Metabolic Conditioning Removed from Nautilus Principles?

Sorry to hear that… I can understand why you would have a special interest in the subject. I have seen articles from credible sources arguing for the use of strength training in cardiac rehab programs. I doubt that would be happening if it was dangerous to the heart.

My last cardiac rehab did include weights, as does the current one I began last Wednesday after another incident and stent in April.

The only time I’ve been directed specifically to not lift weights was in the weeks immediately following a heart attack and the recent ischemic event due to weakening of the muscle. This was to prevent tearing of the muscle while it was in a weakened/injured state.

Edit:

To touch on this for a moment-

Yeah. Not that I was the picture of healthy habits, but mine was at 47, and a real doozy too. In the days/week prior I had been doing things like cutting trees and chucking logs around, and had dead lifted in the 300+ neighborhood (not awesome, I know…). Anyways, the myth among the general public that only fat, lazy, out of shape people have heart attacks really should be demolished. It likely prevents a lot of people from getting a check up or responding to symptoms that they ignore until its too late.

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Hi SkyzykS,

Your own experience having cardiac infarction sounds downright unfair! Keep up the good work though. There is support for both strength training (anaerobic) and/or aerobic activity in terms of rehabilitation. Re risk of thickening the left ventricle: Can anyone say that we shouldn’t be performing any excercise? Obviously the extremes and/or PEDs come into question here.

A collegue and friend of mine is a cardiologist. Many were the times he sadly stated “it doesn’t matter how people live because of hereditary traits”. Unfortunately, I share his experiences.

Heart attacks are the main cause of death on my fathers side of the family, especially for men…I am sure I will have one before I reach 80

In the meantime, I will eat healthy, drink less, never smoke, do my cardio and perform HIT, and live life to the fullest

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I agree! Resistance training will strengthen the heart muscle. Resistance training will allow for more personal activity. Resistance training increases capillary perfusion. Combined with a modest amount of cardiovascular conditioning leads to eccentric remodeling of the left ventricle. A goal is to increase cardiac capacity.

Wow this is as close to an agreement as I’ve seen on this topic!! Woohoo!
Scott

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Watch my interview with Doug McGuff MD for the latest on this.

It would appear that rushing quickly between exercises is not necessary for metabolic and cardiovascular improvement as long as the exercises are performed intensely enough and for adequate TUL.

As a general rule, you should rest at least long enough that you are not winded, or become light-headed, dizzy, or nauseated, but not so long that your heart rate and breathing return to normal.

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The huge increase in blood pressure during strength training, especially isometric training, leads to an increase of stress in the heart, which stimulates hypertrophy of the heart wall. This results in an increase in heart wall thickness, decreasing volume for blood in the left ventricle.

I question whether a modest amount of cardio would have that effect. Eccentric remodeling is something seen in elite endurance athletes engaged in a high volume of training, often combined with high levels of intensity. Extrapolating that to folks doing a modest amount of volume at lower levels of effort isn’t warranted.

How do you know? Instead of follow-the-leader HiT protocol, I would be concerned that strength conditioning’s thickening of the left ventricle wall which will decrease cardiac output. Thus, cardiovascular conditioning after weight workouts makes sense.

Btw, Martin Gibala thinks ReHiT is sufficient for cardiovascular conditioning as a minimal dose. One-minute workout! He also has stated that resistance training is not sufficient for cardiovascular conditioning needs. He is a premier expert in the field! Drew Baye and Dr. McGuff are not experts in the field of cardiovascular conditioning.

Because when I’ve seen data on the effect of sports participation on cardiac remodeling, the range of outcomes is very broad. When you compare untrained individuals with elite athletes using extreme training regimes you can show a statistically significant difference. But you are comparing two distributions that have a pretty large standard deviation. If you believe (as I do) that there is a dose/response effect, rather than an on/off switch to cardiac remodelling, I’d expect the response to diminish as the dose diminishes, to the point that it would be hard to demonstrate an impact from a modest dose of exercise.

Who said anything about following a HIT protocol for cardio? I simply questioned whether modest levels of traditional cardio produced anywhere near the same result as high volume endurance training when it comes to eccentric cardiac remodelling.

If you are concerned that HIT style strength training produces a dangerous level of left ventricle hypertrophy, I think you are fretting unnecessarily. My take on the literature is that the effects are modest to non existent in most people, unless you are talking about high level power lifters, strong men, or olympic lifters, and especially those who are using steroids. I recall that one study of competitive power lifters found that 40% of them did not exhibit any evidence of LV hypertrophy. Considering that HIT folks don’t, for the most part, chase massive weight, try not to valsalva, and use very low volume, and infrequent routines, it seems very unlikely they would be putting themselves at high risk.

I have read Gibala’s book, and a number of his publications. Based on my understanding of his work, I think you are overstating and misrepresenting his conclusions. His studies show that short doses of interval work can produce some of the benefits of traditional cardio. But he is quite clear that there are still a lot of unknowns about that mode of exercise. In particular, he seems to understand that those protocols produce VO2max improvements largely from peripheral adaptations rather than central adaptations. So I’d be surprised if they produced the eccentric cardiac remodeling that you value so highly. But maybe I missed it. Can you point me to any of his papers where he assessed cardiac remodeling?

It is also interesting that you would reference the ReHIT protocol. ReHIT is based on a cycling test for anaerobic power. So the success of ReHIT shows that intense anaerobic exercise can improve cardiovascular function, and improve VO2max via peripheral adaptations. Just like McGuff claims…

You wish!

The consequences of locomotive activities versus resistance training activities are very different. McGuff/Little deliberately misleads readers to believe they are similar as regards cardiovascular conditioning. Neither Dr. Gibala, nor Izumi Tabata use resistance training for their standard protocol for cardiovascular conditioning studies!

I think the big argument here more than anything is about a trainer or person who wants to cater to and sell books and courses to those who hope to get everything in the way of cardio and muscle with their singularly proposed workout or the HIT trainee who simply doesn’t want to do any extra cardio work because they feel they get enough heavy breathing during their workout . They both have legitimate reasons for pushing their cause, it really depends on what level of cardiovascular fitness one hopes to achieve.
Scott

Really!

McGuff states that Cardio does not exist!

He is deliberately misleading the truth. Locomotive activity is far superior to resistance activity as regards :purple_heart: health! Then there is the issue of mitochondria, slow twitch fibers, endurance, and fat burning! Resistance training ain’t even close!

Haven’t we been here before? - Why is the same or similar content repeatedly brought up in new threads? Not being unappreciative, just wondering if it isn’t time for a unique thread dealing with HIT vs cardio and the left ventricle?

Selling books is reason enough ! ha ha! That’s all anything is about these days, selling something .
Scott