Question

1. Do you think heart rate responses would be different to the different modes of exercise?  Why? What is the purpose/function of increasing heart during exercise? What factors influence increase in heart rate during exercise among the different modes?

Answer 1

There are different modes or types of exercises. The four main modes of exercises are :

- endurance : endurance exercise aims at increasing cardiovascular and respiratory fitness through activation of aerobic pathways.

- strength : strength training involves resistance exercises and aims at building muscle mass and strengthen the muscles.

- flexibility : flexibility exercises aims at increasing musculoskeletal flexibility through exercises such as stretching.

- balance : balance training helps improve coordination of various organ systems and postural balance.

All these modes of exercises are performed at different intensities and different level of effort is required for each mode.
The exercises that requires more vigorous muscular efforts needs more energy to perform work. This requires greater amount of oxygen to the muscles delivered by blood. The heart senses the need for increased oxygen demand and increases myocardial contraction to increase cardiac output. This causes increase in heart rate.
Strength training requires vigorous amount of muscle work whereas flexibility and balance training do not require high intensity of exercises and does not cause much rise in heart rate.
Factors that affect heart rate during exercise are intensity, duration, repetition.