has anybody experimented or researched blood pressure as a fatigue indicator?
i noyiced that systolic pressure can be as low as 100 right after training and recovers quickly. it gives totally different indications as compared to rest hr or hrv. love to hear your experience.
I have not heard of blood pressure being utilized as a measure of acute fatigue, but post-exercise hypotension is common. Basically, the vascular system (i.e. capillaries) remains dilated for a period of time after exercise even though heart rate decreases , which will lower the overall pressure in the cardiovascular system. Once the vessels constrict after several hours of rest, blood pressure typically returns to resting levels, as you have seen.
I think the primary challenge with measuring BP during a workout is the practicality of taking the measure. Second, what value would BP data provide that is not already afforded by HR, HRV, or other measures in terms of fatigue? It would be interesting to see a study of the vascular response in a rested vs. fatigued state.
As an indicator of overreaching or overtraining, I’m sure that there would be some elevation to resting blood pressure due to enhanced sympathetic influence in this state.
I started monitoring just a few weeks ago. It seems that pressure resets itself within 2 hours after an short high-intensity training (4x 1,5m all-out, in between hr zone 2, about 45m in total):
date/time | systolic | diastolic | HR
| 13/06/2022 14:56 | 113 | 73 | 71 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13/06/2022 17:04 | 124 | 80 | 69 |
Resting HR should be below 60 for while sitting, in my case, for a rested state.
This looks like an expected response after a bout of high-intensity exercise. HR will typically remain slightly elevated, due to the catecholamines released during the workout, until they are cleared.
Just curious - did you take your HR and BP in the hours leading to your workout?
I did, normal values with the systolic value on the high side during meeting at work.
I’ve been hypertensive since age 40 and racing bikes since my late 30s (plus college). I’ve measured my blood pressure every morning for about the last 15 years.
I’ve noticed that as my TSB goes more negative, my blood pressure will tend to fall below its normal value. I asked my physician about this and he speculated it could be due to increased nitric oxide production (vasodilation) or accumulated volume reduction (not getting full replacement of fluids lost through sweat - I’m a heavy sweater).
Conversely, if I don’t work out for a couple days or more, my blood pressure will start going up above my normal value.
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This makes me wonder: the average physician says that training is good to reduce blood pressure, but isn’t that simply because of cardiovascular fatigue? Or perhaps the stress relieve?
It depends on what you mean by the average physician. My physician I mention above or the generic family physician? The evidence-based recommendation for the general population is that exercise is good and reduces lifestyle-related conditions such as hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. CV fatigue isn’t producing those effects, it’s a combination of a lot of physiological factors.
If you’re talking about trained cyclists who do hard training and their reaction to it, that’s another topic entirely.
I came up with the thought because i had workload related stress lately and noticed bp reset to normal levels within an hour after training.