High intensity nausea
Discussion
As I live in Spain, my Zwift sessions have become a daily thing. I'm training anyway for a Gran Fondo this September, but as I'm not allowed out to exercise at all (a member of my local Malaga club was fined 1,500eur a couple of days after the lockdown started), I've settled down with my Kickr Core and Zwift.
All is good and I've upped my FTP to 287w and I'm breaking records weekly, but I'm really struggling with the races and sprints. I could cycle for hours and hours at my 90-95% threshold, but the moment I give it my all in the last km of a race or in a sprint >100% FTP threshold, I begin to feel seriously sick. I've had to jump off the bike mid-race to stop myself being ill.
However, if I drink a little, within a few seconds, the feeling is gone and I can continue as if it never happened.
It's intensely frustrating as I'm consistently up with the leader packs in races with tons of energy left yet I just can't keep up on the final sprints due to this nausea. I've tried pacing myself more, different breathing techniques, carb packing well before the race, trying isotonic drinks but I'm always getting this nausea.
Any ideas or suggestions on how to manage this and ultimately eliminate this problem altogether?
All is good and I've upped my FTP to 287w and I'm breaking records weekly, but I'm really struggling with the races and sprints. I could cycle for hours and hours at my 90-95% threshold, but the moment I give it my all in the last km of a race or in a sprint >100% FTP threshold, I begin to feel seriously sick. I've had to jump off the bike mid-race to stop myself being ill.
However, if I drink a little, within a few seconds, the feeling is gone and I can continue as if it never happened.
It's intensely frustrating as I'm consistently up with the leader packs in races with tons of energy left yet I just can't keep up on the final sprints due to this nausea. I've tried pacing myself more, different breathing techniques, carb packing well before the race, trying isotonic drinks but I'm always getting this nausea.
Any ideas or suggestions on how to manage this and ultimately eliminate this problem altogether?
It's your brain's way of stopping your body from doing stupid things. In the case of motion sickness it's totally counter productive because generally there's nothing you can do about it to stop the motion. In the case of high intensity exercise it's very effective!
I get the same problem if I haven't done anything high intensity for a while. Usually when I start doing 1-2m max intervals near the start of the season I'll vomit in my first couple of sessions usually after the 3rd interval, but after that it just doesn't happen again. My strategy is to take a short break when it happens, wait until the nausea has passed, and then try and complete the session.
Perhaps you should do some focused high intensity interval sessions to deliberately trigger it, and then use this strategy to un-learn the nausea response?
Your mileage may vary of course, it's all in the mind and we're all different!
I get the same problem if I haven't done anything high intensity for a while. Usually when I start doing 1-2m max intervals near the start of the season I'll vomit in my first couple of sessions usually after the 3rd interval, but after that it just doesn't happen again. My strategy is to take a short break when it happens, wait until the nausea has passed, and then try and complete the session.
Perhaps you should do some focused high intensity interval sessions to deliberately trigger it, and then use this strategy to un-learn the nausea response?
Your mileage may vary of course, it's all in the mind and we're all different!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycl...
I can picture Sir Chirs Hoy lying on the floor in a documentary after a mega session! Though I assume he's operating at peaks we wont reach
I remember hearing a Coach at a seminar. Said his background was a PE Teacher. One day he set the kids Interval running sessions. All was great. Hard as you can for 50m then walk back.
Then one threw up. Which cascaded and several threw up.
He assumed that he was going to get fired. But the kids loved it. "We ran so hard we were sick!"
If the OPs problem is the other end. Then that will probably be diet related. As per the poster above, before I run anything over 5/6K I need to make sure I'm as empty as possible. And I have to watch that I don't overdo certain foods in the 24hrs prior to a session. Caffeine gels are off my plate as they exacerbate things!
I can picture Sir Chirs Hoy lying on the floor in a documentary after a mega session! Though I assume he's operating at peaks we wont reach
I remember hearing a Coach at a seminar. Said his background was a PE Teacher. One day he set the kids Interval running sessions. All was great. Hard as you can for 50m then walk back.
Then one threw up. Which cascaded and several threw up.
He assumed that he was going to get fired. But the kids loved it. "We ran so hard we were sick!"
If the OPs problem is the other end. Then that will probably be diet related. As per the poster above, before I run anything over 5/6K I need to make sure I'm as empty as possible. And I have to watch that I don't overdo certain foods in the 24hrs prior to a session. Caffeine gels are off my plate as they exacerbate things!
S1KRR said:
If the OPs problem is the other end. Then that will probably be diet related. As per the poster above, before I run anything over 5/6K I need to make sure I'm as empty as possible. And I have to watch that I don't overdo certain foods in the 24hrs prior to a session. Caffeine gels are off my plate as they exacerbate things!
That was more of a general running tip!The OP is suffering from nausea.
Nausea can be sign of heart distress or in a worst case scenario an indicator of an MI (heart attack) in progress or about to start. Given your experiencing this at flat out effort it maybe the old ticker saying its at or over its limit and you need to back off. . Listen to your body and use it accordingly not everyone can be a super athlete (physical limitations in play such as the hearts ability to pump blood to meet demand) .
fredd1e said:
Nausea can be sign of heart distress or in a worst case scenario an indicator of an MI (heart attack) in progress or about to start. Given your experiencing this at flat out effort it maybe the old ticker saying its at or over its limit and you need to back off. . Listen to your body and use it accordingly not everyone can be a super athlete (physical limitations in play such as the hearts ability to pump blood to meet demand) .
I don’t think he’s doing flat out efforts. He’s just going fractionally over what he can do for a whole hour.fredd1e said:
Nausea can be sign of heart distress or in a worst case scenario an indicator of an MI (heart attack) in progress or about to start. Given your experiencing this at flat out effort it maybe the old ticker saying its at or over its limit and you need to back off. . Listen to your body and use it accordingly not everyone can be a super athlete (physical limitations in play such as the hearts ability to pump blood to meet demand) .
Nausea might be a symptom of a heart attack, but it's only a symptom of a heart attack if you're having a heart attack... In which case I expect he'd know about it.If you're worried about your heart go and get it checked out, but I think it's unlikely to be the cause.
Vomiting as a response to high intensity exercise is fairly common and not something to worry about from a "it might kill me" perspective.
Hey all....sorry for the absence on my part. It's been a busy week.
So some very interesting discussions going on and I'm doing quite a bit of research into this. I'm pretty damn sure there's no heart failure going on! Funnily enough before this whole pandemic I had a complete ECG and cholesterol check as I had a misreading for an illness I had. All came out fine.
I also monitor both my heart and blood pressure daily with average resting of 50bpm and BP avg of 112/75 so all good there too.
Somebody earlier in the thread mentioned internal training, so I'm going to give that a go more regularly and see how I get on. Last night I did my first interval workout for a while and it involved 5 reps 160/320. I actually felt ok aside for the last 320 stint where I began to feel a little nausea towards the last few seconds. As soon as I backed off back to 160 and drank some fluids, I felt absolutely fine. Looking back at my heart rate, it was well below 180bpm with a maximum of 178 so well within my normal tolerances.
I'm just going to keep up with the intervals mixed in with the endurance work to see how I get on and keep you posted on this.
Gagging to go outside for a ride as I want to see if I have the same feeling in the open as I do on Zwift, but it's going to be months before we're allowed out again (living in Spain).
So some very interesting discussions going on and I'm doing quite a bit of research into this. I'm pretty damn sure there's no heart failure going on! Funnily enough before this whole pandemic I had a complete ECG and cholesterol check as I had a misreading for an illness I had. All came out fine.
I also monitor both my heart and blood pressure daily with average resting of 50bpm and BP avg of 112/75 so all good there too.
Somebody earlier in the thread mentioned internal training, so I'm going to give that a go more regularly and see how I get on. Last night I did my first interval workout for a while and it involved 5 reps 160/320. I actually felt ok aside for the last 320 stint where I began to feel a little nausea towards the last few seconds. As soon as I backed off back to 160 and drank some fluids, I felt absolutely fine. Looking back at my heart rate, it was well below 180bpm with a maximum of 178 so well within my normal tolerances.
I'm just going to keep up with the intervals mixed in with the endurance work to see how I get on and keep you posted on this.
Gagging to go outside for a ride as I want to see if I have the same feeling in the open as I do on Zwift, but it's going to be months before we're allowed out again (living in Spain).
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