**Exercise**

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When you exercise or compete in sports, you notice several things about your body. You breathe heavier and faster, your heart beats faster, your muscles hurt and you sweat. These are all normal responses to exercise whether you work out regularly or only once in a while or whether you are a "weekend warrior" or a trained athlete. When you watch world-class athletes compete, you see the same responses, only magnified.


The body has an incredibly complex set of processes to meet the demands of working muscles. Every system in the body is involved. In this article, we will look at how your body responds to strenuous exercise -- how muscles, blood circulation, breathing and body heat are affected. You will also see how these responses can be enhanced by training.

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Your Body's Response to Exercise


Any type of exercise uses your muscles. Running, swimming, weightlifting -- any sport you can imagine -- uses different muscle groups to generate motion. In running and swimming, your muscles are working to accelerate your body and keep it moving. In weightlifting, your muscles are working to move a weight. Exercise means muscle activity!

As you use your muscles, they begin to make demands on the rest of the body. In strenuous exercise, just about every system in your body either focuses its efforts on helping the muscles do their work, or it shuts down. For example, your heart beats faster during strenuous exercise so that it can pump more blood to the muscles, and your stomach shuts down during strenuous exercise so that it does not waste energy that the muscles can use.

When you exercise, your muscles act something like electric motors. Your muscles take in a source of energy and they use it to generate force. An electric motor uses electricity to supply its energy. Your muscles are biochemical motors, and they use a chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for their energy source. During the process of "burning" ATP, your muscles need three things:

They need oxygen, because chemical reactions require ATP and oxygen is consumed to produce ATP.
They need to eliminate metabolic wastes (carbon dioxide, lactic acid) that the chemical reactions generate.
They need to get rid of heat. Just like an electric motor, a working muscle generates heat that it needs to get rid of.
In order to continue exercising, your muscles must continuously make ATP. To make this happen, your body must supply oxygen to the muscles and eliminate the waste products and heat. The more strenuous the exercise, the greater the demands of working muscle. If these needs are not met, then exercise will cease -- that is, you become exhausted and you won't be able to keep going.

To meet the needs of working muscle, the body has an orchestrated response involving the heart, blood vessels, nervous system, lungs, liver and skin. It really is an amazing system!

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ATP is Energy!


For your muscles -- in fact, for every cell in your body -- the source of energy that keeps everything going is called ATP. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the biochemical way to store and use energy.
The entire reaction that turns ATP into energy is a bit complicated, but here is a good summary:

Chemically, ATP is an adenine nucleotide bound to three phosphates.
There is a lot of energy stored in the bond between the second and third phosphate groups that can be used to fuel chemical reactions.
When a cell needs energy, it breaks this bond to form adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and a free phosphate molecule.
In some instances, the second phosphate group can also be broken to form adenosine monophosphate (AMP).
When the cell has excess energy, it stores this energy by forming ATP from ADP and phosphate.
ATP is required for the biochemical reactions involved in any muscle contraction. As the work of the muscle increases, more and more ATP gets consumed and must be replaced in order for the muscle to keep moving.
Because ATP is so important, the body has several different systems to create ATP. These systems work together in phases. The interesting thing is that different forms of exercise use different systems, so a sprinter is getting ATP in a completely different way from a marathon runner!

ATP comes from three different biochemical systems in the muscle, in this order:

phosphagen system
glycogen-lactic acid system
aerobic respiration

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Phosphagen System

A muscle cell has some amount of ATP floating around that it can use immediately, but not very much -- only enough to last for about three seconds.

To replenish the ATP levels quickly, muscle cells contain a high-energy phosphate compound called creatine phosphate. The phosphate group is removed from creatine phosphate by an enzyme called creatine kinase, and is transferred to ADP to form ATP.

The cell turns ATP into ADP, and the phosphagen rapidly turns the ADP back into ATP. As the muscle continues to work, the creatine phosphate levels begin to decrease. Together, the ATP levels and creatine phosphate levels are called the phosphagen system. The phosphagen system can supply the energy needs of working muscle at a high rate, but only for 8 to 10 seconds.

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Glycogen-Lactic Acid System


Muscles also have big reserves of a complex carbohydrate called glycogen. Glycogen is a chain of glucose molecules.

A cell splits glycogen into glucose. Then the cell uses anaerobic metabolism (anaerobic means "without oxygen") to make ATP and a byproduct called lactic acid from the glucose.

About 12 chemical reactions take place to make ATP under this process, so it supplies ATP at a slower rate than the phosphagen system. The system can still act rapidly and produce enough ATP to last about 90 seconds.

This system does not need oxygen, which is handy because it takes the heart and lungs some time to get their act together. It is also handy because the rapidly contracting muscle squeezes off its own blood vessels, depriving itself of oxygen-rich blood.

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Aerobic Respiration


Muscles of the human body

By two minutes of exercise, the body responds to supply working muscles with oxygen. When oxygen is present, glucose can be completely broken down into carbon dioxide and water in a process called aerobic respiration.

The glucose can come from three different places:

remaining glycogen supplies in the muscles
breakdown of the liver's glycogen into glucose, which gets to working muscle through the bloodstream
absorption of glucose from food in the intestine, which gets to working muscle through the bloodstream

Aerobic respiration can also use fatty acids from fat reserves in muscle and the body to produce ATP. In extreme cases (like starvation), proteins can also be broken down into amino acids and used to make ATP.

Aerobic respiration would use carbohydrates first, then fats and finally proteins, if necessary. Aerobic respiration takes even more chemical reactions to produce ATP than either of the above systems. Aerobic respiration produces ATP at the slowest rate of the three systems, but it can continue to supply ATP for several hours or longer, so long as the fuel supply lasts.

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Runners Take Your Mark


So imagine that you start running. Here's what happens:

The muscle cells burn off the ATP they have floating around in about 3 seconds.

The phosphagen system kicks in and supplies energy for 8 to 10 seconds. This would be the major energy system used by the muscles of a 100-meter sprinter or weight lifter, where rapid acceleration, short-duration exercise occurs.

If exercise continues longer, then the glycogen-lactic acid system kicks in. This would be true for short-distance exercises such as a 200- or 400-meter dash or 100-meter swim.

Finally, if exercise continues, then aerobic respiration takes over. This would occur in endurance events such as an 800-meter dash, marathon run, rowing, cross-country skiing and distance skating.
When you start to look closely at how the human body works, it is truly an amazing machine!

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Getting Oxygen to the Cells


If you are going to be exercising for more than a couple of minutes, your body needs to get oxygen to the muscles or the muscles will stop working.

Just how much oxygen your muscles will use depends on two processes: getting blood to the muscles and extracting oxygen from the blood into the muscle tissue. Your working muscles can take oxygen out of the blood three times as well as your resting muscles.

Your body has several ways to increase the flow of oxygen-rich blood to working muscle:

increased local blood flow to the working muscle
diversion of blood flow from nonessential organs to the working muscle
increased flow of blood from the heart (cardiac output)
increased rate and depth of breathing
increased unloading of oxygen from hemoglobin in working muscle

These mechanisms can increase the blood flow to your working muscle by almost five times. That means that the amount of oxygen available to the working muscle can be increased by almost 15 times!

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Increasing Blood Flow


Making the Pipe Bigger

As you exercise, the blood vessels in your muscles dilate and the blood flow is greater, just as more water flows through a fire hose than through a garden hose.

Your body has an interesting way of making those vessels expand. As ATP gets used up in working muscle, the muscle produces several metabolic byproducts (such as adenosine, hydrogen ions and carbon dioxide). These byproducts leave the muscle cells and cause the capillaries (small, thin-walled blood vessels) within the muscle to expand or dilate (vasodilation). The increased blood flow delivers more oxygenated blood to the working muscle.

As you begin to exercise, blood from organs is diverted to the muscles.

Taking Blood from the Organs

When you begin to exercise, a remarkable diversion happens. Blood that would have gone to the stomach or the kidneys goes instead to the muscles, and the way that happens shows how the body's processes can sometimes override one another.

As your muscles begin to work, the sympathetic nervous system, a part of the automatic or autonomic nervous system (that is, the brainstem and spinal cord) stimulates the nerves to the heart and blood vessels. This nervous stimulation causes those blood vessels (arteries and veins) to contract or constrict (vasoconstriction).

This vasoconstriction reduces blood flow to tissues. Your muscles also get the command for vasoconstriction, but the metabolic byproducts produced within the muscle override this command and cause vasodilation, as we discussed above. Because the rest of the body gets the message to constrict the blood vessels and the muscles dilate their blood vessels, blood flow from nonessential organs (for example, stomach, intestines and kidney) is diverted to working muscle. This helps increase the delivery of oxygenated blood to working muscle further.

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Take a Deep Breath


Making the Heart Pump Harder

Your heart, also a muscle, gets a workout during exercise, too, and its job is to get more blood out to the body's hard-working muscles. The heart's blood flow increases by about four or five times from that of its resting state. Your body does this by increasing the rate of your heartbeat and the amount of blood that comes through the heart and goes out to the rest of the body. The rate of blood pumped by the heart (cardiac output) is a product of the rate at which the heart beats (heart rate) and the volume of blood that the heart ejects with each beat (stroke volume).

In a resting heart, the cardiac output is about 5 liters a minute (0.07 L x 70 beats/min = 4.9 L/min). As you begin to exercise, sympathetic nerves stimulate the heart to beat with more force and faster; the heart rate can increase about threefold. Also, the sympathetic nerve stimulation to the veins causes them to constrict. This, along with more blood being returned from the working muscles, increases the amount of blood returned to the heart (venous return). The increased venous return helps to increase the stroke volume by about 30 to 40 percent. When the heart is pumping at full force, the cardiac output is about 20-25 liters per minute.

Breathing Faster and Deeper

So far, we have talked about getting more blood to working muscle. Your lungs and the rest of your respiratory system need to provide more oxygen for the blood, too.

The rate and depth of your breathing will increase because of these events:

Sympathetic nerves stimulate the respiratory muscles to increase the rate of breathing.

Metabolic byproducts from muscles (lactic acid, hydrogen ions, carbon dioxide) in the blood stimulate the respiratory centers in the brainstem, which, in turn, further stimulates the respiratory muscles.

Slightly higher blood pressure, caused by the increased force of each heartbeat and by the elevated cardiac output, opens blood flow to more air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. This increases the ventilation and allows more oxygen to enter the blood.

As the lungs absorb more oxygen and the blood flow to the muscles increases, your muscles have more oxygen.

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Getting More out of Hemoglobin


Your body has increased the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your muscles, but your muscles still need to get the oxygen out of the blood. An exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide is the key to this.

A protein called hemoglobin, which is found in red blood cells, carries most of the oxygen in the blood. Hemoglobin can bind oxygen and/or carbon dioxide; the amount of oxygen bound to hemoglobin is determined by the oxygen concentration, carbon dioxide concentration and pH. Normally, hemoglobin works like this:

Hemoglobin in red blood cells entering the lungs has carbon dioxide bound to it.
In the lungs, oxygen concentration is high and carbon dioxide concentration is low due to breathing.
Hemoglobin binds oxygen and releases carbon dioxide.
Hemoglobin gets transported through the heart and blood vessels to the muscle.

In muscle, the carbon dioxide concentration is high and the oxygen concentration is low due to metabolism.

Hemoglobin releases oxygen and binds carbon dioxide.
Hemoglobin gets transported back to the lungs and the cycle repeats.

As you exercise, though, the metabolic activity is high, more acids (hydrogen ions, lactic acid) are produced and the local pH is lower than normal. The low pH reduces the attraction between oxygen and hemoglobin and causes the hemoglobin to release more oxygen than usual. This increases the oxygen delivered to the muscle.


Getting Rid of Waste

Your exercising body is using energy and producing waste, such as lactic acid, carbon dioxide, adenosine and hydrogen ions. Your muscles need to dump these metabolic wastes to continue exercise. All that extra blood that is flowing to the muscles and bringing more oxygen can also take the wastes away. The hemoglobin in the blood will carry away the carbon dioxide

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Heating Up


Your body heats up when you exercise, and it will show on your skin. Your skin feels hotter to the touch and may look flushed, and you sweat. Although those things let you know how much heat your body is giving off, they are actually the ways that the body cools itself.
Working muscle produces heat in two ways:

The chemical energy used in muscles contracting is not efficiently turned into mechanical energy. (It is about 20 to 25 percent efficient.) The excess energy is lost as heat.

The various metabolic reactions (anaerobic, aerobic) also produce heat.
Your body needs to remove this excess heat. The heat produced by exercising muscle causes blood vessels in the skin to dilate, which increases the blood flow to the skin. This elevated blood flow to the skin and the large surface area of the skin allows the excess heat to be lost to the surrounding air.

Also, receptors carry the message of excess heat to your body's thermostat, the hypothalamus in the brain. Nerve impulses from the hypothalamus stimulate sweat glands in the skin to produce sweat. The fluid for the sweat also comes from the increased skin blood flow.

The sweat evaporates from the skin, removing heat and cooling the body. Evaporation of sweat removes fluid from the body, so it is important to maintain fluids for blood flow and sweat production by drinking water and/or sport drinks. Sports drinks also replace ions (sodium, potassium) that are lost in the sweat, and provide additional glucose to fuel anaerobic and aerobic respiration.

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Heat Stroke


Evaporation of sweat is an important cooling system that can efficiently remove heat. However, if exercise is done in a hot, humid environment, then sweat does not evaporate. This reduces the efficiency of this system and the person is subject to heat stroke. Heat stroke is a life-threatening condition.

Here are its symptoms:

The core body temperature rises above 104 degrees F (40 degrees C)
Sweating stops
Heart rate increases
Respiration increases
Confusion, dizziness, nausea and headache occur


Heat stroke can cause a person to collapse, lose consciousness and even die. Emergency medical help involves these two steps: lowering the body temperature (removing clothing, spraying the person with cool mist, putting on ice packs, immersing the person in ice water) and replacing fluids, if possible.

You can avoid getting heat stroke by wearing shorts and other loose clothing, drinking plenty of water or sports drink and exercising in cool weather (below 82 degrees F or 28 degrees C).

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Training Your Body


Your body can get more out of exercise and can exercise more easily with training. Athletes spend a great deal of time training. It allows the body to adapt its basic response to exercise and to improve athletic performance.

Training can:

make your muscles perform better
match what you eat with what your body will use in energy
improve the efficiency of oxygen delivery to working muscle
get you used to the competition environment

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Strength, Power and Endurance


If you exercise regularly or if you are an athlete in training, you are trying to make your muscles work better. You want to be stronger if you are a weightlifter, you want to be able to throw a blistering fast ball if you are a baseball pitcher or you want to be able to finish strong at the end of a 26-mile race if you are a marathon runner.

Those three activities illustrate three major factors in muscle performance:

strength
power
endurance

Muscle strength is the maximal force that a muscle can develop. Strength is directly related to the size (that is, the cross-sectional area) of the muscle. Muscle fibers are capable of developing a maximal force of 3 to 4 kg/cm2 (average = 3.5 kg/cm2) of muscle area.

So, let's say that you have increased your muscle size from 100 to 150 cm2, then the maximal resistance that you could lift could be increased from 350 kg (770 lb) to 525 kg (1,155 lb).

The power of muscle contraction is how fast the muscle can develop its maximum strength. Muscle power depends on strength and speed [power = (force x distance)/time].

A person can have extreme power from muscles (7,000 kg-m/min) for a short period of time (about 10 seconds) and then power reduces by 75 percent within 30 minutes; this aspect is important for sprinters because it gives them great acceleration. Muscle endurance is the capacity to generate or sustain maximal force repeatedly.