Originally Posted by
terrymorse
Is blood pressure another metric to detect how well you are recovering from training? Or can high-intensity training raise your resting blood pressure?
This article says "maybe":
Hunter et al,
Divergent blood pressure response following high-intensity interval exercise: a signal of delayed recovery?, 2019
"
[W]e present a rationale supporting the contention that elevated systolic blood pressure, following a bout of high-intensity exercise, may be indicative of delayed/incomplete recovery."
The reason I ask:
Recently, I had been riding pretty hard and long for several weeks, when I happened to take my resting blood pressure. Suprisingly, it was consistently high (140+). I thought, "Uh oh, old age has caught up with me, it's time to get on the blood pressure drug bus". I took last week off the bike entirely, and I just started back with some easy rides yesterday. Each rest day, my BP trended downwards. This morning, it was down to 107/69.
I'm hoping that the high BP was caused by me overdoing the bike riding, and not the "other thing".
I am intrigued to see this. I noticed something very similar last August at the height of my training intensity. Normal BP had been around 120/70 and it I was finding systolic in the high130's-low 140's and diastolic in the low 80's. It dropped back down in October after my last event and I took a break from structured training. I was unsure of the cause and wondered whether it was the result of over doing it with sodium in response to to heavy sweating. I mentioned to my Dr during my annual physical just before Christmas and he couldnt explain it any other way. Strangely, when the BP went back down, I experienced a bump in resting heart rate of about 10 bpm, which has persisted. I wonder if this is related. I had attributed the raise in RHR to fighting a sinus infection that arose around the same time, bu tperhaps boht the infection and RHR bump were symptoms of overtraining.
For context, I noticed the elevated BP during a block of training where CTL was around 90.
