Question

Describe the adaptations to the skeletal muscle with long term aerobic exercise training and long-term resistance exercise training. Describe how they occur and how they contribute to improved performance (e.g. how does aerobic exercise training allow a person to offset fatigue).

Answer 1

Adaptation to the skeletal muscle with long term aerobic exercise:

  Due to the aerobic training the extraction of oxygen from the blood supply and the energy metabolism get changed and it get improve the muscle performance.Due to the increased extraction of oxygen cardiac output also get increased.

Muscle fibers type:

Muscle fibers is of two types the are slow twitch(type 1) fibers and fast twitch fibers(type 2). The slow fibers have high blood supply and high fatigue resistant and the fast fibers are also have relatively high blood supply and the fatigue resistant is low. Prolonged aerobic training causes the proportional of type 1 fibers get increased.

Mitochondria:

Due to the aerobic training the mitochondria in the muscle fibers get increased

Blood flow capacity:

  Due to aerobic exercise the consumption of blood in the muscle mass get increased due to the high intensity exercise the all the blood vessels get activated and the blood supply get increased.

Muscle capillarity:

  Due to aerobic training the capillaries around the muscle bulk get increased and it improve the exchange of oxygen to the fibers .

Adaptation to the skeletal muscle with long term resistance exercise training:

Muscle cross section area :

Due to the long term resistance exercise training increase the cross sectional area of the muscle. It may be hypertrophy or hyperplasia or both.

Hypertrophy:

It refers to increase in the size of the muscle fibers.

Hyperplasia:

It refers to the increase in the number of cell or fibers in the muscle.

Mitochondria number:

Due to the resistance training the quantity of mitochondria get increased in the muscle cells to increase the energy production.

Increase in capillary density:

  Due to resistance training the capillaries around the muscle get increased to improve the exchange of oxygen to the fibers.

Due to the aerobic training the proportion of slow twitch fibers is high .These fibers are have high fatigue resistant so the aerobic training allow the person to offset fatigue.

Contribution:

  Due to the long term aerobic training it improve the cardiac output in the body and VO2 max get increased in the body . It helps to increase the endurance in the body. It also improves the performance of the athletes.

Due to long term resistance training tones the body and increase the bulk of the muscle. It also improve the flexibility of the muscle . And it also improve the balance. It helps the athletes to enhance the performance.