Cardiovascular quirks

[Big J]

I am now about 3-4 months into rowing on a regular basis. It's been great for my cardiovascular health and it's seen my resting heart rate drop from about 60 to around 45-47. I was surprised at how little time it took to do that.

What perplexes me a little is the way that my heart and lungs perform when rowing. I did a lot of time trial cycling as a kid (13-16 years of ages) - loads of 10 mile TTs and compete nationally once before getting injured. Given that my times for 10 mile TTs were in the 25-26 minute range, it probably explains why I like 30-minute rows so much.

Anyway, the maximum I've seen my heart rate go to since getting the monitor is 184bpm. I've not done much sprint work since getting the HR monitor at Christmas, but I've done plenty of challenging rowing.

What is odd is that my max heart rate is pretty much where you'd expect it to be for my age, but I'm really comfortable for really long periods of time at 85-90% of that max and at that sort of level, I don't really get out of breath. There is a lot of discussion on here about breathing, but the commonly accepted mantra of breath in on catch and out on the drive doesn't work for me because even on R20, that's too much breathing for me.

But my heart rate still definitely limits me, because I can feel myself working towards hypoxia when my heart rate gets over 175, but even then the breathing doesn't increase that much.

So I suppose my question is, is there a way to (carefully) up your maximum heart rate whilst at the same time reducing your resting heart rate? I feel that that is my weak link at the moment. I have sufficient strength, I have the right levers and I have massive lungs (I always get given the bag of balloons at parties because I can inflate them in one breath), but my heart is still a little untrained, or at least that's the way it feels.

Does anyone else's CV system have funny quirks? My wife rows a bit too, and whilst her max heartrate matches mine exactly (and she's 5 years older), she's completely unable to hold much above 150 for significant periods of time. But her resting heart rate is a bit lower than mine.

It's just interesting to me

[jamesg]

Your numbers suggest you're working comfortably at AT level, so have completed your aerobic training.

Next step, for racing, is anaerobic: another month or so of short fast anaerobic training, usually called tapering.

The Interactives seen here offer plenty of examples for the last weeks:

http://3.8.144.21/training/interactive

[Dangerscouse]

Yes mate, my HR is weird. Some days I'll fail at circa 90%, others it'll go to circa 98%. Despite that I can quite often get into a good groove at around 85% and it feel like hard work, but not feel massively troubling.

I think I'm a respiratory limited athlete, as I always find my breathing fails before I get to the acid burn of lactic acid. I'm getting more interested in breathing exercises recently as I wonder if I'm failing due to a lack of relative diaphragm strength.

[Tenshuu]

As a life-long exercise-induced asthmatic - I can attest to some interesting dynamics with breathing and HR%.

I've gone 12+ minutes straight @ 185-190bpm (32m, 175lbs, 195bpm rowing max HR) and felt obviously tired at the end, but felt like my breathing was great, and that I could continue to suffer beyond that - this memorable effort was pretty high HR for the final 20-25 minutes of an hour long row.

Logbook link here:

https://log.concept2.com/profile/1086130/log/42363964

As mentioned above me - some days I feel like I could hold 185BPM for an hour, and my breathing is good - however other days, I feel like anything over 175 is a sufferfest and will be handle down in 5 minutes. I've also had some days where even a pre-puff on my inhaler can't help me feel like I'm getting enough breath above 170BPM.

I would also like to mention, that from my knowledge of physiology, it is impossible to increase your Maximum heart rate ceiling without aging in reverse- but you can definitely decrease your resting heart rate as you have experienced.

When I'm feeling good, my rows have some labored breathing up to 90% of my HR for long periods - as in, I feel like I could have short interrupted conversations with others between 75-85% HR without feeling like I'm gonna lose steam during the conversation - sometimes I'll even take every 3rd breath by nose or some relative breathing rhythm.

[iain]

As a life-long exercise-induced asthmatic - I can attest to some interesting dynamics with breathing and HR%.

I've gone 12+ minutes straight @ 185-190bpm (32m, 175lbs, 195bpm rowing max HR) and felt obviously tired at the end, but felt like my breathing was great, and that I could continue to suffer beyond that - this memorable effort was pretty high HR for the final 20-25 minutes of an hour long row.

I also get exercise induced asthma, but fortunately it is largely controlled by inhalers. I have not experienced issues with breathing based on HR, only on breaths per minute. I actively regulate number of breaths per stroke, so this is dependent on rating (as I have failed to row for extended periods at 1 breath per stroke). That said, the comfortable rating drops on longer rows and I wondered whether any of that was actually fatigue of breathing rather than legs. So at 20SPM I can get close to max HR but can easily perform 40 maximal breaths per minute and so have no breathing issues.

[frankencrank]

But my heart rate still definitely limits me, because I can feel myself working towards hypoxia when my heart rate gets over 175, but even then the breathing doesn't increase that much.

This max HR numbers are simply normals and there will be a deviation. I am 77 and I can still talk at near my predicted maximum. Your max must be higher also. The reason you go anaerobic is because your breathing cannot go any more. The reason one can't keep increasing breathing forever is at some point you start to see turbulent flow and the work to increase breathing is too much for your muscles.

Let me add. Resting HR is simply an indicator of aerobic fitness. Max HR is a little more "fixed" but as you continue to improve your aerobic fitness your resting HR will continue to drop (into the 30's even if you are young) and max HR will increase somewhat. It is how our body adapts to repeated stress of this sort.