[mminer237]

Edit: I posted this accidentally when editing without noticing. Hypertrophy isn't necessarily a bad thing. I thought I was discarding the comment cuz I realized I was out of my depth. whoops

Please ignore my comment, though I will leave it to make the below comments less confusing.

Original: You don't want to "work out" your heart though. Cardiac hypertrophy is a bad thing.

The benefit of exercise is that your muscles become more oxygen-efficient. Your heart endures some stress now, so that it can work less in the future.

[kiritanpo]

Cardiac hypertrophy is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be the result of positive adaptation, such as exercising.

Eccentric hypertrophy (athlete's heart) is the positive adaptation resulting from training the heart. The heart has a lower resting rate and is more efficient at pumping blood. It returns to normal size if training stops.

You'll never reach a state of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (the bad kind of hypertrophy) with exercise. Its cause is usually genetic.

[kazga]

Not true. You can't really train your muscles to use less oxygen for the same energy output (what "oxygen-efficiency" would imply). You rather increase their capacity to take up oxygen from the blood and burn it. They will use more oxygen to output more energy.

That additional oxygen needs to come from somewhere. Endurance training at the same time trains the heart to deliver more oxygen to the periphery; the primary mechanism is increased cardiac stroke volume.

[bluGill]

You kind of can - the muscles can use aerobic or anaerobic processes. When you develop brute strength you are training those anaerobic processes. That isn't what OP was talking about, and overall it is much less energy efficient, but it does produce a large burst of energy when needed and you can train your muscles that way.

[gf000]

I would assume that another factor is that the technique for a given exercise on the other hand can be improved, and that can help with decreasing the necessary energy - would that be a correct statement? And as a follow up, depending on activity type this may or may not be significant?

[frocodillo]

Yes, definitely. Technique is partly about efficient mechanical movement, sending the various parts of your body in the right direction(s) and not waste effort on movement that doesn’t contribute to propelling you forwards. But for endurance sports, it’s really about minimizing energy cost at a given speed. To use running as an example, you can improve biomechanical efficiency through better timing, correct loading of tendons, tendon stiffness, elastic energy use, and more.

[SJMG]

This is terribly uniformed. Do not listen to this.

Cardiac hypertrophy isn't a "bad thing". This is completely contextual. What you don't want, for example, is pathological hypertrophy from things like hypertension, or exclusive left ventricular hypertrophy without associated increase in chamber size.

The heart is very complex. You 100% should exercise it.

[adrianN]

Wikipedia says Athlete's heart is benign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome

[groundzeros2015]

This is why I hate health science. Informed people can have the same information and come to opposite conclusions. The entire field is made up of contradictory explanations and principles, to the extent that it’s unknowable what’s true or not.

[robrenaud]

The flat earthers are why I hate astronomy.

Afaict, the grand parent poster is just very wrong. You do want to cause acute stresses to your heart (cardiovascular exercise) to get it work better.

[groundzeros2015]

It’s not really about this particular claim. It’s that I can read a comment that has a reasonable chain of logic and I don’t know if it’s true. This topic is just not easily studied and theories are hard to falsify.

[groundzeros2015]

Claims about flat earth are falsifiable with at-home experiment.

[rhyperior]

That seems… misguided.

Sources?

[jagged-chisel]

Your heart is also a muscle.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

... about the size of your fist. Keep loving, keep fighting.

(attributed to Bertolt Brecht)