If you’ve ever wondered a great way to monitor progress of your fitness, blood pressure and your BPs response to that stress is a great way to start. I did a pull of a 20 year old male weighing 104KG (229LBS in freedom measurements) and a ceiling of 187CM (6 ft 1 in). This was a SupraMaximal test using a cycle ergometer with a relative VO2max of 28mL/min/kg, which is pretty much expected.

In graph A you will see that the resting BP is 110/70 and the first stage begins at a resistance of 0 watts. Moving to 100 watts at at 2 minutes, the systolic response will increase 28mmHg with diastolic remaining the same. The next stage was sort of surprising with a diastolic increase to 78 and systolic remaining the same at 138. This is interesting because if diastolic increase it will be small like this however it happened early with only 25 being added for 125 watts of resistance. At the end of this stage their resting relative VO2max went from 3.5ml/kg/min to 15ml/kg/min (3.5 is accepted resting just existing as a human value).  As the next two stages increase by 25 watts each over two more 2 minute intervals, the diastolic eventually settles back down to 72 while the systolic increases linearly. Typically in elite athletes (especially endurance trained athletes) you’d see the linear increase occur much slower and the O2 uptake would increase however their VO2max would be higher as their body can more efficiently utilize the uptake. You can see at the 13:50 mark max is hit with a systolic of 186mmHg and 72mmHg diastolic.

I’m on my phone and it’s tough to be as detailed as I want to be, but here is a graph.

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This graph was also made rather quickly just for this post. I am also interested in the Total Peripheral Resistance (TPR) as this was below average for a sedentary college student.

A decrease in TPR is caused by a decrease in vascular resistance in musculoskeletal vascular beds. The decrease should have a been a bit more and this is an indication of an individual with lower aerobic capacity or an underlying cardiovascular issue, or just overall poor individual fitness.

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Why is this important?

It is important if you are wanting to improve your overall cardiovascular performance, enhance your endurance, or need to utilize an exercise prescription to control blood pressure.

It is also a great tool to use to gauge progress. Many times the scale does not tell the whole story. Putting on one pound of muscle mass while losing one pound of fat will not move the scale at all. By getting a baseline of your BP response to exercise and then testing at pre planned intervals, you should see a different SBP response. It will increase linearly with heart rate and intensity however, the increase will be less sharp.

I just remember in Freshman Chem at A&M if you got the correct answer on a multiple choice question it was worth ONE POINT. If you got the question wrong it counted MINUS 1.25 POINTS. They told us it was to discourage "guessing". People in my class got Cs with negative grades. I can't imagine the whining that would take place today if that program was in place. Fast forward 50 plus years and I'm sure glad I'm retired. It probably didn't hurt that one day in a rain storm a really pretty 22 year old girl had a flat right in front of my dorm. I did the gentlemanly thing and changed it for her. Just as I was finishing the girls Dad showed up. He was my Chem Prof.

Hell yeah brother.

Like a boss.  Gig’Em!

I really don’t even know what his reply was to be honest.

It's still pretty rough in engineering classes at ATM. Daughter had something like a low-70's average in one of her classes last semester, wound up with an A on the curve. There were people in the class, some of them grad students, making 30-somethings on tests. It was a very tough class that centered on the mathematical analysis of complex signals.

I appreciate the replies guys but I put this in the fitness section and unfortunately the replies have not been at all related to my OP.

So what form of exercise would you see the most benefit in reducing BP?

Weight lifting/resistance or cardio running, biking etc?

In general if youre going from sedentary to active just moving and adding stimulus will eventually improve your body’s response. If you’re trying to lower blood pressure I would recommend 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity aerobic exercise. Which is the minimum ACSM recommended. However if completely depends on you. Overall the more you stress your system the more you will adapt.