Hello,
When I do cardio my heart rate climbs twice to about 150-160bpm. People say that it’s actually good for your health and well being of heart. How does making the heart work twice as fast help it instead of hurting it?
In: R7 (Search First)
Like other muscles, your heart will be slightly damaged when it is asked to work harder than it is used to. It will then repair the damage in a way that makes it stronger—provided you allow enough time for recovery. Over time, endurance athletes’ hearts also get bigger, particularly the left ventricle, so they can pump more blood with each stroke. (There are also diseases that can cause the left ventricle to get bigger, but when it happens due to exercise, it’s not pathological.)
The current advice from endurance experts is to do most of your cardio exercise at an easy to moderate, conversational effort—easy enough that you can speak in complete sentences. More intense efforts should be 20-30% at most of your total time. That reduces the risk of overuse injuries. It’s not your heart that is most at risk, though; it’s skeletal muscle and connective tissue, especially at joints.
One study recently claimed that too much exercise was bad for the heart, [but the data don’t support that claim](https://www.outsideonline.com/2405907/extreme-exercise-heart-health-study).
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