Cardiac Effects of Lifting

[musclemoose]

You welcome death?!?! Why??? How old are you...?

Death is not something to fear. Its a certainty and must be accepted. Good people die unexpectedly every day that you would never expect it would be their time to go. Others you expect to die young cause of their unhealthy lifestyle and they live till 90. Shit id love to live a full life and hope i do. But when its my time to go it will be the time god decides and i welcome it. i just pray its quick.

 

[MKSuccess500]

Question, why would a lower reps—a more PL scheme and more in-tune with CNS activation rather than pure hypertrophy be MORE likely to cause LHV hypertrophy?

Valsalva is terrible, so definitely no to that.

Just that heavier lifting is going to cause a larger spike in BP no matter how you breathe and that puts more stress on the heart. That is what causes some of the LV hypertrophy.

Honestly, this is something I don't understand. To me I think why would lower reps be more stressful when you're going to failure with both? If I can deadlift 10x500 or 3x585 and each are to failure then why would there be more issues with the latter? If anything I find the high reps harder and you're doing a longer set.

Having said that, I consistently hear the "heavier weight" will cause more of an issue. I wish someone could explain mechanistically. Or if I could wear a cuff that constantly measures blood pressure through the full set.

Seems everyone does the valsalva to some degree

 

[MKSuccess500]

Are we seriously discussing how heavy weights/low rep schemes create more LVH on a board where almost everyone takes aas/gh? If you are seriously worried about LVH, get away from performance enhancing drugs. The heavy lifting isn’t going to kill you. What’s next? We should all stay on gear but just do Pilates so we don’t stress/damage our cardiovascular system?

This is just an idiotic post. Doing one thing that’s unhealthy (AAS) does not mean one should blindly do something else that’s potentially unhealthy (Valsalva and unnecessarily intense lifting). That’s like saying why care about taking health supplements or doing cardio when you’re taking unhealthy PEDs. Completely illogical. Not to mention NOT everyone on this site is still on unhealthy amounts of PEDs

 

[concreter]

What about the Tolle on the Central nervous system.
Training to hard, long, heavy or too frequent will cause a Crash!
Here is were how much and what kind of steroids will either help or Hinder!

 

[g.r.o.w.t.h.]

This is just an idiotic post. Doing one thing that’s unhealthy (AAS) does not mean one should blindly do something else that’s potentially unhealthy (Valsalva and unnecessarily intense lifting). That’s like saying why care about taking health supplements or doing cardio when you’re taking unhealthy PEDs. Completely illogical. Not to mention NOT everyone on this site is still on unhealthy amounts of PEDs

I did not say one shouldn’t care about doing everything g they can to maintain health if taking PEDs. What I said was that if you are worried about LVH, get off the PEDs or maintain a true TRT dose. Drugs are the culprit, not intense lifting. This is a bodybuilding forum and you want to advocate low intensity lifting? Go to a jazzercise forum with that BS.

 

[MKSuccess500]

What about the Tolle on the Central nervous system.
Training to hard, long, heavy or too frequent will cause a Crash!
Here is were how much and what kind of steroids will either help or Hinder!

That may be true but I don't think we're worried about dying from CNS fatigue here

 

[MKSuccess500]

I did not say one shouldn’t care about doing everything g they can to maintain health if taking PEDs. What I said was that if you are worried about LVH, get off the PEDs or maintain a true TRT dose. Drugs are the culprit, not intense lifting. This is a bodybuilding forum and you want to advocate low intensity lifting? Go to a jazzercise forum with that BS.

No one is advocating for low intensity lifting. The point of the thread is to understand if lifting does in fact cause negative structural changes to the heart, especially in those of us who once used AAS and may not have a perfectly functioning heart

 

[musclemoose]

No one is advocating for low intensity lifting. The point of the thread is to understand if lifting does in fact cause negative structural changes to the heart, especially in those of us who once used AAS and may not have a perfectly functioning heart

Doesnt matter whether you lift heavy or do intense cardio or do high volume. AAS and HGH will cause increases in growth of the heart over long term use in most cases especially when you are using multiple compounds at high doses. Even tren on low dose over time will destroy your heart. In fact i think tren is the biggest culprit of them all with regards to destroying your heart.

 

[g.r.o.w.t.h.]

No one is advocating for low intensity lifting. The point of the thread is to understand if lifting does in fact cause negative structural changes to the heart, especially in those of us who once used AAS and may not have a perfectly functioning heart

Anyone training intensely is subject to athletes heart! Also known as enlargement of the left ventricle! It is actually more common in endurance athletes vs weight trainers, and, for the most part, isn’t considered a big deal (obviously the degree of enlargement is a factor here). Man, training of any nature is healthier than not training (within reason). Stop over anylizing this shit.

 

[maldorf]

Death is not something to fear. Its a certainty and must be accepted. Good people die unexpectedly every day that you would never expect it would be their time to go. Others you expect to die young cause of their unhealthy lifestyle and they live till 90. Shit id love to live a full life and hope i do. But when its my time to go it will be the time god decides and i welcome it. i just pray its quick.

That is very true if one's death isn't seriously precipitated by something like taking 9 grams/week of testosterone and who knows what else. Totally preventable. I am sure that if you could somehow ask Dallas now if he would rather be alive or be a probodybuilder he would choose life.

Thinking like you do is easy, I thought like that before my heart attack, but when you are truly facing death you regret doing so much. This reminds me of that ignorant post one of our members awhile ago made about a bodybuilder dying young, he said it "was a good death".

 

[maldorf]

Honestly, this is something I don't understand. To me I think why would lower reps be more stressful when you're going to failure with both? If I can deadlift 10x500 or 3x585 and each are to failure then why would there be more issues with the latter? If anything I find the high reps harder and you're doing a longer set.

Having said that, I consistently hear the "heavier weight" will cause more of an issue. I wish someone could explain mechanistically. Or if I could wear a cuff that constantly measures blood pressure through the full set.

Seems everyone does the valsalva to some degree

Lifting more weight is going to cause more pressure in the abdomen and thorax. In both you have the vena cava and dorsal aorta running ,the two biggest blood vessels, and those are going to have tremendous pressures on them. Now those two weights you mention aren't too drastically different if you look at %, so I doubt the difference would be much. If you compared doing squatting 225 x30 to 445x10 then that would be a large difference in pressure. 600x1 would be very large.

 

[MKSuccess500]

Lifting more weight is going to cause more pressure in the abdomen and thorax. In both you have the vena cava and dorsal aorta running ,the two biggest blood vessels, and those are going to have tremendous pressures on them. Now those two weights you mention aren't too drastically different if you look at %, so I doubt the difference would be much. If you compared doing squatting 225 x30 to 445x10 then that would be a large difference in pressure. 600x1 would be very large.

Well the problem with your example is those would not all be to failure, as someone who could do 1x600 could do WAY more than 30 reps with 225 if they were even remotely conditioned. So the 1x600 would be to failure while the 30x225 would not

But for the sake of the discussion lets say you chose 50x225 to failure or whatever it would actually be, are you saying that at the end of the 225xfailure set the persons blood pressure isn't going to be as high as the person just doing ONE rep at 600?

This is what I've never understood about this argument and I'd love to see gotgame chime in as he's said something similar but I just don't understand it. Of course if someone did 1x225 and 1x600 then yes the BP is going to be way higher doing the 600lb. But if someone is doing 30-50 reps with 225 their BP is going to go up, and up, and up....you really think their blood pressure after two minutes of grinding to intense failure for 30+ reps isn't going to get as high (and for much longer) than it would be for just 1 rep at 600lb?

I do not know the answer, but that just seems very strange to me as most would agree repping out to true failure for higher reps is much harder

 

[Flex500]

I think what some are saying is in the absence of aas and such an enlarged heart, or, “Athletes Heat” is really not any sort of risk factor at all (generally speaking). We see the most severe cases when the athletes heart get away to maybe 400-450 grams....HALF the size of DM’s and much smaller than Rich. And most don’t even get that big.

What I’m getting at is if these is even a sliver of a concern I’d focus on dropping the dose and getting HBP in check.

That isn’t to say this isn’t a fair and interesting discussion but in the presence of abusing aas and hgh any hard training is going to “add on” but is really not the primary culprit of the issue.

 

[maldorf]

Well the problem with your example is those would not all be to failure, as someone who could do 1x600 could do WAY more than 30 reps with 225 if they were even remotely conditioned. So the 1x600 would be to failure while the 30x225 would not

But for the sake of the discussion lets say you chose 50x225 to failure or whatever it would actually be, are you saying that at the end of the 225xfailure set the persons blood pressure isn't going to be as high as the person just doing ONE rep at 600?

This is what I've never understood about this argument and I'd love to see gotgame chime in as he's said something similar but I just don't understand it. Of course if someone did 1x225 and 1x600 then yes the BP is going to be way higher doing the 600lb. But if someone is doing 30-50 reps with 225 their BP is going to go up, and up, and up....you really think their blood pressure after two minutes of grinding to intense failure for 30+ reps isn't going to get as high (and for much longer) than it would be for just 1 rep at 600lb?

I do not know the answer, but that just seems very strange to me as most would agree repping out to true failure for higher reps is much harder

The % of your max doesn't matter really, it is the weight you are pushing or pulling. So if one man is doing 600 lbs in the squat and is able to do 3 reps and another guy is only able to do 1 rep, their peak blood pressure is the same.

Like I said before, much of it is the intrathoracic and intradominal pressures compressing the dorsal aorta. Think of it as a garden hose, and a car runs over it. The pressure inside the hose is greatly increased with all of that pressure from the car. Same thing in a person, but the pressure comes from increased peripheral resistance in the blood vessels. It is a mechanical thing. There is also an increase in contractility and heart rate but most of that is offset by vasodilation. I think it is the very large compression of major arteries that causes the very large peak in BP.


From a research study:

"Abstract
The purpose of this study was to record the blood pressure response to heavy weight-lifting exercise in five experienced body builders. Blood pressure was directly recorded by means of a capacitance transducer connected to a catheter in the brachial artery. Intrathoracic pressure with the Valsalva maneuver was recorded as mouth pressure by having the subject maintain an open glottis while expiring against a column of Hg during the lifts. Exercises included single-arm curls, overhead presses, and both double- and single-leg presses performed to failure at 80, 90, 95, and 100% of maximum. Systolic and diastolic blood pressures rose rapidly to extremely high values during the concentric contraction phase for each lift and declined with the eccentric contraction. The greatest peak pressures occurred during the double-leg press where the mean value for the group was 320/250 mmHg, with pressures in one subject exceeding 480/350 mmHg. Peak pressures with the single-arm curl exercise reached a mean group value of 255/190 mmHg when repetitions were continued to failure. Mouth pressures of 30-50 Torr during a single maximum lift, or as subjects approached failure with a submaximal weight, indicate that a portion of the observed increase in blood pressure was caused by a Valsalva maneuver. It was concluded that when healthy young subjects perform weight-lifting exercises the mechanical compression of blood vessels combines with a potent pressor response and a Valsalva response to produce extreme elevations in blood pressure. Pressures are extreme even when exercise is performed with a relatively small muscle mass."


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3980383/

another good one.
**broken link removed**

Up to 480/350 BP when doing leg presses! Now that is only when the guy is pushing the weight up, the concentric phase. Coming back down is the eccentric phase where the muscles are relaxing and BP drop back down. So its a cyclic thing where the BP goes up and then back down, a rhythm. The study shoed that about 30-50 mm hg of that was due to Valsalva. The majority then isn't even Valsalva, so there is nothing you can really do to lower the pressure when going heavy. Why I think when I was squatting 455 for 10 reps that I may have blown a small plaque off my right coronary lining. It was a relatively light weight for me but lots of pressure in my body.

 

[MKSuccess500]

I think what some are saying is in the absence of aas and such an enlarged heart, or, “Athletes Heat” is really not any sort of risk factor at all (generally speaking). We see the most severe cases when the athletes heart get away to maybe 400-450 grams....HALF the size of DM’s and much smaller than Rich. And most don’t even get that big.

What I’m getting at is if these is even a sliver of a concern I’d focus on dropping the dose and getting HBP in check.

That isn’t to say this isn’t a fair and interesting discussion but in the presence of abusing aas and hgh any hard training is going to “add on” but is really not the primary culprit of the issue.

Does anyone know if there's a way to get the weight of one's heart through scans or is it only done at time of autopsy?

 

[MKSuccess500]

The % of your max doesn't matter really, it is the weight you are pushing or pulling. So if one man is doing 600 lbs in the squat and is able to do 3 reps and another guy is only able to do 1 rep, their peak blood pressure is the same.

Maldorf that seems impossible. Imagine when you were squatting 500+lb. How easy would it have been for you to lift 225lb for a handful of reps? It would feel like air to you. Now think back to before you ever lifted, 5x225 probably had you red in the face about to pop. There is no way on earth my blood pressure is the same now when I warm up with 225 on deadlifts (again, feels like nothing at all) compared to a decade ago when I was grinding with 225 about to die from exertion, that's just silly.

Not to mention to say "their peak blood pressure is the same" is a very unscientific statement as there are HUGE variations in blood pressure responses among individuals as you know.

Like I said before, much of it is the intrathoracic and intradominal pressures compressing the dorsal aorta. Think of it as a garden hose, and a car runs over it. The pressure inside the hose is greatly increased with all of that pressure from the car. Same thing in a person, but the pressure comes from increased peripheral resistance in the blood vessels. It is a mechanical thing. There is also an increase in contractility and heart rate but most of that is offset by vasodilation. I think it is the very large compression of major arteries that causes the very large peak in BP.


From a research study:

"Abstract
The purpose of this study was to record the blood pressure response to heavy weight-lifting exercise in five experienced body builders. Blood pressure was directly recorded by means of a capacitance transducer connected to a catheter in the brachial artery. Intrathoracic pressure with the Valsalva maneuver was recorded as mouth pressure by having the subject maintain an open glottis while expiring against a column of Hg during the lifts. Exercises included single-arm curls, overhead presses, and both double- and single-leg presses performed to failure at 80, 90, 95, and 100% of maximum. Systolic and diastolic blood pressures rose rapidly to extremely high values during the concentric contraction phase for each lift and declined with the eccentric contraction. The greatest peak pressures occurred during the double-leg press where the mean value for the group was 320/250 mmHg, with pressures in one subject exceeding 480/350 mmHg. Peak pressures with the single-arm curl exercise reached a mean group value of 255/190 mmHg when repetitions were continued to failure. Mouth pressures of 30-50 Torr during a single maximum lift, or as subjects approached failure with a submaximal weight, indicate that a portion of the observed increase in blood pressure was caused by a Valsalva maneuver. It was concluded that when healthy young subjects perform weight-lifting exercises the mechanical compression of blood vessels combines with a potent pressor response and a Valsalva response to produce extreme elevations in blood pressure. Pressures are extreme even when exercise is performed with a relatively small muscle mass."


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3980383/

While this study is interesting, all it does it tell us that one reaches higher blood pressures with larger exercises, which we all know. What it does NOT say is whether or not blood pressure would be higher pushing that 2-leg leg press to failure with a 5-rep max vs a 20-rep max. It does not indicate that at all.


I hope that doesn't come across as attacking you, I find this very interesting, but so far I have seen no evidence to suggest a large exercise to 1-rep max failure is going to cause higher blood pressures compared to the same exercise to a 12-rep max

 

[Deleted member 106824]

A total of four sets of isotonic leg presses were performed by each subject with a 5-minute rest period between each set. In the first set, the subject lifted, to the point of concentric contraction fatigue, 85% of his maximum five repetition set using Valsalva during concentric muscle exertion. The second set was performed using the same weight, to the point of concentric contraction fatigue, while avoiding Valsalva by maintaining slow exhalation on exertion (as verified by the spirometry whistle). The third and forth sets were performed
as the first two, except the weight lifted was increased to 100% of each subject's maximum five-repetition set. No pausing was allowed between repetitions within a set, with each set lasting no longer than 15 seconds.

**broken link removed**

My interpretation of that is that Maldorf is correct that for a given individual using a heavier weight for a given exercise will cause a higher BP than lower weight even if both are taken to failure. In this case it looks like people took a roughly 8RM and repped it out and a roughly 5RM and repped it out and the 5RM caused significantly higher spikes in BP



However, this study contradicts something else Maldorf has said: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3624118

this shows bodybuilders (who obviously lift more weight) actually had a lower blood pressure response to maxing out than novice weight lifters if both went to failure. So it clearly isn't just based on the weight as novices would use much lower weight and still have a higher BP response if taken to failure. So it seems clear it is not a case that X-weight for one person is going to cause the same response as X-weight for another person. If you are more experienced that will cause less of a response even if to failure, and of course if that weight isn't hard for you it will cause even less of a response.