Yes and no.
You can learn to endure the breathlessness, but I wouldn’t describe it as an adrenaline tolerance.
The day after the run I went to go lift and could barely get my heart rate up at all… even on the elliptical maxed out on resistance it was hard to hit 150bpm. I just started taking creatine again thinking maybe there was something going on with that alactic energy system… so there are 2 variables… the cardio / sprints from the day before and creatine … anyone?
I’m going to say things that might seem mean, don’t take them that way.
If you’re worried about your heart, go to a cardiologist. Literally no one on this forum is qualified to help you with heart rate issues.
With that being said, if it’s creatine causing you issues, see a doctor.
Chances are you’re out of shape, weak, and just not willing to put in the hard work.
Again I don’t mean any of that to be mean but as I said before literally no one here is qualified to diagnose what ever this is over the internet. Unless you are passing out under load or having known heart issues, just keep training and things will get better.
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Apparently either I did not explain well or you did not read well. Either way you did not understand. Chances are you just aren’t __________ enough. Thanks!
So out of curiosity… I decided to see what my HR was after some squat sets last night. So a little background…
Kind of ran myself into the ground recently with training, so took about a week off completely. Last night was first session back and did some 5s on squat at 365 lbs, about 55% of my raw max and a weight that I felt I could have easily done 10+ reps on. I’m 32 years old, so not far off the age of OP. 245 lbs at 5’9 and in what I would call good cardiovascular health. Resting BP is good, resting HR is under 60, I regularly go MTBing and jogging a few times a week.
So after set 1, HR was between 150 and 160 BPMs. Looking at the original post, sounds like the numbers are pretty much the same.
How long have you been putting specific training effort into improving higher rep squat and deadlift capacity? You have to keep in mind that this is something you will have to prepare for, so if you never do high rep sets and just try jumping right in, it WILL suck.
Last winter I spent a block building up my 10 RM. I think I spent 4 weeks building from a 405 top set to a 500 top set. The top sets never got any less miserable, but my capacity the load I could handle for that duration of a top set increased. The reason I’m bringing this up is because you haven’t shared anything about how much time you’ve already dedicated to working on this.
There is no general rule that says “60% for 8 reps should always feel like this, and 70% for 5 reps should always feel like this…” it’s going to depend on what you’ve done in the weeks leading up to prepare for it.
Ask any powerlifter who has spent a 10 week peek doing nothing but sets of 1-3, and then jumps back into 10s right after the meet. It’s absolutely fucking miserable, but that’s why you don’t see many people (even regular gym-goers) with big legs.
So if you haven’t already, I would recommend spending about a month or two working on your 10 rep set capacity. Maybe do something like 3 sets once a week at 40-45-50% and trying to add 5% each workout to all sets. By the end of a month you could be up to 60-65-70% for 10s which would be a solid ending point. Just keep in mind, it’s going to be pretty damn miserable every workout. I (and I’m sure others on this forum) have vomited on multiple occasions after high rep squat sets and had to lay on the floor drenched in sweat. It. Sucks. I’m not saying that this is a level of intensity you should, or even need to push to, but if you’ve never pushed to anything like this before you might just not have a good reference point for what hard really is.
If you haven’t done something like this yet, I wouldn’t worry about chasing creatine and lactate ghosts. All that to say though… if you really do think there is something wrong with your heart, as @corstijeir said, go see a doctor.
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5/3/1 BBB 3x10 with 50-70% after your 5/3/1 lifts, that’ll put the suck right into you.
It’s never easy. I’m going to see if I can get a HR monitor thingy going and show you guys mine during a ME squat set.
Thanks. No I never thought anything was wrong. I have been working on my volume for DL and squat. I was not familiar with some of the concepts people had brought up. Conditioning and high volume… I had been working low volume for so long I may have fallen into that category you spoke of. I just figured if I could hit cardio at 80% for an hour I was good… The other variables were just curiosity… I like understanding how things work. Just mostly trying to figure out if the nasty pounding heartbeats were something everyone gets or if I could train it away say with high volume or if it was adrenaline or just my anxiety or what. One of the things I hate most in the whole world is not being able to breathe. It is just something I became hyper aware of one day after like a set of 10 DL at 3 or 350 and I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath and panicked even though I knew I was okay. Just hoping there is a way to train for it so I can get back to muscle fatigue instead of training work volume… and if that is limiting me then train it up which is what I have been aiming for and it seems to be helping… just sheer volume seems to be helping. Thanks for the research and the thoughtful respone. It may be mostly just my anxiety problems but I have to get past it one way or another.
So 5 is enough to push you to 155 ish and you had at least 5 left in the tank. Do you not feel like you hit a hr/air wall before you fatigue your muscles then? You just keep pumping out reps at HR of 160? 170?
Typically, on sets of 5+ I’ve cut off the set due to technique breakdown before HR or breathing limiters. In my experience, it’s VERY unlikely to reach lower body failure on a squat, since it’s the core bracing that goes first and then you end up trying to squat in a compromised position. You have to think, the squat and deadlift are complex full body movements, so muscle failure doesn’t just mean lower body. Although you haven’t hit muscle failure on your legs, you may very well be near muscle failure on your core or back supporting muscles, which (in my mind) would drive up the HR and breathing demands.
However…
I have (and you see BBers do this sometimes too) done high rep squat sets before with a very large, trustworthy back spotter that works to basically support your upper body positioning once that starts failing, so that I could crank out more reps after what otherwise would be technical failure and really finish off the legs. Again, it’s absolutely horrible, but since you don’t have to focus as hard on bracing your core it takes some of the effort out of the breathing side of things.
If you have access to a leg press or hack squat, you might try progressing high rep sets on those to get to a point of hitting some leg muscle failure sets. That would give a good frame of reference for what more isolated leg muscle failure feels like (taking core/bracing out of the picture)
@tasty_nate I gave it a shot yesterday to see where I was. I had not worked lower body for 4 or 5 days. The gym in town only has smith machines but I did 3x10 squats complete ass to grass sitting on my heels with 205# 50-60% of my max… HR hit 150-155… felt pretty good and my legs feel like I did something today. My lower back muscles right where the dimples are started killing me after so I had to throw in some chest and pull the blood away somewhere else … so you are right about stabilizers…
A little later I did 2 sets of 10 DL with 205# (standing on 2 plates because the smith machine won’t touch the ground) and HR hit 150ish… then I did 295# for 10 … I would get set lift lower and stand up and then repeat… set-up brace lift lower stand up… first 5 went fast then I hit 150hr … so I would do one about every 10 seconds until I finished all 10.
My goals aren’t too high … I want to be strong enough to hit a 1200 total 300/400/500 but for a 3 rep set so I’m comfortably into the bracket… add about 10lbs of muscle and drop 10-15 lbs of fat. I think this volume work may hold the key…
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I’ll just leave this right here…