I’ve always had an issue where when squatting I feel faint afterwards. This escalates the more sets and the more reps I do. It doesn’t require that much weight to set it off, and it’s often the limiting factor to how much I can squat. There is the standard symptom of feeling light headed immediately after doing a squat, but for me this often persists for a long time. Time to get some data.
Here I measured my blood pressure with a blood pressure cuff immediately before and after doing a set of 10 reps 205lb.
My resting bp is normally about 123/80 and heart rate is about 65. The measurements here were taken standing up with the left arm dangling down so they are slightly different from what you would get in the regular sitting position.
Valsalva only
Here’s an experiment to isolate a variable - I did the valsalva maneuver 10 times in a row for a couple seconds each to simulate a set of squats, but with no load on the body. This was done standing up and the measurements were taken standing up as before:
Basically complete noise, as far as I can tell. The next step should be to do cardio sprints to isolate heart rate from loading, since the heart rate spiked during a set.
Heart rate only
Here the protocol was simple - Absolute max effort on an exercise bike until heart rate hit 155 (the same as the max hr from the squats) and then rest. This produced by far and away the biggest physiological change - even from the first set my vision went a little dark, and I had to stop and lie down after the third set as I felt extremely sick and nearly passed out. Took >30mins to feel normal. Here is the data:
