Question

Why does an athlete breathe faster and deeper than usual after finishing the race???​

Answer 1

Explanation:

Let us understand from the beginning:

• When we do vigorous exercise or workout, our muscular force helps us to do that particular work.
• Hence, muscles are applying force by continous contraction and relaxation.
• Hence, they need a lot of energy for this.
• But due to heavy workout, like an athlete running in a race suffers from muscle cramp and start breathing faster because the muscles were not able to intake sufficient oxygen from the atmosphere.
• This resulted in respiration with insufficient oxygen, known as anaerobic respiration in the muscles.

Anaerobic respiration:

When oxidation of food material does not require oxygen or it occurs in the absence of oxygen. In muscles, lack of oxygen leads to anaerobic respiration.

$\boxed{ \rm{Food \longrightarrow Pyruvic \: acid \longrightarrow Lactic \: acid + 2ATP}}$

In muscles and due to vigorous exercise.

Hence due to accumulation of lactic acid, muscles suffers from cramps which is painful and the athlete start breathing faster to intake a large amount of oxygen to satisfy the need of oxygen.

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Answer 2

Answer:

An athlete needs to supply extra energy to his muscle cells which have worked hard during running. For this, he breathes faster and deeper so that more oxygen is supplied to the cells. This speeds up the breakdown of food and as a result, more energy is released.