In static or isometric physical exercise (e.g., weight lifting,
weight and hammer throwing, wrestling and bodybuilding),
strength is developed with little or no movement. This physical
exercise, when chronically performed, is known as resistance
training, which is a specialized method of conditioning designed
to increase muscle strength and power. Both skeletal and
cardiac muscles adapt themselves in response to this type of
training. Resistance training results in hemodynamic alteration with marked elevation of blood pressure (BP), leading to
pressure overload in the heart, resulting in the parallel addition
of sarcomeres. This leads to a predominant increase in
cardiomyocyte cell width and consequently to an increase in
left ventricular wall thickness without reducing the size of the
internal cavity in diastole, with the development of concentric left
ventricular hypertrophy (1,2,4). The increase in wall thickness
induced by pressure overload is mainly due to an increase in
cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area (5) (Figure 1).