Objectives While a few studies have done on professional athletes’ cardiac adaptation and it has not performed about elite athletes yet, the question raises whether the long time endurance and resistance trainings have different morphological and functional effect on heart. The purpose of this study was to review the effect of training type on cardiac adaptations in elite Iranian athletes.

Methods This cross-sectional study was performed on elite athletes who came to Iran Sports Medicine Federation for Pre-Participation Examination of Major International Tournaments during autumn of 2015. Thirty-one elite male athletes were divided into dynamic (n = 9), static (n = 10) and combined (n = 12) groups according to their exercise components and control group was 12 non-athletic students. 2-dimensional echocardiography was performed and One-Way-ANOVA and LSD-post-hoc tests were applied (P ≤ 0.05) for comparing variables.

Results The largest Fractional Shortening (FS), Inner Ventricular Septum (IVS), Septal Thickness (ST), and Left Ventricle Mass (LVM) belonged to Combined, Static, Dynamic, and control groups respectively. Ejection Fraction wasn’t different among groups (P = 0.13). LVM, ST, Left Ventricular Inner Dimension (LVID) and Posterior Wall Thickness (PWT) in diastole and systole were lesser in the control group (P = 0.001). LVID in diastole and systole was different in combined (P = 0.014) comparing to dynamic (P = 0.041). LVID in systole was different in combined comparing to static (P = 0.019) and LVM was different in combined comparing to dynamic (P = 0.012) as shown at Table 1.

Conclusion Among the factors affecting morphological adaptations in athletes’ heart, type of training has an important role.