The Importance of Blood Pressure in Powerlifting

today we have yet another guest uh one that if people have been following nexus for a while would know uh and it is the glimmer from muscle nerds hello and he is here to speak with us as at this time a guest presenter in the upcoming nexus mentorship uh on health and and within that a little bit more specifically on blood pressure so we've done a little bit of work um did a video together on it like a short form video so in this time we'll go a little bit more in depth because i feel like blood pressure is something that within performance sports especially powerlifting where it's very very you know very specific it's complete it's so easy to just go like i'll throw that in the bin and yeah and because performance you can just drive so hard until until you're dead yeah you know what i mean in powerlifting so um blood pressure is much more scary once you understand it and i understand it because i did your course and then i i've done your full hypertension course and then i yeah that made me go like god damn i knew this shit was scary but then when you say some of the figures, it's like, holy fuck. Yeah, when you're researching it, you're like, holy shit. I got to tell people about this stuff. And then you're constantly measuring your blood pressure four times a day. That's what I was about to say. You're sitting there like writing it going like, yeah. Oh, God, I'm at 121 over 81. I'm going to die. You're not that bad. Yeah, that's all right. That's much better than the measurements I get back. That's for sure. When I was competing in powerlifting, nobody talked about this. I mean, we're talking 20 something years ago. Yeah. I was 120, 324 kilos. I could barely walk up a flight of stairs without needing a post-workout shake. You know, I would take a shit. My whole face would be purple. And we never took our blood pressure back then. That's probably Zach on an everyday basis, though, because Zach has a lot of digestive issues. It's a struggle. It's a struggle. I can, yeah, I can understand. What's your blood pressure at the moment, Zach? Let's go around and give each other's blood pressure. Right now. We have got one in here. Yeah, we have got one in here. We've both just slammed some caffeine, so I don't know if it's a bit of – I want to get this out. Zach, what's yours? I've got less than no idea. I have not checked my blood pressure in like six months. Oh, there you go. We've got a culprit right here. Exactly. But we do have a cuff right here. We keep it in the gym so everybody that signs up, they don't all do it because they're – Well, they don't care. I'd hate to actually get your readings though. Right now, they would be extreme. Yeah, I don't want to get them. When we first started teaching about that stuff, I was really surprised at how many coaches did not know their client's blood pressure. They're like, we don't take it. It's not in our scope of knowledge. I'm like, hold on a second. It is massively in your scope of knowledge. You don't have to pull out the whole Dr. Garb and a stethoscope and a sphincter, the mama, the bedobbiter, whatever they call it. You've got technologies. Put it on them and hit the button because if you don't do that, how do you know what you're doing? Is that going to be a positive or negative physiological response for them? Yeah, exactly. you don't know which direction to go like where they're at and uh and we'll get into like some of how it affects performance and adaptation as well but i think it's because it's just not a like being healthy isn't sexy like when you're talking to palettes they're all about what's your one rm bro how you know like pulling up lifts videos or like selling performance selling technique like there's many ways to sell powerlifting i think but blood pressure isn't one of them yeah you know uh the health side of it isn't just isn't sexy so i don't think it is like gets talked about and it gets overlooked you know it's a sport of extremes so it's like everyone just just all about extreme strength and just most of the time people are like okay i don care about this how do i squat while i keep my hips together how do i do this without getting a massive injury but they don think about other injuries they could get like long cardiovascular damage And I I often talk about this to people It's like a credit card. You're just, you're racking up this debt that you're going to have to pay off someday. You can be like, yeah, well, you know, I used to deadlift 400 kilos, but now you're 80 and your joints are completely destroyed. You've already had four heart attacks. you know you don't you don't have to trade that you can have good health and you can have good physiology and good blood pressure and you can still be really fucking strong there's sure compound interest on that credit card as well yeah once you once you fall into the data it's real much harder to get out than it is to massively pay it off as it comes yeah um and we'll talk about your model on that the beast mode to least mode least mode to beast mode uh and how that plays into powerlifting because i feel like it directly applies to powerlifting in terms of peaking and being strong and being sympathetic and then trying to reverse that. And we've talked about it in a much less formatted way. Well, one of the things that you always say is that before someone is a powerlifter, they are a human and a person. Yeah, all that kind of language. Yeah, it all comes back into that model and having what I call like an exit plan. Like it's okay to have high blood pressure when you're coming into a comp. I would be almost weirded out if you didn't. Yeah. But, uh, but as long as there's an exit plan, you'd be sweet. As long as there's a plan after to go like, okay, let's fix this shit up. So everything really. And if you're competing in powerlifting and you're about to get on the platform and you're not on the verge and on the borderline of injuring yourself, you're probably not ready. You're probably not going to win. You want to try to stay as healthy as possible until it's time to get on the platform. So it's like when I talk to people about their HRV and about staying, you know balancing out the parasympathetic and the sympathetic you don't want to be parasympathetic when you're stepping on stage you want to be tight you want to be so tight that you have like sausage hands and you can barely turn your neck and that's what you want you don't you want to have to put a certain amount of weight on just to get into the bottom of your squat while you're warming up that was will basically before one of his record breakers comps he looked i called him buffalo billy just looked yeah like a big watermelon when i was trying to push to 125 yeah and zach's been we've all pushed to like tried to push to 125 i don't know any of us have been relatively like a decent holding 125