I listened to a AACC podcast episode a while ago where they discuused a ‘theory’ that a person only has so many hearbeats in a lifetime. It was a response to a quick question at the end. I have searched for the podcast but cannot find it.
Can anybody recall the episode it was in please.
TIA
Cant find the podcast. It is not that you only have a finite number of heartbeats in your life, just that you life for a certain time and your heart will beat for a certain times, there is no causation as in you have used up your heartbeats and you die.
And training actually lowers your average heartrate during the day, meaning athletes actually on average die with less heartbeats in their life. Maybe somebody else can find the relevant podcast.
#284
My podcast player randomly threw that one up for a re-listen yesterday during my outdoor workout
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay, “The Slowly Moving Finger”, that sort of looked at this - basically saying that we humans were pretty lucky, we basically had like 2.8 billion heart beats on average (average HR 70 bpm, average age of 80), while many other animals were only around 1-1.5 billion.
meaning athletes actually on average die with less heartbeats in their life.
Not necessarily - I mean, you’d expect that athletes on average would live longer, so total heart beats maybe is the same?
284 it is. Thanks very much.
I was interested in re-listening to the theory and the calculations again.
The former President believes in that theory…which tells you all you need to know about the validity of the theory.
284 was the podcast. I believe coach chad was referencing from one of the first few chapters of The Haywire Heart . It is an Interesting read or listen.
I would say that athletes might possibly use more heartbeats.
All that working out raising heartbeats compared to sitting on a couch.
If you are interested in this kind of stuff, you will no doubt be fascinated by the Naked Mole-rat, and the Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality!
Well, yeah - but you’re only working out 1-2 hours a day, and you have a lower resting heart rate the other 22-23 hours a day.
Look at it this way: If you worked out for 90 minutes at an avg HR of 160bpm, then had an avg hr of 50 the rest of the day, you’d have a total of 82,000 heart beats for a full day. If you didn’t work out and averaged 70bpm for the entire 24 hours, you’d have 101,000 heart beats for the full day.
That’s a 20,000 beat difference.
I think Google will be my friend on this one. Sounds intriguing.
If I think back to my serious athlete days as a D1 swimmer, we worked out 4-6 hours a day.
I’m sure we used more beats than couch dwellers.
Yeah but you guys are fookin’ nuts…