The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner

Long time swimmer and runner here - the biggest difference between the two IMO is the focus on lung capacity for swimming.<p>A common swimming training set most competitive swimmers will be familiar with are &quot;lung busters&quot;. You do a 200y free that&#x27;s 50y breathing every 3 strokes, 50 every 5, 50 every 7, 25 every 9 and then a 25y butterfly without breathing. I had a coach who would have us do 6 of these on 2:45 (meaning about 15-30s of rest for strong distance swimmers). Everyone would be audibly gasping for air by the end of these.<p>In races, how often you breathe is a critical part of race strategy. In a 50y&#x2F;m free you generally shouldn&#x27;t breathe at all; in a 500+ race, there are big debates about whether to breathe every 2 or 3 strokes. Additionally, how much to kick is a key part of strategy since kicking&#x27;s contribution to speed is not great compared to how much oxygen it depletes.<p>I really don&#x27;t think running compares in terms of how stressful the sport is on the lungs. That said, running 400m sprints with small rest intervals is extremely hard on every part of the body and I found the muscle stress from running far greater than from swimming.

I&#x27;d like too see more study on the long term damage of endurance sports on the heart. I&#x27;m hoping to begin running marathons at the end of this year and ultramarathons next year. But reaching that level of fitness requires multi-hour runs, sometimes as many as twice a week. When training for mountaineering, I sometimes climb 5000+ feet in a day. Days like that tend to elevate my resting heart rate for up to a week afterwords. This probably means I&#x27;m sustaining heart damage, at least temporarily.<p>There are notable case of ultra runners dying, and autopsy shows long term heart damage. Some combination of duration and intensity seems to be dangerous, but the risk factors are not well understood yet.

In the article it&#x27;s stipulated it&#x27;s because of gravity. But it&#x27;s also mentioned in passing that swimmers hold their breath. I wonder, is there any effect in being able to hold your breath for long when it comes to cardio? As in, I can hold my breath for 4:58, does that offer me any advantage?<p>Or what about training with a bigger lack of oxygen, as in waiting longer between strokes to breathe or holding your breath while running, does it do any good?

Hardly a word on the type of runners? Typical track and field running disciplines are a very different load than marathon or longer and the training cannot be compared at all. The same question would apply to swimming, if there were truly established long distance disciplines outside of triathlon (but even there, the swimming part takes only a fraction of the time of the others).

I was a national level 5k runner in Canada<p>I often have doctors tell me that my resting heart rate was too low for the machine to read. The lowest I’ve clocked is 34 bpm.<p>I assume there’s a safe limit to how low a heart rate can go, which makes me wonder what the limit to cardiovascular performance in running is.

&gt; But even now, he says, “an important message is that all of the athletes showed better function than a normal person off the street, which supports the message that exercise is good for hearts.”<p>Or people with good hearts become athletes and their hearts improve with exercise.

If anyone is interested in cardio activities, jumping rope is another one that gives high numbers:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Metabolic_equivalent#Activities" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Metabolic_equivalent#Activitie...</a>

It&#x27;s certainly an interesting finding, but I wonder if there are any long term implications of it? Especially as swimming should be easier on the knees than running is.

Define runner. I skimmed the article and didn&#x27;t see it. Maybe I missed it. Some runners train for long distances - marathons or longer. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the sprinters who train for a short burst of maximum speed. And there are competitions for many distances between these extremes. It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me if difference between these extremes were as great or greater as those between runners and swimmers.

The sample size is very small. Makes me nervous about any conclusions.

We&#x27;re really a furnace burning oxygen inside which deteriorate cells faster when you&#x27;re doing sports competitively, sports are great for health, what about competitive sports? is it really that good? is there any data showing that they live longer and healthier because of those intense exercise?<p>I exercise regularly but always had this doubt about &quot;over-exercise&quot; that could do more harm than good.

Does anaerobic activity (lifting) improve the condition of the heart?

Would love to see a comparison with bike exercise.

Does gravity really affect our health?

now do the knees...

can i get a tldr? stuck behind paywall