Athlete’s heart – this is how sport affects the heart
An athlete’s heart is usually diagnosed during routine examinations around the heart.
What is an athlete’s heart?
In principle, the athlete’s heart does not pose any health risks for competitive or recreational athletes. The heart usually adapts to the demands of the athlete to enable maximum performance. Depending on the load, six hours of endurance training per week are enough to develop an athlete’s heart. Typical changes in the athlete’s heart can be detected using cardiac ultrasound and echocardiography ( ECG ).
These are:
- an enlarged heart
- thick heart walls
- heart murmurs
- enlarged heart chambers
How dangerous is an athlete’s heart?
An athlete’s heart can trigger symptoms similar to those of various heart diseases. In order to rule this out, a doctor should therefore be consulted:
- An enlargement of the heart also occurs in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a special heart muscle disease) or heart failure  (weak heart).
- Heart murmurs can occur with heart valve disease  as well as with a healthy athlete’s heart.
- An irregular pulse also indicates cardiac arrhythmias  .
In an athlete’s heart, however, the heart valves are fully functional and there is neither an increased risk of heart attack nor heart disease.
Caution: If you have chest pain, shortness of breath, loss of energy or other symptoms of heart disease, further examinations such as a comprehensive stress test or magnetic resonance imaging  (MRI) of the heart are recommended to check its function and structure.
Basically, the athlete’s heart is not dangerous for humans, but a natural adaptation that also regresses with reduced training. Competitive athletes are recommended to carry out special training plans after the end of their career in order to slowly get their heart used to the lower stress. The so-called detraining should be checked and controlled by medical professionals. What else can happen?
Athlete’s heart: Influence on the resting heart rate
Due to structural changes such as the enlargement of the heart and the thickening of the heart walls, the heart pumps more blood around the body per heartbeat. This slows the heart rate: trained people need fewer heartbeats per minute to pump the same amount of blood through the body than untrained people.
While the resting heart rate of healthy adults is between 60 and 80 beats per minute, a so-called athlete’s heart rate is 30 to 40 beats per minute (competitive athletes) or 40 to 50 beats (trained recreational athletes). In athletes, an increase in performance can be recognized by an increased difference between the pulse values ​​at rest and during exercise.
