Get Back In Shape To Improve Blood Pressure & Heart Health

The Back In Shape Program has been running for a while now, many people from up and down the UK and all over the world have worked with us to get their Back In Shape. Many have had success in removing their back pain or sciatica, additionally there are a growing number of cases whereby members fully embrace the Back In Shape Program, continuing to work diligently making our teachings part of their day-to-day life. The positive consequences of this diligence have been abundant and unexpected in many cases with members sharing stories along the lines of:

“I know i joined the program to fix my left sided lower back pain but I’ve just got back from a check up and X has also improved so much my GP/Doctor wanted to know what i’ve been doing to make such a great change!”

For us, the benefits of building the practices necessary to get Back In Shape in general, as well as fix your back pain are somewhat obvious, so we rarely go down the rabbit hole of explaining and “advertising” these additional benefits. this being said, it is helpful to remind ourselves that although this knowledge is fairly run of the mill for us, many of our members and the public at large are not often aware of these common facts.

With this in mind we thought it a good time to cover just one of many lovely benefits that you can get from getting “Back In Shape”.

How could your blood pressure be influenced for the worse?

Generally blood pressure is a measure of the pressure within our circulatory system. It reflects the elasticity or rigidity of our arteries and blood vessels, in essence giving us a window into the health of this essential system. The blood pressure can rise or fall based on a plethora of factors, resulting in both short term changes and more long lasting trends.

Unfortunately nowadays there seems to be the belief that high blood pressure and the need for medication to control this is something that is inevitable. Perhaps even something that marks the start of a decline in health. There doesn’t seem to be enough information out there that many of these factors that change our blood pressure short or long term, can be influenced.

There are significant factors that can affect your blood pressure, these include stress as well as physical fitness, body mass, diet and hydration. There are of course many more besides these mentioned, for the sake of brevity we won’t look to cover these all individually today.

When your back is bad, could this influence our blood pressure

Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the Back In Shape Program and the principles we teach are not the first port of call for many. The majority of our members find us having already tried numerous approaches, treatments, programs and some even undergoing more invasive procedures.

Chronic injuries and pain can often be stressful and to be struggling for a long period of time with back pain will take its toll, not just physically, but mentally too. The stress is something that is often not seen visibly on the surface, but a factor that leads to many physical, mental and chemical changes in the body. Much of this is not going to produce favourable changes in measures such as blood pressure.

For example, when we are stressed there are resultant changes in the tension in certain blood vessels through a process called vasoconstriction. These changes will have an inevitable impact on the pressure in the system.

How do you improve your blood pressure by getting Back In Shape

We all know that we could be fitter and healthier than we currently are. If nothing else, the events of the recent years has taught us we could all do with being a little healthier. Very few of us, after a long look in the mirror would be reach the conclusion that no improvements are required. This being said, quite often we get lulled into a false sense of security assuming because we’re active we must be fit and healthy. One of the common misconceptions that is somewhat frustrating to hear goes something like: 

“I’m so busy all day, doing lots of things, that when i get home I’m tired, my daily activity tires me out plenty so i don’t need to do exercise.”

In order to improve our fitness we have to work at a significant intensity in order to signal the body to adapt and change. This is a very important distinction and one that once learned can drastically improve your health and fitness. It’s not about just being tired at the end of the day, but more, how we fatigued ourselves. Just being tired at the end of the day is not sufficient to bring about change within our body.

The great thing about those getting involved with and progressing through the program is that you start working at this correct intensity, 4 or 5 times a week! You start to learn how to push yourself correctly within this specific time slot each day. This change to the daily habits and education has the effect of building up your fitness, improving your heart and circulatory system. 

It may be that you’re someone who’s worked out in the past, but it’s the camaraderie of being part of a group of people all working towards the same goal that keeps you consistent over the long term. It is this long term consistency that is what gets your body to change internally and adapt. 

Over this month of July we’ve been running our workout challenge and it’s been focussed on just this goal. Finding the right intensity with which we can trigger our body to make changes. And it has been a fantastic way of many of our members all sticking to a schedule and getting their workouts done – building these great habits in a fun way with others.

Getting your whole body Back In Shape

Being in pain, stressed, being injured and inactive create a perfect storm for the circumstances that can all too easily enable us to not do the things required to improve our circulatory health. When these factors go on for a period of months, years or longer, it can take its toll on us.

The remarkable news is that our bodies are just that, remarkable. Once we get ourselves active again, pursuing something purposeful, consistently over weeks and months, continuing for the long term we can trigger our body to change for the better.

Improving our circulatory health through regular exercise done at the right intensity to continue to improve our fitness, works to help us in a number of ways. We will reduce our back pain and disability, a source of stress for many. We also improve our fitness and ability to partake in all the things we love again, further reducing our stress and feeling a greater sense of fulfilment. It begins to become a positive loop. Our improved circulation enhances our body’s ability to ship resources around our body, including to those areas in need of healing. And so the positive loop continues further with a boon to the recovery of our lower back injury too!

For those of you that have fully embraced the Back In Shape Program and made it to the later stages, many of you will be aware of these transformations. For those of you not quite there yet, we do hope that this gives you a little glimpse into what’s in store for you if you can keep up your consistency. The good news is: it becomes self maintaining, especially if you go through the mental process of understanding all we’ve covered above. 

There are many members that have reached out to us to make us aware of other “general health measures” that have improved in a rather unexpected manner, perhaps topics for a future article and video. For now, keep up the great work you’ve been doing and know that these kinds of benefits come to those who are consistent, they don’t come quick, but they are real changes!

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Comment of the week – Bridget

“The good news is though due to perseverance, I have had to monitor my blood pressure this week and thanks to the BIS programme my blood pressure has lowered so much I am now in the normal zone and the stress has not even affected that.“

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3 Tips To Help Get Your Whole Body Back In Shape:

• Take measurements

Firstly, taking measurements of your health and fitness is essential, what gets measured gets accomplished. Whether it is a distance you can walk, a number of reps you can do, taking your blood pressure, body composition or recording your VO2 MAX (measure of fitness) in a lab and many more besides. There are lots of different ways you can record your current “level of health” and taking a moment to do this is an essential first step.

• Building good habits:

Change in our body doesn’t happen overnight, it would be a waste of energy for our body to make adaptations to every one-off high level stimulus. You need to build routine and habits. Do a workout 3,4 or 5 times a week, for example. Sometimes the “plan” will evolve over time but the habits should be formed. Make the time to do this and hold yourself to account – our group on Facebook is a great way to do that and get all the support to go alongside. Building these good habits helps you in the long run as it becomes difficult to break them once they’re part of your life. No doubt you’ve already found this with some of those unwanted habits that are so very stubborn when you try and change them.

• Be consistent & progressive

It is only the consistency over the long term that leads to lasting change. Steadily working a little harder, every so often allows you, over the long term to tell your body that this is what you expect of it as the new status quo. Your body starts to realise that this isn’t just another fad to ignore. You’re serious now, and so it will divert the necessary resources to help your body grow stronger, fitter and more healthy.

The more you do, the more you can do!