Exercise physiology explains how the body responds to physical activity and adapts to training over time. This cheat sheet helps students connect workouts with heart rate, breathing, energy use, fatigue, and recovery. It is useful for planning safe exercise, improving fitness, and understanding why different activities train the body in different ways.
The core ideas include heart rate, training intensity, the FITT principle, overload, specificity, recovery, and the body’s energy systems. Important formulas include maximum heart rate = 220 - age and target heart rate = maximum heart rate x intensity percentage. Students should also understand that aerobic exercise mainly uses oxygen for longer activity, while anaerobic exercise supports short, high-intensity efforts.
Key Facts
- Maximum heart rate can be estimated with the formula maximum heart rate = 220 - age.
- Target heart rate can be estimated with the formula target heart rate = maximum heart rate x intensity percentage.
- Moderate-intensity exercise is usually about 50% to 70% of maximum heart rate.
- Vigorous-intensity exercise is usually about 70% to 85% of maximum heart rate.
- The FITT principle stands for frequency, intensity, time, and type, which are the main variables used to plan exercise.
- Progressive overload means the body improves when exercise stress is gradually increased over time.
- Specificity means the body adapts most to the exact type of exercise performed, such as running improving running endurance.
- Recovery is necessary because muscles, energy stores, and body systems need time to repair and adapt after training.
Vocabulary
- Exercise physiology
- Exercise physiology is the study of how the body responds and adapts to physical activity.
- Heart rate
- Heart rate is the number of times the heart beats per minute.
- Aerobic exercise
- Aerobic exercise is activity that uses oxygen to produce energy for longer periods, such as jogging or swimming.
- Anaerobic exercise
- Anaerobic exercise is high-intensity activity that produces energy without relying mainly on oxygen, such as sprinting or heavy lifting.
- Progressive overload
- Progressive overload is the gradual increase of exercise difficulty to improve fitness safely.
- Recovery
- Recovery is the rest period when the body repairs tissues, restores energy, and adapts to training.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Using 220 - age as an exact maximum heart rate is wrong because it is only an estimate and individual heart rates can vary.
- Training hard every day is wrong because the body needs recovery time to repair muscle tissue and reduce injury risk.
- Ignoring intensity is wrong because the same activity can train different fitness goals depending on heart rate, speed, resistance, and effort.
- Increasing workout time, speed, and resistance all at once is wrong because rapid overload can raise the risk of soreness, fatigue, and injury.
- Confusing aerobic and anaerobic exercise is wrong because long steady activity and short explosive activity rely on different energy systems.
Practice Questions
- 1 A 16-year-old student estimates maximum heart rate using 220 - age. What is the student’s estimated maximum heart rate?
- 2 A student has an estimated maximum heart rate of 200 beats per minute. What is 70% of that maximum heart rate?
- 3 A workout plan says to exercise 4 days per week for 30 minutes at moderate intensity by cycling. Identify the frequency, intensity, time, and type.
- 4 Why should an athlete include recovery days in a training program instead of doing intense workouts every day?