How to Exercise to Lower Hypertension

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Stephen Smith a personal trainer located in Atlanta, Georgia. My business is Viva Fitness specializing in personal training and exercise and nutrition. I have been training for over 20 years with a degree in physical education and in health and a master's in exercise physiology. I train at Urban Body Fitness which is also located in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm going to talk to you about doing exercises to help lower hypertension. A key thing you need to keep in mind is not to lift too heavy too quickly. What you don't want to do with exercises is lift heavy because that will help shoot up the blood pressure. We're trying to lower the blood pressure therefore making you exercise, so simple things you can do is say for example on this lateral machine here as opposed to cranking up the weights real high put it on a light weight. We are doing anywhere between you know, 12, 16 reps, nice and controlled where you can move the entire time, nice smooth control keeping the resistance on the muscles. If you're doing pull ups this machine over here or use an assisted pull up machine. Too many times you struggle to lift up, remember you want it nice slow controlled high rep movement. You don't want to do anything that's going to really shoot the blood pressure up right away like lifting extremely heavy weights. In addition to lifting high reps, low weights is do cardiovascular. Now the cardiovascular exercise is nothing that is too intense. Start out slow with a nice walk, gradually increase as you progress along. Don't start out running, don't start out on hills, don't start out full force, nice gradual pace just to get the body acclimated to the exercises to help the heart rate gradually increase not necessarily shoot right up. So start off slow, light weights, light exercise and you'll be on the right road to do exercises to help lower hypertension."