“Stronger” hearts typically have a resting pump rate lower than that of weaker or less healthy ones. A healthy, athletic male might have a resting BPM of 60, while an otherwise healthy but post-partem female could be closer to 90.
Would both of these hearts expend the same energy pumping 120 BPM? Would the healthier heart be theoretically expending more as it is acting in double-time, or would the weaker one be working harder as it is already inefficient at pumping blood?
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There’s several factors at play here. An athletic heart is not only more efficient down to the conductance of the cardiac tissue, but it also has a larger stroke volume. With those 120 bpm each beat could be pumping 40cc of blood while in the other heart each beat might only be able to pump 30cc. This is because an athletic heart is able to more fully contract to squeeze out all of the internal volume. Think of the conductance of the heart as a snowy hillside. The first time you take a sled down the hill the snow hasn’t been compacted to make a path. The more often you take your sled down that path, the more compacted it gets and the faster you and your sled will go down the hill the next time. Plus I haven’t even mentioned blood pressure decreasing in an athlete due angiogenesis and dilation of already present veins and arteries.
So to summarize, it’s not just bpm that need to be accounted for here. You also have to consider:
- conductance lowering the cardiac impulse threshold
- stroke volume
- blood pressure
- levels of contraction