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Arms Extract Less Oxygen Than Legs During Exercise |
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Written by SuperHuman
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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
Upper body endurance exercises, such as rowing or arm cycling, seem
more difficult than lower body exercises, such as running or cycling.
Also, you burn fewer calories during upper body than lower body exercise, which limits the usefulness of upper body activities for helping people lose body fat. Spanish researchers found that leg muscles have a greater capacity to extract oxygen than arm muscles. They blamed the differences on diffusion— the movement of oxygen from a high concentration (in blood) to a lower concentration (in tissues). Upper body muscles have a lower blood flow distribution, the blood cells remain in their blood vessels (i.e., capillaries) for a short time, and the oxygen has a longer diffusion distance to reach vital cell energy centers. Upper body endurance training is vital if you want to play upper body endurance sports. (Am J Appl Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiology, 289: R1448-R1458, 2005)
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