there is one disease that is characteristic of all sports, and it does not depend at all on the specifics of training, but, rather, it is associated with improperly organized training. No, this is not rhabdomyliosis, it is much worse - an athletic heart. Its consequences mislead every 5th athlete from the path to Olympus.
What it is?
Let's take a look at what a sports heart is from a physiological point of view. A sports heart is a traumatic and pathological change in the cardiac contractile tissue, characterized by the presence of scar connective tissue. In fact, these are scars on the muscle that interfere with the normal and healthy contraction of the heart.
As a result, this leads to an increase in the load on the main channels, chronically increases blood and intracranial pressure. Decreases the sensitivity of the main contractile structures to oxygen. Decreases life expectancy Increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. And this is not a complete list of what sports heart syndrome can lead to.
Most often it manifests itself in athletes, however, for athletes with many years of experience, its consequences are not as catastrophic as for beginners. The thing is that over the years of training, the body adapts and increases the volume of contractile tissue in order to compensate for damage to the heart muscle and cicatricial disconnected connections. However, if an athlete trains all his life on the brink of his capabilities, then, most likely, a heart attack as a result of sports heart syndrome will cause him to die.
A sad fact: one of the most famous athletes of our time, who died from a sports heart, due to a long violation of the training plan in combination with the use of anabolic steroids, is Vladimir Turchinov, who passed away before he was 60 years old.
How does it work?
A sports heart is obtained as a result of improper planning of the training process. It usually begins to develop as early as adolescence. The thing is that usually all the main sections associated with speed-strength sports have a group structure. It is easier for the trainer and more profitable commercially. And when a newcomer comes to an already established group, he is usually subjected to the same loads as those who have been practicing for several years.
Because of this, there is:
- Overtraining;
- Chronic malaise;
- Damage to the immune system;
- Damage to liver cells.
But the most important thing that turns out is a sports heart. The thing is that every athlete who starts his training usually forms the intensity of the load depending on his state of health. Generally, how you feel is easy to determine by two factors:
- The amount of sugar in the blood. It determines the overall oxygen level. When sugar is depleted, the athlete begins to feel nausea, weakness and dizziness.
- Pulse.
And it is the pulse that is responsible for the formation of a sports heart. The mechanism of formation is extremely simple. In view of the beginner's unpreparedness for serious stress, the heart rate often rises above the fat burning zone. The heart is frantically trying to cope with stress. At these moments, you can observe pumping, and sometimes even painful sensations in the chest area. However, the worst thing is that as a result of receiving microtraumas, the heart begins to overgrow not with ordinary muscle tissue, which helps to improve the strength of contractions, and, therefore, not to experience overload in the future, but connective tissue.
What does this lead to?
- The total volume of the heart muscle increases with a decrease in the working surface.
- Connective tissue often partially obstructs the coronary artery (which can later lead to heart attack);
- Connective tissue interferes with the full amplitude of contraction.
- With an increase in volume with a decrease in the force of contractions, the heart receives a consistently higher load.
As a result, once the mechanism is started it is very difficult to stop.
Unfortunately, training is not always a factor in the appearance of a sports heart. Very often, cardiac muscle hypoxia and increased stress occurs in the following cases:
- Caffeine abuse
- Power abuse;
- Cocaine use (one-time or permanent);
- Use of powerful fat burners based on clenbuterol and ephedrine (such as ECA).
As a rule, any of these factors, combined with moderate intensity training, can lead to disastrous results that irreversibly affect the quality and longevity of life.
Types of sports heart
Athletic heart can be classified according to the following indicators:
- The age of obtaining connective tissue;
- The volume of the affected area;
- Location of damaged areas.
On average, the classification is determined from the following table:
| Disability category | Duration of obtaining connective tissue | The volume of the affected area | Location of damaged areas | Possibility of surgical treatment |
| Normal person | Absent | Absent, or less than 1% | Away from major arteries | Not required |
| Minimal damage | Recent, scarring can be stopped by reducing stress | From 3 to 10% | Away from major arteries | Not required |
| Experienced athlete | Long-standing scars to which the heart muscle has adapted by increasing the total volume of contractile tissues. | From 10 to 15% | Away from major arteries | Shunting and cutting out of areas is possible. |
| Disabled person of the first group | Not important. Extensive scars that interfere with full contraction of the heart muscle | Over 15% | Partially obstructs key arteries, interfering with normal resting blood flow | Shunting and cutting out of areas is possible. High risk of death |
| Disabled person of the second group | Not important. Extensive scars that interfere with full contraction of the heart muscle | Over 20% | Partially obstructs key arteries, interfering with normal resting blood flow | Shunting and cutting out of areas is possible. High risk of death |
| Critical damage level | Not important. Extensive scars that interfere with full contraction of the heart muscle | Over 25% | Partially obstructs key arteries, interfering with normal resting blood flow | Impossible. Pacemaker placement or use of a heart muscle donor is recommended |
How is it diagnosed?
Diagnosis of a sports heart is possible only in conditions of echocardiography. In addition, you will have to additionally pass a stress test. It is not possible to independently determine the sports heart syndrome.
However, in case you notice one of the symptoms characteristic of a sports heart, you need to urgently consult a doctor:
- Bradycardia;
- Unreasonable tachycardia;
- The appearance of painful sensations during cardio;
- Decrease in strength endurance;
- Chronic increase in blood pressure;
- Frequent dizziness.
If any of them is found, you need to find out the cause of the appearance, in order to prevent the development of a sports heart, as a pathology in general.
Contraindications to sports
The only way to stop the development of sports heart syndrome is to temporarily stop physical activity for up to 5-6 years. What does this lead to? Everything is very simple. As a result of catabolic processes and optimization of the body for modern needs, part of the connective tissue can be destroyed in the process of reducing muscle contractile fibers. This will not eliminate all damage, but it can reduce its volume by up to 3%, which will allow it to function normally.
If you are a serious athlete and have discovered the first signs of sports heart syndrome, you should, first of all, review your training program.
The first item should be buying a heart rate monitor. During training, the pulse should not touch the fat burning zone even at peak moments, which means that for a long time you will have to change the profile of the main training in order to increase endurance and heart rate. Only after you carry out special cardio training (moderate cardio in the pulse zone of muscle hypertrophy without pumping), and a decrease in the base heart rate by more than 20%, you can gradually return to the standard training regime.
No, this does not mean that you need to completely eliminate the work with the barbell. However, intensity, speed, number of sets, weight and recovery time should be kept to the limit. Only by rolling back your results for a long time, you can gradually re-achieve them without harm to the heart muscle. However, some sports (especially power all-around) are simply contraindicated for athletes with this condition.
Treatment methods
There are several main treatments for an athletic heart. However, none of them will completely eliminate this syndrome forever. The fact is that damaged areas, like the lungs of a smoker, will never function as before, even with a full recovery.
- Surgical intervention.
- Complete rejection of motor abilities.
- Drug strengthening of the heart muscle.
- Increase in useful volume to compensate for non-working sections.
- Installing a cardio stimulator.
The most effective early treatment of sports heart syndrome is an integrated approach, which affects the reduction of physical activity with general strengthening due to drug intervention. In second place is the increase in the useful volume of the heart. It is this factor that experienced athletes compensate for the mistakes of youth and damage associated with overtraining of the body.
However, if the changes in the cardio-contractile tissues are pathological, or the scar connective tissue partially blocks important arteries, then the classical method of treatment will no longer help. Only forced catabolism is possible (an extremely dangerous undertaking that can end in unpleasant consequences), or surgical intervention.
Today, the practice of surgical removal of damaged tissue with a laser is more common than even 10 years ago. However, the chances of successful surgery for injuries in key areas of the contractile muscle are still much less than 80%.
Installing a cardiac pacemaker can only be suitable for those people who suffer from a sports heart, in conjunction with age-related degenerative changes in the soft tissues of the ventricles.
The only effective method that can completely get rid of sports heart syndrome is a donor heart transplant. Therefore, it is easier to prevent it than then, 10 years after the end of his sports career, he goes under the surgeon's knife and risk his own life because of improperly planned training complexes.
To summarize
An athletic heart is not a sentence. As a rule, the majority of young men who began to engage in strength athleticism early have total injuries of up to 10%, which absolutely do not interfere with them in everyday life due to adaptation. However, if the limitation of your injuries has a short period of time, this is a reason to identify errors in the training method, and most importantly, to remove them for the purpose of prevention. It is quite possible that for this it will be enough to add creatine phosphate on an ongoing basis, or to drink a course of preventive drugs for the heart muscle. Sometimes reducing the intensity of the training is enough.
In any case, if you start to control your heart rate, and do not reach the increased speed of your motor, you can avoid a sports heart, which means that your life expectancy, as well as the prevention of other pathologies of heart diseases, will increase significantly.
Remember - physical education helps to improve your own health, but sport always makes its followers disabled. Therefore, even if you are intensively preparing for the new Crossfit challenge, you should not overwork yourself. After all, no sporting achievements and awards are worth your life.
