Effects Of Exercise On The Musculoskeletal System

Reviewing Physiological Data
Effects of exercise on the musculoskeletal system:
Musculoskeletal system
The musculoskeletal system is made of muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones/joints and associated tissues that move the body and maintain its form. This system operates under the control of the nervous system producing voluntary movements. “This system protects the brain and internal organs, maintains up right posture, blood cell formation, mineral homeostasis, stores fat and minerals”. During this 6 week programme I can see Dara’s short term responses. As Dara starts to exercise, the body adapts to the increased level that exercise puts it under. With the short term effects of exercise on Dara’s muscles there is then an increase of temperature,
with this there is a greater demand for oxygen in the blood supply through the dilation of the capillaries. As his body is going into overload, his muscles and all body organs need more energy and oxygen; this is because my client’s body is working more than usual. The blood supply has to increase because it has to go to the parts in his body which we are exercising the most.
Flexibility was an increased due to the range of movement around the player’s joints, muscles and tendons. Their joints become a lot stronger due to the training programme. Over the 6 week programme the expected response that I should see in Dara’s is that he would become more flexible than what he originally was, and this has been proven due to being testing at the beginning and at the end. He should also become an overall fitter and healthier individual. Another thing is that their muscular endurance should improve as well as strength. His lenience to lactic acid will also improve and his recovery time will decrease as it will be able to adapt to his current training levels. I carried out different fitness tests on Dara so that I could check his progress throughout the 6-week-programme to see if he was improving or not. His bleep test score improved a good bit. This is a result of Dara doing regular aerobic exercise as the slow twitch fibres get increased network in the arteries, capillaries and veins. Dara’s muscles where also put under stress to the point that tiny tears also occurred in his muscle fibres. These micro tears cause a small tear which causes pressure on the nerve endings, so when it recovers it grows in size. My client can now work harder for a longer period of time, as he can perform better aerobically. Dara’s flexibility has improved throughout the 6 week programme. The flexibility of muscles increases. When Dara is doing sport, this could prevent injury and may even improve performance throughout the full session. It is clear to see in reviewing Dara’s programme results because with short term stretching he gets more flexible. In week 1 during exercise he became a lot more flexible starting off with 14 cm before exercise and then with stretching it enabled him to reach 16 cm and through exercising the whole 6 weeks this helped even more as when exercising now Dara can now stretch up to 21 cm. Through regular exercise ligaments will increase in both flexibility and strength. Athletes require more elastic ligaments to handle the overload of progressive training program. Dara’s flexibility score was higher during exercise due to the muscles being warmed up. I chose the sit and reach test to test his flexibility, the reason for choosing this test was because the sit and reach test is the most common way to measure flexibility and is designed to assess the flexibility of the lower back and hamstrings muscles. An advantage of this is that it requires minimal equipment (a bench and a 30cm ruler) so in doing this test it was very practical because all of this equipment was available to me, also the practicality of this test also means that it can be conducted almost anywhere. Another advantage of this is that there is little cost with all the equipment. There also are disadvantages, the main disadvantage to this test is that if Dara doesn’t warm up correctly he may not be able to reach and stretch as far.
Effects of exercise on the cardiovascular system:
The cardiovascular system is a system of the body consists of the heart, the blood, and the blood vessels.
This system is responsible for transporting blood. As the cardiovascular system moves blood through the body, cells get oxygen and nutrients. Carbon dioxide and other wastes are removed from then removed from the body.
The heart rate raises, stroke volume increases, cardiac output increases, blood pressure increases, blood flow increases and blood plasma volume decreases. The short term effects of the cardiovascular system include an increase in cardiac output during and after exercise. The stroke volume and the heart rate increase because of the increase of oxygen being demanded by the working muscles. Blood flow is mainly put to the muscles that are working. Blood pressure also increases as more blood is transported at a much faster rate to the working muscles. This is evident as when Dara began to exercise his blood pressure went from 112 resting to 128 during exercise. This is because blood is transported at much a faster rate. Before you even begin your exercise, your heart rate already starts to build up, this is known as your anticipatory heart rate. Before intense exercise this happens due to the nervous system sending out signals. During exercise your blood needs to work harder to supply your muscles with more the sufficient amount of oxygen. Your heart does this by pumping more blood around the body by increasing
the amount of power of each l contractions which therefore raises your blood pressure. Then it starts to decrease with a resting heart rate, before gradually returning back to normal. The heart eventually becomes more efficient, and no longer needs to be as vigorous when pumping blood around the body to recover it.
Resting heart rate is able to slow down because the heart is now able to pump a larger quantity of blood with every beat, this can also be known as improved circulation. In response to this, it needs to supply the muscles with more oxygen during exercise. Blood pressure decreases by up to 10 mmHg. The body produces a more red blood cells in order to keep the muscles supplied with oxygen during heavy exercise. I carried out different fitness tests on Dara so that I could monitor his progress through the training programme to see if he was improving or if he wasn’t. I made sure that each test was carried out in the same way to ensure that these were fair tests and that nothing was changed to make it unfair. The test I used for this was the bleep test. To carry out the beep test there is very little equipment needed as all you need is the cd and CD player, or I could also use YouTube. Luckily I had both of these available to me and didn’t need to purchase any. It takes a few seconds to set up and can be conducted either indoors or outdoors so Dara has a choice of where he wants to do it also. A major disadvantage of this test is that it is hard to get an exact result and the test cannot just be repeated like others such as the sit and reach. Dara will need a couple of days to recover so that he gets his best results.
Effects of exercise on the energy system:
There are two energy systems used during the process of respiration. Aerobic which is with oxygen and anaerobic which is without the use of oxygen which produces fast bursts of energy for short, powerful bursts. When the exercise is a high intensity, and when it is too much for the cardiovascular and respiratory system to deal with, the anaerobic system kicks in. ATP is where we get the energy from to continue and this system only works for the first 10 to 20 seconds of exercise with 100% effort. Long term exercise from aerobic and circuit training makes muscle tissue generate more ATP, therefore eventually allowing Dara to do more anaerobic exercises for longer/at a greater intensity. These results are why Dara can sustain prolong periods of aerobic exercise as a result of long term exercise. As a result of having more energy Dara will be able to work harder.
To test Dara’s energy system I used the 70m sprint test. I chose this as it is a good measure of his specific muscular speed and it is very easy to do. The test is suitable to the component of fitness we are testing as it is a suitable distance to build speed and maintain it but still over a short distance, so that it can be repeated a few times if something went wrong or was recorded wrongly. Because of this, it can be done at least 3 times more or less straight after each other, with short breaks in between. These all make this test very practical and an average could be taken. This is a cost free test as no equipment is required apart a stopwatch, and you can normally find these on your phone. It can be carried out on a football field but if weather is not sufficient an indoor sports centre will have to be hired, for example, the local area have medowbank sports arena. The test takes a short time to complete as it is a sprint. The areas of improvement that I would make is to ensure that once Dara has crossed the finish line that I was ready to press the stop button to ensure he got the correct score.
Effects of exercise on the respiratory system:
The respiratory system is organs that supply the body with oxygen through red blood cells.
The organs work together to change the air that is breathed in into oxygen for the blood. The body’s cells require oxygen in order to function, so if the respiratory system does not work properly, there could be a massive problem. Exchange of gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide) occurs and the blood becomes oxygenated before returning to the heart and being circulated towards the muscles. An massive change to make the heart and lungs work harder was the number of breaths needed per minute which a rest Dara’s was 10-14 breaths per minute, but as Dara began to exercise this increased. When you exercise you have an increase in the depth of breathing. Your muscles need more oxygen during exercise because they need to produce more energy to work for longer periods of time. Without an increase in oxygen the muscles will try to produce energy through the anaerobic energy system. But this won’t work long term. Before you begin exercising you get a small rise in breathing rate and this is called anticipatory rise. When you begin exercising there is a noticeable increase in breathing rate and after a few minutes of aerobic exercise your breathing continuous to increase but eventually levels off if the intensity remains constant. If you are exercising at your highest possible intensity then your breathing rate will keep increasing until exhaustion, where you can literally go no longer. Throughout
my 6 week programme, Dara’s bleep test results increased due to an increase of his respiratory muscles. Dara’s diaphragm and intercostal muscles became stronger and overall chest size/capacity got bigger. This results in an improved ability to breathe in more air for longer with less fatigue. The beep test was also used for this method, to carry out the beep test there is very little equipment required as all you need is a cd and cd player. This is not a costly piece of equipment and can be easily purchased. This test is conducted either indoors or outdoors so Dara can decide what or where he wants to do it himself. A disadvantage of this test is that it is hard to get a precise result as the test cannot be repeated just after a test as Dara needs time to recover.