Other/Mixed Does the body care how the bpm goes up in terms of health?

[Steve Freides]

I was discussing this with Pavel earlier, and his recommendation was to attend Strong Endurance.

In my mind, we might reframe the OP's question into a consideration of three broad classes of training: strength, traditional endurance (walk/run/bike/swing), and Strong Endurance (Q&D is one of the many SE protocols).

@David Smit, OP is Internet forum speak for "original poster," meaning the person who started the thread and asked the original question.

-S-

 

[Steve W.]

Don't know about "health," but I've definitely noticed a difference in terms of fitness for basketball.

I never enjoyed sustained aerobic exercise and so never did much of it. If was playing a lot of basketball, I got in good shape for basketball. But if I was coming off a layoff from playing, I'd be (to quote Charles Barkley) "sucking wind through every hole I could get it in," regardless of how much strength, "metcon," or high intensity interval training I had been doing off the court. I was convinced that there was really no way to do "conditioning" for full court basketball other than actually playing basketball.

But then I stumbled across an article on conditioning that asked a question that really resonated with my experience (paraphrasing from memory -- unfortunately I do not remember where I saw the article or the author's name): "How come you are doing tons of metcons and high intensity intervals and still gassing out when you compete?" The article then focused on the importance of a big aerobic base.

It was lightbulb moment, like when Pavel asked in PTTP, "If training to failure is so great, why has your bench been stuck on 185 since Arnold's last movie?"

Around this time I added two new (to me) modalities to my training. One was A+A style KB work, mainly using snatches, double cleans, and clubbell and mace swings. A+A gave me permission to take lots of rest between sets, minimizing the perceived level of effort of my training sessions, trying NOT to "keep my heartrate up," and just generally keeping training sessions relaxed -- letting the accumulated time and volume do the work instead of the intensity of my effort.

The other was adding some low intensity locomotive aerobic training, mainly using a NordicTrack cross country ski machine while watching sports on TV. I never used a heartrate monitor, but stuck to a comfortable level of effort I could sustain with exclusively nasal breathing and that I could sustain for an hour at a time (and still feel like I could continue basically indefinitely if I had to). I mostly did one hour sessions, often only one per week and never really more than 3 sessions in a week.

Once I had been doing this for a while, all of a sudden I stopped getting tired on the baskeball court. And if I had a layoff from playing, I still had excellent stamina when I started up again. The difference was very dramatic from what I had experience most of my training and playing life.

One significant caveat is that this transition in training coincided with a period where age (I'm now 55) and accumulated orthopedic injuries and arthritis really began to catch up with me. The high school kids, college students, and twentysomethings I play with often compliment me on my conditioning (maybe they're just being nice), and I now joke that I can't run fast enough or jump high enough to get tired ;-). But even within that context, I am convinced that my training made a clear difference in my fitness for playing.

 

[North Coast Miller]

Answer to the original question is an emphatic "yes, it matters" in terms of adaptive response.

For general health, not so much. The demands determine the response, adaptation is not free, the body only improves in response to a demand and 80% (at a guess) is very specific to that demand.

In terms of general health, raising the HR is simply a good indicator that work is getting done. Raising the HR with cigarette or amphetamines isn't going to improve your health.

 

[User 4484]

Thank you all who have answered the question. Lots of great insight. It seems that it was not as easy as I first though

 

[Steve Freides]

2. I've had what's been called a "very slight heart murmur" for my entire life. It's one of those things that has never caused me any problems, and has never been deemed worthy of further investigation - until now. Why now? No actual reason, just my general practitioner's observation of, "Hey, you're 65 years old, and you've never had an echo cardiogram - let's get you one and see if this murmur is actually anything we should be concerned about, or if we can stop talking about it completely." And I agreed.

I've had my initial appointment with the cardiologist - he looked at my cholesterol numbers and said, "Your numbers are higher than where we like to see them in someone your age, but you had that test for coronary calcium and scored a zero, so I'm not going to tell you to do anything different." I think this (the test for coronary calcium) is a great test for anyone with any heart-related concerns to have. It's a _way_ better predictor of you having blocked coronary arteries than your cholesterol numbers are, and even if you have to pay for it yourself, it's about $150 here, and that's a worthwhile expenditure, IMO.

When I have the echo cardiogram in a few weeks, I'll post about what the results are.

Just following up - had the echo cardiogram, doctor called a few days later and said I have nothing to be concerned about and we could safely stop discussing my heart in the future.

-S-