Long Term Affects

In my lesson last Thursday we learnt about long term affects and the structure of our bones.

Long term affects makes our muscles grow and makes our bones get stronger. This also increases our flexibility due to more synovial fluid and makes our tendons stronger aswell. We also manage to grow more cartalidge around the end of our bones and our lung capacity increases; our body also produces more red blood cells. This all happens because our body adapts to the way it is having to change. Over a long term, excercise makes the body much fitter so it needs to be able to keep up with itself.

Cardiovascular
Long term affects also make our heart get bigger and stronger when you excercise it. The stroke volume of the heart increases because it's much stronger than before.

Musculoskeletal
Our bone consists of three layers. Bone marrow, compact bone and cancellous (spongy) bone. The compact bone is the layer on the outside and the cancellous bone and bone marrow are on the inside. The more you excercise, the stronger your bones become, which makes them less likely to shatter if you ever have an accident.

Respiratory
The muscles between your ribs are called 'inter-costal' muscles and beneath your ribs you have a long muscle going horizontally called the 'diaphragm.' When you breath your inter-costal muscles and diaphragm expand. When you excercise they expand much more because your taking in bigger breaths.

When you excercise for a long period of time, say a few weeks or maybe a month or two, your body gets used to those daily excercises. For example, this could be what happens to a persons body after a few days of excercising:

Day 1-Go for a jog, last 10 minutes weak and out of breath
Day 2-5- Lasted 15 minutes, breathing more steady, not as tired and weak
Day 7-14-Same thing as before
Day 15-Lasted 30 minutes not tired, weak or out of breath

(During every jog from day 1-15 the muscles tear and repair getting slightly bigger and stronger. Due to muscles getting bigger, heart rate needs to increase so more o2 can be brought in to them. As your muscles get bigger, the bones need to be stronger to support them and more dense so they don't shatter.)

Musculo-Skeletal System

In my previous lesson, we learnt about the musculo-skeletal system. The musculo-skeletal system consists of all the bones in your body and your muscles. We was taught what a joint was; a joint is the point where two bones meet. A good example of a joint is the elbow, your humorous and radius meets at your elbow and your body allows you to bend it because its not a straight bone, its like a hinge on a door, very flexible. To protect your to bones from rubbing together at a joint, you have a thick layer around the end of the bone called 'cartalidge'. There's also a bag of liquid inbetween where the two bones meet, that's called 'synoval fluid.' In your life you tend to move all your joints a lot, so when you get older you can get such things as tennis elbow. Tennis elbow is a repetitive strain injury in your arm where your bones rub together because your cartalidge and synoval fluid has worn away because they've been rubbing together as you've been moving your joints all your life. It's a very painful thing, because when there is nothing to protect your joints from rubbing together, the nerves on the end of the bones clash together, and because nerves are very sensitive it can feel really painful.
We also learnt about how your muscles work in pairs. A good example of this is your tricep and bicep muscle in the top of your arm. When your pushing something your bicep stretches, so your tricep relaxes in order for that to happen, and same thing if it was the other way around. Your bones are connected to your muscles via tendon. The tendon is a thin tissue that allows your muscles to move because its attached between the muscle and the bone. Before excersice your muscles are quite stiff and not as flexible during and after excersice. The reason being is because during and after excersice your muscles are constantly moving, and the friciton between them heat them up, so the more hotter they are, the more flexible they are.

Sometimes you must wonder how your muscles get bigger. Your muscles get bigger because when you excercise the fibre inside of your muscle tears and they build upon each other. So the more you excersice, the more your fibres tear and build, so the more your muscles gets bigger! Also sometimes you may see people with VERY big muscles, like wrestlers. The reason their muscles are so big is because some of them take a pill called a 'steroid.' A steroid allows you to train much longer because it numbs the pain in your muscles that you get when you train for a long period of time. Because they can train much longer than a person that hasn't taken the pill, there fibres in their muscle rips a lot more, so it grows a lot bigger.
Over weight people are very weak people because they don't move their body very much. In order for your muscles to build you have to excercise or move a lot, but over weight people don't move very much so their fibres never build upon each other, and if you don't move your muscle very much, it wears away. For example, if you break your arm and you take the cast off your broken arm, it will feel much lighter than your other arm because your body has been eating away your muscle in the broken one.

Blood Pressure

In todays lessons we recorded our resting blood pressure rate on an automatic blood pressure monitor. One by one we went around the classroom and recorded each other's blood pressure, we wrote down the result on a piece of paper.
Afterwards we went around the class again each doing an excersice, then recorded our heart rate after excersice. My resting blood pressure rate was 122 over 60 and my blood pressure rate afterwards was 104 over 58.
(The reason why the blood pressure increases after excersice is because more blood is pumped around the vessels which is putting more pressure on to the veins.)

Cardiovascular & Respiratory

In my lesson before the Easter holidays we learnt about the cardiovascular and respiratory system. The cardiovascular system is all about the heart, veins and arteries and the respiratory system is all about the lungs and breathing. We done a frisbee excersice with the Post 16's to get our heart rate going. We also done a skipping excersice and a warm up at the beggining which associated jogging.
Afterwards we checked our breathing rates before and after. My breathing rate before was 30 breaths per minute and after excerise it was 36 breaths per minute.
My pulse beat was 108 beats per minute before and 180 beats per minute after excerise.
(The reason your blood pumps faster after excercise is because your moving  much faster so your body has to keep up with the pace of your blood being pumped through your heart, around your body and back to your heart again. And the reason you breath more after excercise is because your body takes in more oxygen and puts it in to your muscles so your body also has to keep up with that.)

Heart Rate

In my lesson before the Easter holidays I done an excersice to record my heart rate. We was split in to groups and each of those groups wrote an excersice for the other group to do. My group had been given a running excersice. We recorded our resting heart rate for 2 minutes and wrote it down on our table. After we done a little relay race. Once we finished our relay race we recorded out heart rate after excercise. Then we compared the two.