I think a mixed approach to swimming has lowered my resting heart rate a bit over the years. We don't do exclusively H.I.T. style workouts, but tend to do distance sets on Monday, strokes/IM on Wednesday, and sprint on Friday. On the off days (I try to swim once or twice a week on my own), I tend to do what the great James Kegley, formerly of Indiana, calls "il garbagio"--long swims that are like fitness swimming, with perhaps a bit more effort.
I did manage to get my heart rate down to a PR of 33 one morning upon first arising, but I grew so excited at the pending record that it sped up a bit at the end.
I still hope to reach Bjorn Borg's 29 at some point, perhaps on my deathbed, though this, I suspect, will require timing things exactly right.
All of the above notwithstanding, I suspect there is a genetic component at play here as well. My dad had a very low resting heart rate, and he never swam or jogged. He did play doubles tennis once or twice a week throughout his adult life. Not sure if this is the "fitness swimming" equivalent of tennis, but it certainly wasn't Nadal v Djokovich singles by any stretch.
Bottom line: like most things, I suspect resting heart rate is largely dictated by genes, which gives you a basic range. Within this range, exercise can lower it significantly in some, though perhaps not all, people, whereas sedentary living is likely to keep it on the higher end of the range. You need to do enough exercise to increase the interior volume of your heart's pumping chambers plus increase the overall amount of plasma in your blood stream. Thus Lance Armstrong has 50 percent more blood than most of us, and each beat of his ventricles circulates a lot more blood (and oxygen and nutrients) than a normal mortal's heart can.
Wt lifting, by the way, doesn't increase stroke volume, but it thickens the walls of the heart's pumping chambers, which must get used to the (temporarily) skyrocketing blood pressures that heavy lifting creates, especially during the valsalva maneuver.
I think a mixed approach to swimming has lowered my resting heart rate a bit over the years. We don't do exclusively H.I.T. style workouts, but tend to do distance sets on Monday, strokes/IM on Wednesday, and sprint on Friday. On the off days (I try to swim once or twice a week on my own), I tend to do what the great James Kegley, formerly of Indiana, calls "il garbagio"--long swims that are like fitness swimming, with perhaps a bit more effort.
I did manage to get my heart rate down to a PR of 33 one morning upon first arising, but I grew so excited at the pending record that it sped up a bit at the end.
I still hope to reach Bjorn Borg's 29 at some point, perhaps on my deathbed, though this, I suspect, will require timing things exactly right.
All of the above notwithstanding, I suspect there is a genetic component at play here as well. My dad had a very low resting heart rate, and he never swam or jogged. He did play doubles tennis once or twice a week throughout his adult life. Not sure if this is the "fitness swimming" equivalent of tennis, but it certainly wasn't Nadal v Djokovich singles by any stretch.
Bottom line: like most things, I suspect resting heart rate is largely dictated by genes, which gives you a basic range. Within this range, exercise can lower it significantly in some, though perhaps not all, people, whereas sedentary living is likely to keep it on the higher end of the range. You need to do enough exercise to increase the interior volume of your heart's pumping chambers plus increase the overall amount of plasma in your blood stream. Thus Lance Armstrong has 50 percent more blood than most of us, and each beat of his ventricles circulates a lot more blood (and oxygen and nutrients) than a normal mortal's heart can.
Wt lifting, by the way, doesn't increase stroke volume, but it thickens the walls of the heart's pumping chambers, which must get used to the (temporarily) skyrocketing blood pressures that heavy lifting creates, especially during the valsalva maneuver.
