Research
Mixed
Long-term endurance training leads to specific structural and functional adaptations in the heart, including chamber enlargement and improved diastolic performance, without necessarily increasing myocardial oxygen consumption per unit mass under certain conditions.
Regular endurance training makes your heart larger and more efficient, pumping more blood with less effort at rest. This is a sign of a healthy, adapted heart.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
the increased maximum cardiac output in the trained healthy human appears principally due to an increase in cardiac mass and volume and superior diastolic performance.
Why this rating
Based on a review of human studies, though some conclusions are hampered by cross-sectional designs and lack of heavy exercise testing.
Source
Organ-Specific Physiological Responses to Acute Physical Exercise and Long-Term Training in Humans
Ilkka Heinonen et al. · Physiology · 2014
DOI 10.1152/physiol.00067.2013
narrative_reviewCited 127×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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