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The following message was posted in the Weight Trainer's United forum and on my MySpace page.

Blood Pressure and Resting Heart Rate Comparison

By Gary F. Zeolla

For the first couple of years after I set up my home gym in September of 2005, I used a basic pattern of lifting weights three times a week, and then walking on three off days. My lifting workouts lasted about an hour and a half, sometimes longer when using powerlifting gear. My walks were for 30 minutes at about a 3-1/2 mph pace. But after a while, that got to be too much for me, so for a while last fall (2007) I tried only lifting and walking each twice a week.

But when December came, I decided to cut out the walking and lift four times a week. But I reduced my workouts so that they only take an hour or so. But that includes doing what I call "short intense cardio" at the end of the workouts.

I do step-ups on my squat box (11" high) on squat days as they work the quads like squats. I hit a heavy bag on bench days as that works the same muscles as benches do. I feel it mainly in the pressing muscles (pecs, anterior delts, and triceps). On deadlift days I jump rope as I mainly feel that in my upper back, forearms, hamstrings, and calves, again, muscles worked in deadlifts.

I started at just a couple of minutes but have now worked up to six minutes on all three exercises, and that is as long as I intend to go. I will now work on increasing the intensity rather than the time. The first and last 30 seconds are done at a slower pace for warm-up and cool-down. That leaves a full five minutes at a high intensity.

But my concern was if the shorter workout times and much shorter cardio would be sufficient for cardiovascular health. So when I made the change in December I took my blood pressure and resting heart rate with my dad's monitor. And now, almost four months later, I just took it again. Below are the numbers:

12/2/07 – BP: 108/ 79, RHR: 57 bpm (beats per minute)

3/28/08 – BP: 101/ 71, RHR: 54 bpm

Normal blood pressure is 120/80 and a normal RHR is 60-80 bpm. But it is even better for the blood pressure to be below 120/80, and the lower the RHR is the stronger the heart is. The reason is, a stronger heart is able to pump more blood with each pump, so it doesn't have to pump as often. I heard that when Lance Armstrong was in shape for his Tour de France wins, his RHR was 16.

In any case, it seems that what I am doing now is working out even better than my previous program. This makes sense as I saw a study a while back that found just six minutes of cardio done at a very high intensity provides the same cardiovascular benefits as TWO HOURS of cardio done at a moderate intensity. And doing the cardio after the weightlifting workouts only adds to the benefits.

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Blood Pressure and Resting Heart Rate Comparison. Copyright © 2008 By Gary F. Zeolla.

The above message was posted on this site on April 1. 2008.

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