resting blood pressure as a measure of fitness / illness?

neeb
neeb Posts: 4,467
edited May 2014 in Training, fitness and health
I find resting HR a very difficult variable, mine is always jumping around all over the place from hour to hour or day to day. I wonder if resting blood pressure might be as good as or a better measure of fitness and health than HR. I've noticed that my systolic BP when truly rested seems to track my fitness reasonably well from month to month and is maybe raised a bit if I have a virus. I can get much the same BP if I repeat the test (or at least if I concentrate on relaxing and ignore the first reading), but my pulse can vary by 10bpm from one minute to the next.

How good is BP as an indicator of fitness (relative to a single individual of course, i.e. comparing only to your own readings at other times?)

Comments

  • gazeds
    gazeds Posts: 182
    it change's through the day, mine's usually around 97-54
  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,467
    edited May 2014
    madasahattersley wrote:
    Our team manager used to take our blood pressure every morning and if it looked like our blood pressure was "good" then we'd be made to train stupid hard. Unfortunately my blood pressure always seemed "good" when I was so exhausted I was falling asleep at the breakfast table, one of the many reasons I was so overtrained.

    Whether that's just the knowledge of the person doing the reading I don't know. I was told that a big gap between D/S meant that you were fresh and should go and do hill reps for 5 hours (though that clearly wasn't the case for me).
    :D Sounds like a nightmare... I think with many people medium-term BP (week to week) comes down with training & fitness, but mine is also probably at its lowest when I'm recovering from a hard/long effort the same or the previous day, so as a measure of short-term day-to-day condition it's probably a bit dodgy!
  • neeb
    neeb Posts: 4,467
    gazeds wrote:
    it change's through the day, mine's usually around 97-54
    That's pretty low, especially the diastolic. I'm about 109 over 65.

    As it happens I just finished a 111km race about 2 1/2 hours ago and BP right now is only a little raised, about 110/68, but my pulse is still way up, in the 70s as opposed to its normal resting level of about 48-55. It was hot so I'm probably still dehydrated if that makes a diff.

    Interestingly I'm getting that slight orthostatic hypotension thing that I often get after a big exertion (mild light-headedness on standing up too quickly), but my BP is not any lower than normal. Maybe it's the blood volume being low, leading to the body adjusting BP less efficiently on change of posture?
  • Stalin
    Stalin Posts: 208
    madasahattersley wrote:
    Our team manager used to take our blood pressure every morning and if it looked like our blood pressure was "good" then we'd be made to train stupid hard. Unfortunately my blood pressure always seemed "good" when I was so exhausted I was falling asleep at the breakfast table, one of the many reasons I was so overtrained.

    Whether that's just the knowledge of the person doing the reading I don't know. I was told that a big gap between D/S meant that you were fresh and should go and do hill reps for 5 hours (though that clearly wasn't the case for me).

    Fatigue takes many forms. Anyone who claims one measure alone can predict when you should train hard or rest is a liar, a fool, or both.
  • nzhendo
    nzhendo Posts: 12
    BP is probably a fairly poor measure of fitness. Too many other variables going into it. At best it would only be a very, very crude indirect measure.

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