Yesterday on my first exercise of the day (squats) after a couple reps in I all of a sudden get a terrible headache.
It happened again today on the first exercise of the first set of bench. The pain is so bad it ruins the rest of my workout and I cannot give it my all. I still feel the pain when I get home from the gym about an hour later. Could I possibly have blown a blood vessel?
Hey Bushy, I think I may have sometimes been breathing wrong too, which may have contributed to my hypertension issue. I used to feel sick and dizzy after a workout, almost as if I would pass out if I did another rep.
I usually try and breathe steady through a hard rep, because breathing deep seems to increase my energy to push the weight. But sometimes my breathing form may be off, and if it is, I know about it because my body tells me through its reactions.
I actually had a great workout last night, and didn’t feel a headache or dizziness afterwards. I must’ve been doing something right.
So what’s the right way to breathe?
I agree with both boshido… and Mr. meth.
Breath out on the concentric portion. I usually wait until the last 3/4 of the move to exhale. That is most likely what is going on.
I remeber about five years ago I was doing a set of skull crushers and got stuck on my last rep about half way. I struggled for a second and almost set the weight back down when a guy stood over me and screamed breath and bam the weight went right up. Ever since then I have been able to get those last few reps when training to failure pretty easy just by proper breathing.
There are different techniques, but I will take a quik breath in during the eccentric portion (negative) and then hold for the first 1/4 of the concentric (positive) portion and then begin to exhale.
This happened to me a few years ago, it was during a weightlifting session during wrestling season. I worked through it, but as soon as I got home, it felt like the back of my head was going to explode with every beat of my heart, the throbbing was immense. The next day, I passed out during practice, and had to be taken to the hospital. Turns out, one of my Cervical vertibrae (not sure which one, sorry) had shifted and was pinching an artery going up the back of my neck, and restricting blood flow to one side of my brain. By squatting, the pressure was only worse, and God knows what I was doing to it during wrestling. Anwyho, after a few sessions at the Chiropracter, and lower placement of the bar on my shoulders during squats, and I was good to go.
As mentioned above, breathing helps a lot. I used to have the same problem and would get headaches that were crippling. I used to use Motrin for the headache during lifting and Aspirin to thin my blood out. Over the last several months though, through the addition of fish oil… I’ve found that I don’t get nearly as many migraine headaches that I used to get (in general).
You may also want go ditch the coffee, or cut down the amount you drink. I found that my daily pot and a half of joe was causing me problems too. Once I cut it out and switched to green tea, my headaches stopped almost immediately… barring the first few days of “withdrawl” mind you.
Good luck,
~V
Google “exertion headache” for more information, as that’s probably what you’ve got going on.
I’ve had this happen to me a few times. For me, it’s always been bench press, but I can defiantly see it happening with any of the Olympic lifts. Usually, it happens when I’ve taken a couple of weeks of, then came back and tried to lift heavy right away, or when I haven’t maxed out in a while, and try to put up too much weight. Low carb diets have also seen the return of the skull-splitting pain.
As some of the guys mentioned above, it happens because of the massive jump in blood pressure when you do a heavy lift. When we train, we aren’t just training our muscles, but our nervous and circulatory systems, as well, and it seems that the muscles have a better “memory” than the cardiovascular system, so while your muscles are capable of performing a lift, the body as a whole is not. Low blood sugar, from what I’ve been told, can also cause this.
You’re going to have to back off for a few days, and use lower poundages when you return. When I experience this, I generally don’t lift at all for a week, and then go light the first week back, then start moving back into “real” weight.
It could be an aneurism, but if you’re reading this, I doubt it, since you aren’t dead and all.