Sports doctor prescribed exercise

yirara
yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
So basically I do have muscle problems that I'm born with. Doctors are finally trying to figure out where things to wrong as a cardio pulmonary exercise test I did was mostly ok apart from the known problem of possibly not accessing fatty acids for energy for anything above relaxed walking and lactate rising a bit too fast. But that's not surprising: it's basically steady-state exercise with small increments in intensity. I mostly get used to the increase thanks to working out for 20ish years. Was terminated at what they figured was max effort, and it felt being close. When I run at a steady slow pace I might get a similarly high HR without getting close to max effort.

Now here's where the fun starts, and I thought I blog about it: Doctor gave me an exercise plan for running that he'll adjust every week. The aim is to figure out where things go wrong. Givens are HR and duration, and it includes steady state runs, slow intensity increases and fartleks/intervals. So far so good. Only: the max HR he's given me, based on the exercise test, is about 20bpm lower than my slow relaxed running HR. So.. I guess I'll walk an awful lot next week and see what the following week brings. :D
«1

Replies

  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    edited August 2022
    Well, that was... interesting.
    10 minutes until HR 140, then 10 mins 150, then 10 mins 160.
    Lets put it this way: I did run/walk intervals to prevent my HR from shooting straight up to 170, and then higher from there, but never really got below 140. What I knew before: run/walk intervals are not for me because every time I start running again my legs get heavy, muscles hurt, then breathing becomes chaotic, and once this is all gone 5 minutes are over and I'd walk again according to Galloway. Was basically the same here, only I never got out of the 'this sucks' zone. Things got easier in the third block when I was finally allowed to have a higher HR, but again every new running start was not nice. Did a very frustrated faster, forget-about-HR segment at the end, which finally felt great and relaxed. :D

    I think I might do a proper run tomorrow outside the training plan, because this is very frustrating, and I can't imagine doing this for this whole week.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,760 Member
    @yirara, I appreciate that you are reporting on this. I know you've had quite a range of challenges related to this physiological issue, difficult plus puzzling. I hope you'll find some solution or at least improvement via the current route, which at least sounds a little more promising. It is interesting to read how this is going for you, and it may help other people work at solving their own mystery issues, to see how you're approaching this. I hear that it's difficult to do what you've been asked to do - I hope it leads somewhere.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Thanks a lot @AnnPT77
    I think this experiment might also be interesting for people who think that a training plan or method of training is perfect for them because social media, a doctor, whoever said so.

    I'm really wondering what to do with the next run: fartleks with last faster part at HR 165, but with medium easy to difficult intensity. Either I go to 175-185bpm and get the intensity, or keep my HR low and basically walk with a sprint in the last minute where my HR might indeed end up at 165 :D Both at the same time just isn't possible.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    So that was interesting! Task was to do a run alternating slightly in pace between slower and faster sections. At a certain intensity (12-15 on Borg scale, whatever that means) and only touching upon HR of 165 in the end. Basically: I never got below 160, even when walking, and the last interval got me to 185. yeah, I decided to stick with the intensity and not the HR, as both together just doesn't work. Conclusion: an exercise test done on a bike doesn't need to yield useful info for running.
  • DoubleG2
    DoubleG2 Posts: 122 Member
    Interesting - I'm surprised your HR did not recover below 160 when walking. What is a typical resting HR for you and how long does it take after exercising to recover?
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    DoubleG2 wrote: »
    Interesting - I'm surprised your HR did not recover below 160 when walking. What is a typical resting HR for you and how long does it take after exercising to recover?

    My resting HR is at around 55-60. I never actually walked when running, thus this is new data for me :D I do know when I hike up a mountain, add hot weather and all I might get to over 180, but once things get flat or even downhill my HR will come down. It also reacts to every little change in terrain. I think the walking intervals were simply too short and I had not recovered from running yet as running is super difficult for me compared to walking or cycling. I do know it comes down quickly when I finish a run and just sit about for a bit. So I guess I'm just entertaining the sports doc a bit with this and give him even more to think about :D
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    So yesterday's 'run' was interesting. Was meant to run 15 minutes at HR 140ish, 150ish, 160ish each. Totally useless. It was more windy, and that has quite some influence on my HR. Basically, I walked for nearly 45 minutes with very short slow running intervals. Need to have a word with this doctor. He needs to explain what he's trying to achieve.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Oh-o, I think I'm getting somewhere! Did a hike yesterday and decided to talk to myself or sing a bit after discovering the rating of perceived exertion scale. Basically, I would have rated this hike as a 3 with some harder bits, but looking at the description, and how I was able to talk I realized it was more of a 4-5 with some parts going into 8, and a short section of 3-4.

    Based on this all my relaxed runs are straight 6, with every little incline or wind pushing me up into 7 or 8 even. Even when I run slower than I walk. Basically, moving around is a lot more difficult for me than I thought.

    pbmbf3qzunmd.png
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 467 Member
    I went through something similar about 6 months ago. Eye-opening, isn't it?
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    edited August 2022
    SuzanneC1l9zz wrote: »
    I went through something similar about 6 months ago. Eye-opening, isn't it?

    Wow yes, it totally is! So what happened to you afterwards? Or was it just a random conclusion?
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Well, that was... interesting!
    Ate a few spoons of coconut oil 20 minutes before today's run based on a science paper I read. For once the beginning of my run was easy right from the start while I usually fight for the first few minutes to not give up. My HR was surprisingly low all through the run and my breathing really, really calm. Ok, HR came up to over 186 during the sprint I did at the end, but that's not surprising. But even the sprint was easy. Guess I should experiment more with different kinds of energy with the same amount of calories before runs. Sugar next.
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 467 Member
    Well, my issues are different than yours, but the combination of stumbling on that scale and the FAME heart rate calculator (http://fameexercise.com/delivering-fame/exercise-and-activity-goals/) at about the same time (yes, I'm on a beta blocker) was really eye opening. As was getting a stationary bike with a power meter. I'd been told by my medical team that one of my conditions drastically decreases exercise tolerance. Thought I was an exception until the power meter and finding out what average is for my demographic. Then I adjusted the HRmax on my Garmin to line up with the calculator and started comparing my experiences when exercising to the RPE scale, and holy cow did I have to re-evaluate how hard I was working! Sure changed my perspective on that "150 minutes a week" guideline, too! 🤯
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,908 Member
    yirara wrote: »
    Well, that was... interesting!
    Ate a few spoons of coconut oil 20 minutes before today's run based on a science paper I read. For once the beginning of my run was easy right from the start while I usually fight for the first few minutes to not give up. My HR was surprisingly low all through the run and my breathing really, really calm. Ok, HR came up to over 186 during the sprint I did at the end, but that's not surprising. But even the sprint was easy. Guess I should experiment more with different kinds of energy with the same amount of calories before runs. Sugar next.

    Interesting about the coconut oil. I vaguely remember something about shorter fatty acid chains or something, that could pass the blood brain barrier just like glucose.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    yirara wrote: »
    Well, that was... interesting!
    Ate a few spoons of coconut oil 20 minutes before today's run based on a science paper I read. For once the beginning of my run was easy right from the start while I usually fight for the first few minutes to not give up. My HR was surprisingly low all through the run and my breathing really, really calm. Ok, HR came up to over 186 during the sprint I did at the end, but that's not surprising. But even the sprint was easy. Guess I should experiment more with different kinds of energy with the same amount of calories before runs. Sugar next.

    Interesting about the coconut oil. I vaguely remember something about shorter fatty acid chains or something, that could pass the blood brain barrier just like glucose.

    Yeah, exactly! There's quite a bit of research on comparing sugar and MCTs, and using MCTs as a source of extra energy during exercise in athletes. The biggest problem though seems to be that athletes get gastrointestinal problems from munching on too much oil and thus the use is limited :D I have the feeling that energy generation for me is just a wee bit too slow and I fall into a very deep hole after the first few seconds of exercise and then crawl out again some 6-8 minutes later. Exercise tests have shown that these first few minutes look 'odd' and afterwards I pretty much only run on glycogen. So I thought: what could I use to fill that gap with. Will of course experiment a bit more. Tonight a run without anything extra, and the following one with sugar at approximately the same amount of calories of MCTs in coconut oil (54-65%). And then rinse and repeat. Fun stuff :D
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    SuzanneC1l9zz wrote: »
    Well, my issues are different than yours, but the combination of stumbling on that scale and the FAME heart rate calculator (http://fameexercise.com/delivering-fame/exercise-and-activity-goals/) at about the same time (yes, I'm on a beta blocker) was really eye opening. As was getting a stationary bike with a power meter. I'd been told by my medical team that one of my conditions drastically decreases exercise tolerance. Thought I was an exception until the power meter and finding out what average is for my demographic. Then I adjusted the HRmax on my Garmin to line up with the calculator and started comparing my experiences when exercising to the RPE scale, and holy cow did I have to re-evaluate how hard I was working! Sure changed my perspective on that "150 minutes a week" guideline, too! 🤯

    Ha! Exciting to find out something, right? Mind you, my HRmax is about 3 standard deviations above what it should be according to online calculators. Despite this, my Garmin tells me most of my runs are threshold or tempo runs. Maybe I need to adjust it up a lot more. On the other hand, yeah: on the RPE scale those are super exhausting and I don't keep it up for long unless I take gel. Tons of it. So I guess the conclusion is: bodies are weird. :D
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Run yesterday without anything special was 6km in easy intervals: various lengths of normal and slow pace. Not a good day. The beginning was difficult as ever, and I started to run out of energy after 40 minutes. I would have managed 20 more, based on experience, but this was where I stopped.
    Today is experiment day: What happens if my breakfast consists mostly pf protein instead of carbs. Found some leftover meaty things in the freezer that I'll cook and mix with a quick skyr/garlic dip.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    I look at my breakfast and wonder whether this will turn me into a full vegetarian. Urks. Maybe not the best idea.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Right, I won't be repeating this. All was fine just sitting on the sofa and surfing the net. But when I had to run an errand some 90 minutes after breakfast things got wrong: no energy at all, wading through custard feeling, all muscles super heavy. Not as bad as it could be, but not good either.

    Ok, then I guess I should somehow test this with a mostly fat one-off breakfast. No idea though what to do other than sticking nuts into butter :# Btw, I can't stand peanut butter, in case someone mentions it. :s
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,908 Member
    Is avocado an option for breakfast? Whole avocado, or guacamole?
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    edited August 2022
    Lietchi wrote: »
    Is avocado an option for breakfast? Whole avocado, or guacamole?

    Good idea! It's still a lot of carbs, so that might be a bit of a problem. At the moment I'm thinking of the fatty bits of bacon with nuts, and a tiny bit of sugar or apple syrup. Or I might be able to get a small amount of pork belly. Wanted to cook a Japanese recipe with that anyway. The problem is though that I can't get nutritional info because butchers don't provide it.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Stupid idea of the day: gulp down 180cals of household sugar 20 minutes before a run. Urks!
    Now that was interesting! The first 6 minutes of the run weren't as difficult as they usually are, but instead this energy hole came from about 10-28 minutes. Afterwards I had masses of energy, running was easy, my pulse surprisingly low, and I didn't start to run out of energy at 40 minutes as with the previous run. Hmm..
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 467 Member
    A mixture of coconut oil & sugar as a pre-workout for an extremely specific few people?
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    SuzanneC1l9zz wrote: »
    A mixture of coconut oil & sugar as a pre-workout for an extremely specific few people?

    Ha, I have no idea. But if I were to do that every day I'd gain weight as in order to get say 20gr of the special fats in coconut oil I'd neat to eat about 30 to maybe 35gr. I can't offset that with running long-term. But it's an interesting experiment I'll try. But first a week of repeating the same thing.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,760 Member
    This is so interesting, and odd to me (i.e., dissimilar from personal experience). Repeating myself, but thank you for the ongoing reports.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Thanks a lot @AnnPT77 Hey, I'm a bit odd, being a nudibranch :D I'm slowly getting the feeling that most things work as they should, but just a bit sluggish (see what I did there?) and imperfect. If I understand it correctly, the first few seconds of exercise are fueled by ATP stored in muscles, followed by a brief period of kind of anaerobic energy production until sufficient oxygen gets into the muscles to produce more energy. My feeling is that the following step is not working properly, and I fall into a deep hole until it finally catches up. Exercise tests have shown that at that time pretty much all energy seems to be coming from glycogen though, and given the high intensity of even moderate exercise, my guess is that it's not surprising that I can only run about an hour max. Or... energy from fatty acids is created in mitochondria, right? Glycogen is... *reading now* released into the blood stream from liver and muscles and then somehow used as energy. So my guess is that the first process is running a bit suboptimal, fueling everything but sitting around or strolling over to the supermarket mostly by glycogen. Which is limited. No idea. Just guesswork.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Interesting experiment on Sunday morning: Decided to not make my usual high carb oats with fruit but mixed together a breakfast from protein and fats. All went well, until I went to a diy shop nearby (by car!) to pick something up. Felt like everything around me had turned into thick mud. The stairs to my flat were nearly impossible to get up to, and once at home I crashed slightly. Well, was time for my next meal anyway, and there I ate my usual breakfast and fairly quickly felt better again.

    Forgot about it, went on a run in the evening, and realized fairly quickly it wasn't working. Every single step was super difficult. And once at home I crashed properly. Like: muscles like custard, could not concentrate, slightly nauseous. My glucose levels were just a tiny bit lower than normal, but once I started feeling better again they also came up. So no idea if something happened while I was running. Needed all of yesterday as well to recover from this.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Ok, now I finally know what the aim is of this running programme: find a pulse or intensity at which I can run with low intensity, without getting into anaerobic territory. So far I think this has failed even with the lowest intensity at which I can still run. Should be interesting.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    So I did a suuuper slow run yesterday. 50min, 5km. At my normal speed I manage 6km in that time. Result: lungs/heart were happy, super relaxed, could have gone on forever. Muscles: gave up at the same moment as with a faster run. Both have the same number of steps. Thus if this is a muscle problem it makes sense.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    I thought I give some update. Running week 6. During most of these 6 weeks the moment where my breathing gets noticeably faster is at a HR of 165. Which is unchanged. My guess, and comparing notes with the exercise test is that about here's the lactate threshold. Had a few runs with an overall higher HR, and the moment where this happened was at around 172bpm. Today I had a run with a HR that was overall 10bpm lower. And guess what: the HR where this happened was also about 10bpm lower, at 156. Sigh.
    My muscles at somewhat faster runs used to get weak at around 40 minutes. This seems unchanged. When running super slow things go downward from about 44 minutes, improvement from 43 minutes. Yiha. So basically... 6 weeks might not be long enough to see any improvement. Oh well...
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,002 Member
    Just realized definitions seem to be different.. with lactate threshold my doctor means the moment where lactate rises quickly, thus probably close to the anaerobic threshold. So basically I'm running around anaerobic most of the time.

Categories