The heart undergoes profound changes in response to systematic athletic training. Several adaptations of cardiac shape and function occur with athletic training to improve the heart's function as a pump and thereby increase aerobic capacity. Maximal oxygen consumption or VO2 max is regularly used as an index of physical fitness but the issue of which of the left ventricular structural parameter correlates with VO2 max remained unresolved. The aim of the study was to examine the effects of the long-term intensive physical training on cardiac responses in highly trained athletes-football players and wrestlers- and reveal the structural parameter of the heart which better correlates with aerobic capacity. We studied a group of highly trained male athletes, 221 football players and 51 wrestlers, and 48 healthy male sedentary controls. The research has included M and 2D-echocardiography, resting ECG and stress-testing. The data indicate that highly trained male athletes had higher value of maximal oxygen uptake PWC(170) and PWC(170)/kg than untrained male controls; they exhibit greater left ventricular internal dimension, left ventricular wall thickness, relative wall thickness, left ventricular mass and mass index compared to the untrained controls. The amount of physiologic hypertrophy that occurs in the athletes is related to the intensity and duration of the exercise and is directly related to the fitness level or V02 max. It was concluded that VO2max is the variable that better correlates with the LVMI.
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