Body weight exercises post ablation

Happy Friday everyone. What are your thoughts and what does the science say regarding body weight exercises (push-ups, sit-ups, squats, etc) post ablation? Should we stick with cardio exercises such as brisk walking and stay away from any type of resistance training? Will something like push-ups for example be detrimental to our ablation and long term prognosis? I presently partake in brisk walking multiple days per week but I’d like to start doing push-ups to help maintain muscle mass and strength as I grow older. I’d be interested in your thoughts on this as well as what your exercise regimen looks like. I’ll probably reach out to Natale’s staff to see what his philosophy is on this. Thanks everyone!

- Bill

Great question. Please post back if you learn anything outside the responses here. I am just a couple weeks post ablation and plan to get back into my routine. Maybe slightly lighter weight but definitely weight training and cardio. I've not read to avoid it. In fact my EP said I could start as soon as a week if I felt up to it. But I'm taking at least two months off.

Bill,

My only expertise is as someone whose path to afib was chronic fitness, 15 1/2 years ago. One of the legs of my fairly successful afib remission strategy has been detraining from doing "too" much. My question to myself has always been how gain the benefits of exercise without incurring the potential negative consequences that can put you on the far side of a "U" or "J" shaped benefit distribution. For much of this time, how much is too much has been subjective, and it has worked well for me. I recently started quantifying it for endurance activities as described in this post regarding <[www.afibbers.org] I personally think bodyweight is OK, am also a fan of superslow training (AKA "Body by Science"), Doug McGuff MD being an advocate <[www.drmcguff.com]. Isometrics are OK, too. In my case, the exercise trigger has been a product of duration times intensity. Hence long duration, low intensity is OK as is short duration, high intensity (like Tabatas).

More recently, I've been playing with KAATSU or blood flow restriction (BFR) training. The idea is using bands or cuffs to restrict venous return but not arterial flow. You can get huge benefit with low weights (like 20-30% of one rep max). Mercola has a couple of good articles and links to interviews: <[fitness.mercola.com] and <[fitness.mercola.com]

The idea being you are sending the brain the signal that growth should happen, without doing the damage that happens when you train heavy.

If I were an ablatee, I would start easy and work up. Just think if that soldering iron were applied to your skin where you could see the lesions heal, how long it would take. Hence I would do something like super slow with bodyweight and/or BFR.

Moderate strength training is totally fine. What you want to avoid is trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his “Conan the Barbarian” days. Excessive lifting, especially bench presses, puts compressive strain on the atria and adds to stretch which begets AF. It also wrecks valves as an added bonus.

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wolfpack
Moderate strength training is totally fine. What you want to avoid is trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his “Conan the Barbarian” days. Excessive lifting, especially bench presses, puts compressive strain on the atria and adds to stretch which begets AF. It also wrecks valves as an added bonus.

Having returned to the gym I find myself in a quandary. As in how much is too much as this is relative to ones physical strength de-trained. Also, being one who has a tendency to overdue or push themselves doesn't help. I have been leaving the gym thinking I haven't done enough while at the same time during a workout thinking I might be doing too much.

You can just do repetitions to failure with lower weight amounts versus trying to get that one press at 225lb or whatever.