HI EVERYONE!
Today marks the return of my email series, once a month I will be digging deep into a topic revolving around health, training performance & recovery.
THE CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM is quite a complex topic, I’ve done my best below to explain how to self asses the health of your own cardiovascular (CV) system, why it is ideal to include both aerobic & strength based training for optimal CV health, how to start improving things today & how important it is to have ideal CV function for optimizing physique based goals.. so let’s dig in hey!?
I think it’s fair to say that we all agree that the health of the CV system is paramount for both overall health & performance.
The question is then, are we doing everything we can to maintain peak performance in this very important system?
Lets take a look …
With CV disease effecting 3-4 million Australians a year I think there is a lot we can be doing to lower this number.
For the most part high blood pressure, high resting heart rate, low heart rate variability & poor heart rate recovery are all just symptoms of a struggling CV system.
These important CV bio-markers should be taken seriously, they are the key to assessing the health of our own CV system.
Improving these metrics will not only go a long way to extending life expectancy but in the short term will aid in recovery from training, when the CV system is fit & healthy the body is able to bounce back from heavy workouts much easier – that we will dig into a little later.
THE TOP TWO REASONS FOR POOR CV HEALTH:
1. Poor stress management, sub-optimal sleep, diet & lifestyle.
These 4 all fit into the one category because they all fall under the umbrella of “total body stress” which is often very specific & different person to person.
I think it is fair to say that we all could be looking after ourselves better in one way or another.
For those that don’t agree – congratulations! You are in the minority.
The picture below illustrates all the different areas stress can affect the body both internally & externally.
2. A lack of genuine aerobic capacity, the quote “use it or lose it” really does apply to the CV system.
From the person working 12+ hours a day behind a desk, to the regular gym goer scared of CV training getting in the way of physique based goals.
The reality is we all need some aerobic conditioning, we all will feel better, think better, sleep better, digest food better & be able to make more optimal changes in how we look if we have a good base of aerobic capacity in the CV system.
It has been said many times over by many people way smarter than I that only 5-7% of CV disease is genetic.
So what are we missing?
Just before we dig deep into the CV system it is worth pointing out that we very much can “look” fit, but have poor physical fitness.
Physical fitness & CV health is very much an internal achievement that needs to be maintained with some consistency.
So, lets first look at how we can self asses our own CV health so we have a start point to work from & then I will move on to training parameters to make improvements.
As I mentioned above blood pressure (BP), resting heart rate (RHR), heart rate variability (HRV) & heart rate recovery (HRR) are all indicators of overall CV health.
If these markers are out of the parameters of what is considered ideal we can then make the changes from a lifestyle & exercise perspective to improve the overall health, training recovery & performance.
BLOOD PRESSURE
High levels of stress hormones that chronically swim through the blood stream will end up attaching onto the receptors in the arteries & veins, this will make the arteries & veins more constricted overtime & will slowly increase blood pressure.
When we are stressed out blood pressure increases to shove the blood through faster to where it is needed because the nervous system senses danger.
Chronic stress, even low levels will cause issues long term & feeds into a vicious cycle.
Blood comes out of the Aorta, which splits off into arteries then they split off into arterials & finally capillary beds.
To give you a visual this would be much like starting with a Fireman’s hose, then changing to a garden hose, down to a metal drinking straw & finally a thinner, softer paper drinking straw.
The capillary beds (paper drinking straw) is much more fragile, the more we pump the HR & BP up the more we get constriction & resistance here, we can cause a lot of issues in terms of damage to the capillary beds.
The capillary beds feed things in the body including the calves & brain, this is how our heart pumps nutrients out to our extremities, without good function here blood supply / circulation will be an issue.
High blood pressure left untreated is a big issue & solely relying on medication to mask the cause is not addressing the root of the problem.
When there is capillary damage it will go up the chain to the arteries & will begin to damage more of the vascular structure.
Immune cells get sent out to these damaged sites & they lay down nutrients & cholesterol molecules to repair the damage, glue like consistency is laid down inside that paper straw.
The glue will make the size of the opening in the straw smaller & it will increase the pressure going through it.
This will start creating more damage elsewhere because of the increase in blood pressure it creates & a vicious cycle begins, eventually this will create a block if left untreated.
If you block a blood vessel you stroke out & die, a block in the brain & an aneurysm is the result.
There are a lot of people walking around with unknown high blood pressure, this is not just people not exercising.
Sometimes if overall stress levels are chronically elevated & sleep quality is poor exercise can be that extra stress contributing to driving up BP to unhealthy levels, this is why in my opinion using exercise (especially high intensity) to manage stress isn’t always the ideal choice without addressing other lifestyle situations which includes hydration, hydration is often over looked when it comes to regulating blood pressure.
115 / 75 IS CONSIDERED THE BP GOLD STANDARD
When it comes to BP & CV disease a 5 point increase, going from 115/75 to 120/80 increases our risk of CV disease by approximately 10%.
BP should be ideally checked first thing in the morning upon waking, through curiosity i’d also recommend checking it a couple of hours post workout to see how well the system is at returning to normal levels.
This will be another way of assessing how easily our body finds it to switch from workout mode to recovery mode.
Training will increase blood pressure temporarily & lay down more damage which is normal but if you are feeding something that is continually already happening CV health can suffer without realizing it, training can feed the internal fire if the system is already stressed out & inflammed.
If stress levels are managed, someone is sleeping well & generally feels good, CV training is only going to improve things.
RESTING HEART RATE
For most people RHR should be between 50 & 60 beats per minute, this is best tested in the morning in bed before moving or after a good 10+ minute meditation, RHR can go lower in fit individuals or while in a deep sleep cycle.
I recommend taking your RHR for a minimum of a week but ideally longer to get a solid baseline average.
RHR will be elevated if the body is struggling to recover from training, CV function is not ideal, if the body is fighting something like an infection or if stress levels are elevated for any reason.
Taking RHR in the morning is a great way to identify if the body is in a good position to push a hard workout that day.
I once read, if an NBA players RHR is elevated by as little as 10% for more than a couple of days in a row they can often get benched temporarily to recover optimally & avoid injury.
Elevated RHR will often be coupled with waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom because the bladder is more active at night when stress hormones are high, when stress hormones are held at an ideal level the bladder all but shuts down for the night, if you are waking up regularly to use the bathroom in the middle of the night I would first suggest reducing water intake in the PM, but also realize this is an indicator of an over stimulated nervous system.
Meditation & relaxation is often all that is needed to rebalance the system & sleeping through will return.
Stress hormones keep alertness high so you can’t get in a deep sleep.
You can have a low RHR but a poor HRV, which we will look at next.
HEART RATE VARIABILITY
Heart rate variability is the time between beats of the heart.
If we have a heart rate of 60 beats per minute, the heart does not beat on the second every second, there is always going to be a constantly changing variability between beats.
The way we manage ourselves physically, mentally & emotionally will reflect in HRV results.
Ideal HRV will usually be between 70 & 85.
When overall stress levels are high, HRV lowers & the variability reduces so the delivering of blood & nutrients is improved to where the body needs it. .
HRV is measurable & it will give a very good insight into how stressed out we are, how well we are recovering from our training & when we are in a well rested relaxed state there will be a higher variability between beats.
If more variability (70-85) can be detected in a resting heart rate, it is a good indicator of someone with lower internal stress levels.
With a high HRV result it generally indicates a person is recovering well from training, may be capable of handling stress well & indicates a healthy CV system.
TO TEST YOUR OWN HRV THERE ARE MANY OPTIONS
1. Buy a Bluetooth heart rate monitor & download the APP ELITE HRV.
2. Apple watches have a HRV function but in my experience don’t seem overly accurate.
3. I believe Fit-bit type devices are now including HRV testing.
4. Oura Ring – Oura rings are an investment at around $400 AUD but in my opinion worth every cent.
Oura rings track sleep data, RHR & HRV.
My Oura ring gives me a snap shot of exactly how well my body is managing everything I am asking of it day by day.
So, as a coach I can use a very simple non-invasive approach to determine resilience to stress & training, when de-loads are needed & when higher volume blocks are a good idea client to client.
If less variability (below 50) is present, the assumption can be made that either aerobic capacity needs to be improved, overall stress needs to be reduced or more effort must be put into recovery.
The ideal answer is never more caffeine & less sleep!
HEART RATE RECOVERY
To test your very own heart rate recovery capabilities pick a way of exercising aerobically that you enjoy.
Id recommend holding an elevated steady heart rate of approximately 140-175 depending on your age & fitness capabilities for about 10-15 minutes.
To test your HRR simply stop dead once you have completed your 10+ minutes, be aware of exactly what your heart rate was as you stop & do your best to lower your HR rate over 60 seconds as much as possible.
Reducing your HR 40 BPM inside 60 seconds is the gold standard, 20 is a minimum for a moderate pass.
You can Google the “Coopers Heart Rate Recovery Test” if you want to do the testing by the book.
For a lot of people reducing their HR by 20+ beats per minute is challenging, which indicates poorer heart rate recovery.
Poor functioning of the CV system.
The closer you are to 40 though the healthier the CV system is, this will mean that you can not only recover well for the testing but also between sets, mid-workout & from workout to workout week to week.
With good HRR the body is then in a position to train more often, with more intensity & / or volume, the body is more conditioned to handle training & make progress faster.
We are then imposing less stress on the body for the exact same amount of work.
Taking less away from the body & doing as much or if not more work is a very good place to be when it comes to optimising physique goals.
CV fitness is the foundation to making progress in the gym!
FINAL NOTES ON CV METRICS
BP won’t change as much day to day but RHR & HRV can.
If a client comes to me & their RHR is elevated & their HRV is low & BP is high (which are all common) they have a limited recovery capacity.
Even if they feel good to train they are not in an ideal position to make progress.
If you have CV issues you need to train the CV system, which will improve aerobic fitness, cardiac output (how much blood the body / heart can pump out at any one time)
Lifting weights will improve the things above, but in the way that it does it is quite different to aerobic exercise, the thing to focus on here is the adaptations that naturally occur to the heart – specifically the left ventricle & how aerobic training opposed to anaerobic training (cardio v’s weights) or LISS cardio V’s HIIT.
It creates different adaptations to the heart.
We want a little bit of both methods regularly, most of us need more of one or the other.
We have oxygenated blood supplying all the tissue & then you have the veins that recirculate the blood back into the heart, that goes into the right atrium & right ventricle -that is oxygenated blood.
That blood then has to fuel through the lungs to get oxygen then back to the left atrium & ventricle & then the left ventricle then squeezes & pushes that blood back through the aorta & out – that is circulation.
When we do anaerobic weight training or HIIT type training we get an increase in pressure in all of these arteries, as a result the left ventricle has to work a lot harder to shove out against those restricted blood vessels.
It has to work harder concentrically to squeeze & push, that creates concentric hypertrophy which is a thickness of the wall of the heart, this creates less space inside the wall of the heart for blood so you can’t fill it up as much.
This will increase heart rate if it is not balanced out with lower intensity aerobic exercise, if the heart rate has to increase all the time at rest the body has to produce more stress hormones & things like HRV & recovery will be sub-optimal.
Locking yourself into purely anaerobic strength work only is great for a lot of benefits in the body but it also creates that thickening of the wall.
When we do aerobic training at lower intensities we don’t get as much pressure build up, we get the constant supply of blood coming through into the left ventricle, oxygenated blood that is pumped through continuously, the body has to increase the amount of blood it pushes out per beat which increases the size every time blood pours in & through from the lungs which causes the chamber to eccentrically stretch bigger & bigger & that is where the chamber size will grow – eccentric hypertrophy.
The wall is the same size but the actual whole chamber of the heart has grown.
That is why you can have a lop sided or bigger heart, often referred to as the “athlete’s heart”
That is a good thing because you can get more blood in there, it allows for more blood to be pumped out per beat.
RHR will go down because it does not need to pump as fast & this is how you start balancing out the system, this is how aerobic training brings down RHR & also improves HRV because it can pump out blood easier, it gives us all the other benefits that weight training gives us as well.
As coaches, we can’t help clients manage their shitty relationship or work stress, we can manage their CV system though which will then help them manage their other stresses better because their system is less stressed, it helps to make situations feel less stressful.
It will improve training recovery, which will lead to better workouts more often.
Now you do one hard set & you’re not gassed out for as long after, you can go again sooner at the same intensity because you have a good blood supply to your muscles, no damaged capillaries, a lot of oxygen blood flow – everything is working better.
Which means you can now handle more & more sets, after a couple of months of cardio training I know you can recover better because your CV markers are in a better position, now training volume increases & that is where you start getting rapid physique progress, you have gone from a warn out 1980 Holden Commodore to a brand new Lambo, performance potential is much higher & it feels like you are doing less because the CV system is fully functioning.
An improvement in the CV system will contribute significantly to the potential for lifting weight because you will be getting better blood flow to the muscles.
PROGRAMMING CARDIOVASCULAR TRAINING
So if your usual choice is weights over CV aerobic exercise or the last time you did any exercise period was so far back you can’t remember i’d recommend starting with low intensity, long duration work because we want the left ventricle constantly being supplied blood over a long period of time to improve blood flow throughout the body.
I want a big demand on the cardiac output – that is your heart having to throw blood out to the periphery without a big increase in blood pressure which would be low intensity steady state cardio training (LISS)
The HR zone will be between 120-160 BPM depending on the individual & their age.
A good rule of thumb with this type of exercise is anything that can be done while maintaining nasal breathing.
For the de-conditioned client I would recommend 30 continuous minutes to start with & the goal of increasing overtime to 75-90 minutes a minimum of twice weekly.
This is easy work so it can be done more often, this is the type of training you can do on a treadmill most days at a walking pace with an incline to suit your capabilities.
This type of training especially initially for someone deconditioned should not be harder than a 6 out of 10.
It usually takes a minimum of 4-6 consistent weeks to start making improvements in the CV system, the good news is though once the desired result is achieved it sticks around quite a while & can be maintained with as little as 45 minutes every 10-14 days to balance out strength training adaptations.
You can go too far with it though & end up not getting enough concentric hypertrophy along-side it (strength work) the heart will go floppy & it won’t be able to push blood out efficiently & that is an issue as well, as always in life a balance of both is needed.
So if HIIT type exercise or strength based workouts isn’t really what you enjoy i’d still recommned including it in anyway.
So ask yourself, is your routine balanced? I don’t mean perfectly balanced every week – but are you getting both aerobic & anaerobic training in from time to time to have an optimally functioning CV system?
Is my BP, RHR, HRV & HRR where they are supposed to be?
If someone has high blood pressure they are best to get away from heavy weights & work on CV LISS aerobic fitness first.
LISS can be done most days, the more you do it the quicker the left ventricle in the heart will adapt.
Use aerobic exercise as a health tool like it is supposed to be, not just to burn calories – to improve cardiac out-put & CV health.
Improve the CV system & life will feel much less stressful because there is much less stress internally.
It will improve sleep quality & overall energy levels, so much so often it is hard to get people to stop doing it.
It will improve digestion, hormonal problems & anxiety.
HIIT cardio is anaerobic & creates the pressure build up, it creates the after burn on the heart, It tells the left ventricle to squeeze blood out.
It is not wrong, we just need both HIIT & LISS to optimize things.
Ideally avoid the aerobic work around workouts because it will start to impact the recovery & confuses the nervous system when it comes to progressing strength.
I like LISS aerobic exercise being done on a rest day or at least 4-6 hours away from a strength session.
Once the balance is restored in the heart exercising across all intensities should be programmed in.
This would include long intervals, HIIT type training, tabata & all of that disgusting type stuff everyone loves so much. :))
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If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to reply.
KEEP MOVING & HAVING FUN!
GRAHAM JOHNSTON