Strength training after open heart surgery?

[gadders]

Heart Op Related Tangent:

When I was a young and stupid student I worked as a removals man in the summer holidays. I remember that for one job we had to lift a sofa out of an upstairs window.

One of the chaps on the "catching end" was about 50 and had recently come back to work early after a heart bypass as his family couldn't afford to eat on the statutory sick pay he was getting as he recovered.

Anyway, a fuck up happened and the sofa hit him in the sternum and I still remember the noise he made 30 years later.

I didn't really appreciate it at the time - I just thought he was an old duffer that worked there - but now with a familiy of my own, I realise what a Man (with a captial M) he was for coming back to work and risking his health to feed his family.

[VNV]

Rip asked me to do a podcast with him around 18 months ago on the issue of training after cardiac surgery. For what its worth, here are my thoughts:

@CRETE:
1. Why did you develop an aneurysm - high blood pressure, aortic valve problem, or a genetic process?
2. If the aneurysm in the ascending aorta was completely resected and replaced, do you have aneurysms anywhere else? If no, you should have a CT scan to check it out.
3. Were you training before you developed the aneurysm? If not, start with the bar and build your way up.

@BOBMAN:
Hell yeah man. Thats all I can say. More power to you. With replacement of the root, valve, ascending and arch, you are considered cured of the bicuspid valve and attendant aortic disease. Lift away.

@KIP:
You've got to give the breast-bone at least 6-8 weeks to heal up. Its like any broken bone. After that, get a stress test or echo to see what you heart looks like. After that, do cardiac rehab. Its not perfect, but it will give you a sense for what getting your heart rate up after the operation "feels" like. Then start training. Just body weight squats, then the bar, and then a straightforward gradual LP. Its a marathon, not a race.

Hope its helpful.

abeel.mangi@yale.edu if you have questions you dont wanna air on here...

The amount of talent on this board is ridiculous.