Originally Posted by
Erin158
Lifting weights this winter for first time ever. Been biking 2 years. I try to circut train. Doing twenty reps of each excercise. Leg extension, lat pull down, step up, pushups, seated row, leg lift, standing row and, adobminal with twist on ball. AKA the Joe Friel mountain bike bible regime. This takes about an hour to do three times. My question is. How come I feel like puking by the end of second go round? I don't but I have come close. I usually walk on the track to recover if I feel bad. What is my body doing when I feel this way? Have I used all my muscle glycogen? I always eat something before lifting so its not hunger. My HR is usually in the 150s while lifting. With spikes into 180s while doing excercises. Max is 200. Usually do a 1 hour endurance ride after and feel better after 10 minutes or so. Thanks in advance.
I'll often get something similar when I start this in the fall. It's not that you've burned your glycogen - that'd probably take 3 hours. And for me at least, it goes away after about a month of lifting 2-3 times/week. So my guess is that what powers this type of lifting is the glycolytic reaction, which is a pure carbo-burning reaction. And the first thing it does is scour out the sugar from your blood, which is then supposed to be replaced from glycogen stores, except your body isn't used to doing that yet, so it does a crappy job of it. So basically, it's low blood sugar. And maybe it's also the waste products from the glycolytic process (lactate) that you aren't used to having in such quantity and need to clear. That's why you feel much better pretty quickly when you rest or switch to aerobic exercise. After a few weeks, my HR will drop down to 100 between lifts and only hit 140 during a squat set, though I'm a lot older than you and have a MHR of 168. And that bad feeling goes away.
Which is another thing you could try: calculate where your zone 1 is, and rest until your HR drops into zone 1 or even 5 beats below the top of zone 1 before you do the next lift. Of course if that takes a long time, don't bother, just keep lifting - it'll get better by itself.
I know - I'm a year late - but maybe someone will be interested.