The Musculoskeletal System

How the body responds to exercise:

Musculoskeletal system-

This system responds to acute exercise in the three following ways;

There is an increase of blood supply during exercise and for a short amount of time afterwards. This therefore causes our body temperature to increase as well as metabolic activity in the muscles. The blood supply is increased due to the increase of metabolic activity as this increases the body’s demand for oxygen. This would apply in sports such as football as a footballers body would have to produce more red blood cells in order to allow more oxygen to be transported around the body and to the muscles in use so that the player can continue on for longer in matches.

Muscle Pliability and range of movement is increased.

This is because the body is put under a lot of stress when exercising and micro tears are therefore an effect of this stress. These tears cause pressure on the nerves and pain and swelling is an outcome of this. These micro tears are essential in order to gain muscle. This would be important in sports such as weight lifting as when put under the stress of lifting the heavy weights micro tears will be a result of this which is what needs to happen in order to ensure that their muscles become stronger to improve their ability.

The energy systems response-

The energy systems respond to acute exercise when the intensity becomes too much for the cardiovascular and respiratory system.

Phosphocreatine-This energy system works in order to aid the body when taking part in physical activities which last between 3-10 seconds at maximal intensity such as anaerobic sports, including 100m sprint as no oxygen is needed for this system’s

Energy requirements of different sports and exercise-

Cardiovascular response-

This system responds to exercise in four different ways. These consist of;

Increase of heart rate. During exercise the adrenal gland produces a higher amount of adrenaline and noradrenaline which is sent to the heart. Then the hormones influence the sympathetic nerves which causes the heart to beat stronger to increase the stroke volume in order to increase the heart rate and increase cardiac output. This is evident in sports such as long distance running where people get adrenaline close to the end of the race where they begin to feel tired but they push themselves on. The body would release adrenalin in order to keep the body going which therefore increases the heart rate.

Increase of blood pressure. During exercise the systolic blood pressure increases

Vasodilation and vasocontraction

Respiratory