I’m a fairly serious cyclist. When I train and improve, what is happening in my body? It’s obviously not as simple as “less fat, more muscle mass.” More muscle mass doesn’t help me go 100 miles when I previously couldn’t go 50.
More specific, related, questions: What changes in the human body = cardiovascular fitness? Does something about your heart and your blood vessels actually physically change? Does your body somehow become more efficient at carrying oxygen? What about endurance? How does your body “learn” to endure exercise for a long time? Besides loss of fat and gain of muscle, what are the physical changes that happen in endurance training?
In: 2
There’s a bunch of things. Among them:
* Higher red blood cell count and hemoglobin content -> more oxygen capacity.
* Larger stores of glycogen, the body’s short-term energy storage molecule -> greater energy available to muscles in the short term
* Larger heart muscle -> greater cardiac output.
* Greater perfusion (= more capillaries running through your flesh) -> better oxygen delivery
* More flexible blood vessels -> can move more blood around without spiking blood pressure
* Changes in muscle cell energy usage to use anaerobic sources more readily -> less delay before backup energy sources kick in
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